Is your Bike Friday your only bike

[Rick Mason]

I need to reduce my number of bikes due to my current housing.  If possible, I'd like to have only one bike, so I'm interested in knowing how many of you have a Bike Friday as your only bike. What compromises you needed to make? What you miss (or don't)? Things like that.

I do know what my uses are. The ones most on the "fringe" would be faster club rides, and gravel (loose gravel as opposed to crushed limestone like used on rail trails. I do understand that no one bike, small wheel or large can do everything perfectly. I'd just like to see from the forums collective wisdom, how close I can get on a Bike Friday.

For club rides, my experience tells me that I am OK up to the limits of my "motor", though there is some speed loss from smaller diameters. I know thinner/lighter  tires will help.

For Gravel, I  have ridden some shorter stretches (a mile or 2) using 40-406 Marathons. Acceptable, though not as stable as my full size touring bike on 700 by 35 Marathons. New disk brake equipped NWT bikes can fit larger diameter tires; I believe >= 48-406. Do any of you have experience using a Friday with fatter tires?  Do you see much difference.? Yes, I know a NWT will never be a mountain bike. I'm mostly looking for what you folks have experienced first hand.

I do recognize that the too above uses are somewhat opposed to each other, but I assume tires will make a difference, and for this, I am not opposed to having 2 sets of wheels or barring having 2 wheel sets, changing tires.

Thanks for your thoughts here.

[John Thurston]

If I had to pare my stable down to a single bike, my Friday (a V-brake Llama from the previous century) would be on the short-list of candidates. I currently have it rigged with 44mm tires and drop bars. It easily handles any surfaces I'm comfortable riding. When once I hit a +20% downhill of washboard covered with 1 1/2" gravel, it wasn't great, but those conditions are rare.

It is heavier than my preferred road bike. It doesn't roll over obstacles as well as my larger-wheeled trail bike. But any single bike is a compromise, and I think it makes a reasonable compromise.

https://flic.kr/p/LzM9cE

Your NWT will be lighter, and have a lower bottom bracket, than my Llama. So yours will probably do better on the road than mine, and less well on the trails than mine.

I'll get out my soap box, once again, and say . . "tires". Did I mention tires? If you really want a one-bike stable, ditch those Marathons! Get yourself some lighter, wider tires. Some candidates are:

• Tiogo Powerblock https://www.tiogausa.com/bmx-tires-main.html
• Tioga FastR  https://www.tiogausa.com/bmx-tires-main.html
• Maxis DTH   https://www.maxxis.com/us/tire/dth/
• Maxxis TORCH  https://www.maxxis.com/us/tire/torch/

I've ridden the Powerblock, which is my second favorite tire. I want to try some of the others, but can't justify the experiments until I burn up some more of my inventory. My all time fav (Schwalbe Shredda) is no longer made.

I've preached on-list before about tires. I'll let you search the archives.

-- 
John "Go wide. Go light. Go soft." Thurston
Juneau, Alaska

[Geof Gee]

For a few years, my Bike Friday was my commuter and club ride bike.  Eventually I started doing enough club rides that I picked up a road bike, but my times on the training routes in Arlington changed as one might think with a 5-7 pound lighter bike ... hilly rides were a few minutes faster.  

Out west, I used the Bike Friday with 47 mm wide tires sans fenders on "fire road" rides and it did well. Not sure if I would do better than modern gravel bikes -- I do very little sport riding nowadays so I don't have one -- but at a minimum it's serviceable over a broad range of surfaces.  Given the usefulness of folding and packing, it would be my do-everything-bike.  

-G

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"Sometimes I forget things.  Who I am.  Where I am.  Unimportant things. But I'm not insane. "

[robert clark]

No, but it's my rain winter bike  hub dynamo lights , disc brakes & Rohloff hub (linear shifting sequence)

in heavy rain my rain cape covers my hands legs   and butt in  one  thing... hat on my head

[Small house with unheated basement]

[robert clark]

I have no clubby group riding situations any more , you say you do.. 

[Geof Gee]

I should add that for a few years, it was also my trailer puller for the kids and I did lots of errands pulling the kids all over the place.  The small wheels gave me the low gears for touring and hauling! 

I'll second what the others said about tires. Lots of high performance BMX tires improve the ride and speed of the bike. I have Tioga PowerBlocks on my NWT now.  

-G

[Rick Mason]

Thanks all,

Exactly the kind of response I was looking for. 

The key message being tires. I'm feeling a second set of wheels coming on.

For reference, I have a new NWT on order - took advantage of the November 20% off March delivery offer. Basically the "stock" 18 speed, Disk brake version with just a few changes: 

Add the Brompton front bag attachment bracket to the Head tube; Switch from flat bars to drops; Substitute Sun Rhyno rims, and Schwalbe Kojak Folding Tires (20 x1.35). 

I see that several of you don't like Marathons. I'll look into that though I do have a new pair of them now.

Rick

Two wrongs don't make a right;
But three rights do make a left.

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[Ken Preston]

Is anyone out there looking at selling their tandem. Something in the $1,000 range. 

My buddy is looking to get one for his winter residence. 

Ken

On Dec 15, 2022, at 9:25 AM, Rick Mason <rick.a...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Eric Daume]

I happen to have a BF tandem for sale:

https://bikingtoplay.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-for-sale-post.html?m=1

Eric

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[robert clark]

I would have liked a new type NWT , for the Silk option, but I got a NOS Llama instead.

Ordering guy wanted black but actually ordered the anthracite metallic a rather dark grey, 

so did not take it when done... or so I was told..

[Keith Adams]

A bit late to the conversation, but my $0.02 is below.  Being a new year I'll offer it at a 100% price discount.  :)

I'm fortunate to have space and budget for a fleet of seven (accumulated gradually over the course of nearly 30 years): four single-seaters and three tandems (long story... don't ask).  One of the single seaters is my New World Tourist but it wouldn't survive a purge - in fact I plan to sell it this spring.  I got tired of all the small wheel issues (notably the difficulty in obtaining replacement tires and tubes on a tour I took last summer) but if you're not planning to be away from home for extended periods that is less of an issue.  I've already ordered and taken possession of its successor, a bike that includes 700c wheels and a traditional diamond frame.

Your use cases (club rides, light off-roading) are certainly do-able on a Friday IMO.  (FWIW: My opinion is experience-based, not just a guess.  I've done plenty of each of those things on my Friday.)  For gravel riding, a 1.5" tire run at, say, 2/3 of its maximum pressure rating should do the job.  It's important to reduce tire pressure on rough / uneven surfaces so that the tires can "give" a little more and absorb the irregularities in the surface rather than simply bouncing over / off them.  Handling is much better, as is overall comfort because the tires absorb a much larger fraction of the shocks, rather than transmitting them through the frame to you.

Given the notorious difficulty of unmounting and mounting the brand and model of tires I tend to use on the NWT, my approach would be to go for something in the 1.5 to 1.75 inch range and use them in all ride scenarios.  Adding and releasing air pressure is faster and WAAAAAAYYYYYY easier than changing tires.  Swapping wheels could be a good alternative strategy too.

Regards and good luck in your decision.

-= Keith Adams =-

Rockville, MD, USA

[Rick]

Thanks Kieth - Late maybe, but not too late.

It's interesting that your NWT wouldn't survive a purge - and looks to be on it's way out already. I can understand the tire issue. For the one long tour I did with my current NWT (Pacific Coust - 2000 miles), I did take a folding spare, never needed, but there just in case. But your comments do give me pause.

------ Original Message ------

From "Keith Adams" <adams...@gmail.com>

To "Bike Friday Yak!" <y...@bikefriday.com>

Cc "rick.a...@gmail.com" <rick.a...@gmail.com>

Date 1/2/2023 6:12:31 AM

Subject Re: Is your Bike Friday your only bike

[Keith Adams]

My luck with tires on that tour was beyond extraordinarily awful.  Many others I have read/talked with have reported just the opposite experience: thousands of miles without a single flat.

I suffered two separate complete tire structure failures as well as numerous other patchable punctures, despite having set out with absolutely brand new tires.  One tire died of a bead failure after only a few hundred miles.  

The other, which was on a used tire I was carrying as a spare, died after I hit the sharp edge of a pothole.  I'm a hefty guy and was carrying 55-60 pounds of gear so that incident might be excused but for the fact that I couldn't find a replacement anywhere near where I was at the time.  Given the long list of issues I had already experienced that was the final straw.  It was a contributing factor, but not the only one, in my decision to end my trip two months early.

YMMV and will hopefully be far better than mine.