Bike Friday for a touring bike?

wrote:

However I was gonna go for 26" inch wheels and tires if
I buy a Bruce Gordon BLT.

What's your thoughts on that.... i.e. 26"?

Great size; best tire and rim selection of any wheel size. The
inherent superior strength of the ISO 559 wheel (compared to ISO 622)
allows a lower spoke count with equal strength to a 700c wheel (e.g.
32 instead of 36, or 36 instead of 40).

It's often easier to make a normal-fitting frame for a normal-sized
person, with good tire clearance, by using 26" rather than 700c
wheels. And frames with clearance for 2" or wider tires are much,
much more common in 26".

There is probably no place left on Earth where 26" MTB tires are not
available. That's a plus if you ride in the remoter parts of our
planet.

I like 700c a bit better now that fat tires are available in that
size. I have spent most of my miles, and all the fastest ones, on 26"
wheeled bikes, though.

Chalo Colina

In article ,
James Thomson wrote:

"David" wrote:

They bent your chain ring and yet your front derailleur survived?

Easy to imagine. The lower part of the chainring is relatively exposed, and
not close to the front derailleur.


It requires quite a bit of force to bent a chain ring and it's odd to
have only concentrated on the chain ring when the frame is more exposed
than the ring. Just unlucky I guess? I have heard more about bent
frames, dented tubes (those thin Columbus Foco) and stuff, including
one of the stachion tubes of my Marzocchi Z.3 BAM light fork when the
now deceased Royal Airlines (a Canadian carrier) damaged it while
coming back from the big island.

With the Bike Friday and a Sachs 3x7 or a 3x9 hub, even if the
rear derailleur got snapped off, all I have to do is shorten the
chain to make it a single speed bike with a 7 or 9 speed internal
hub still intact.

The epicyclic part of the hub is a three-speed. The cassette body takes
seven or (eight or) nine sprockets.

Thank you for correcting the error. You are indeed correct. But
still, a 3 speed bike is better than no speed at all. I remember that
in the old days, youth hostel tourers ride on 3 speeders!!

In article ,
wrote:

With the Bike Friday and a Sachs
3x7 or a 3x9 hub, even if the rear derailleur got snapped off, all I
have to do is shorten the chain to make it a single speed bike with a 7
or 9 speed internal hub still intact.

If I do decide to go for a Bike Friday.....Im
definitely gonna go for the internal geared rear hub.

Is that a good idea in your mind??

While I am no expert with gearing, I always believe that with a 20"
bike, you really have no choice but to go with an internal geared hub
to attain a workable gear ratio. The hub on my Friday works great and
has never let me down. I ofcourse have a mechanic service it before I
go on any major bike trip.

Smaller (e.g. 20") wheels translate much more surface bumpiness into
vertical motion at the axle. They fall deeper into holes and are less
capable of rolling out. At any given tire width, they sink more into
soft surfaces than larger diameter wheels and offer less directional
control under those circumstances. Their tires have noticeably more
rolling resistance and wear out more quickly than larger ones.

If pressures are lowered to moderate the ride quality shortcomings of
small wheels, rolling resistance climbs even more. The smaller the
wheel, the easier it is to pinch the tube (other factors equal). This
imposes a limit on minimum pressure which is higher than for a larger
diameter wheel.

Small wheels are stronger and lighter than large ones, and make
bicycles much easier to pack and transport. Still, I don't think this
makes up for their limitations except under circumstances dictated by
travel arrangements.

What I found to mitigate the problem is to use a smooth fat tire on the
front with a max pressure of 50 psi (The Haro Ninja) and at the rear, I
use a Primo Comet with a max pressure of 110 psi. I ride a Brooks with
a Rockshox suspension seatpost to smooth out the bumps on the rear due
to the high tire pressure I use. This is the setup I use to tour and
have found to be just as comfortable as my full sized touring bike.
I certainly would not take it off-road though.

Sheldon Brown wrote in message ...
Chalo Colina wrote:

You can get ISO 406 (20" BMX) tires in many grocery stores and all
Walmarts. They are as broadly available as ISO 559 (26" MTB) if not
more so, and way more available than ISO 622 (700c).

An anonymous poster sniped:

There are no Walmarts in Europe.

Carrefour!

Chalo is correct if the bike in question had the commmon-as-dirt 406 mm
size. Unfortunately, _some_ Bike Fridays use the much harder-to-find
451 mm size. I would agree that 451 is a very poor choice for touring,
but that 406 is a good choice if speed is not a major priority.

I don't think there is any other tire size in existence that is as
widely available as 406.

Sheldon "Ubiquity" Brown

When I was riding in France last summer, I had a stupid day where I
left some of my things in a friends car (I was with him for a couple
of days, and then going off unsuported) including my flat kit... I
got a flat at the beginning of the day, on a Sunday afternoon in the
middle of the Pyranees, and after help from a fellow cyclist in the
form of a glueless patch, eventually found an open bike shop, but they
had no large 622 tubes.... Mostly mountain biking in that region,
from that shop. I don't know what the lesson is, but no matter what
size you have, carry your own spares!!

Whitfit.

On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, David wrote:

If I do decide to go for a Bike Friday.....Im
definitely gonna go for the internal geared rear hub.

Is that a good idea in your mind??

While I am no expert with gearing, I always believe that with a 20"
bike, you really have no choice but to go with an internal geared hub
to attain a workable gear ratio. The hub on my Friday works great and
has never let me down. I ofcourse have a mechanic service it before I
go on any major bike trip.

Moultons www.moultoneers.net have used small rear cogs for ~20 years now
to get a normal range of road gears. Shimano has recently "validated" this
concept with their new small-wheel Capreo group, the 9-speed cassette
starts at 9 teeth for top gear.