Favourite Bike of All Time?

Separate forum to permit easy exclusion when searching for serious information !
User avatar
Guy951
Posts: 1599
Joined: 14 Jul 2009, 8:23am
Location: Mid Beds

Re: Favourite Bike of All Time?

Post by Guy951 »

My Brompton. I've had it just over two years and have hardly touched any of my other bikes since I got it!
Attachments
Brompton.jpg
What manner of creature's this, being but half a fish and half a monster
drossall
Posts: 6115
Joined: 5 Jan 2007, 10:01pm
Location: North Hertfordshire

Re: Favourite Bike of All Time?

Post by drossall »

I've remarked before that my favourite bike tends to be the one I am riding when you ask. Whether it's a cheap, gas-pipe fixed or my best road machine (which is still not the latest model by some distance). It's not about the bike and all that.

On the subject of trikes, here's mine. The place to look to drool is the Tricycle Association site. They are a minority interest, and sadly this does mean that second-hand ones can be quite cheap compared to what they necessarily sell for new.

However, this doesn't really apply:
Manc33 wrote:The idea of ... not having to worry about going off balance is so tempting.

You can't lean a trike so, to keep it stable, the rider needs to throw him/herself around a bit. See some of the pictures in the TA gallery of trikes cornering at speed. Harder work than a bike, definitely!
Image

I saw a picture recently of a tandem trike in a time trial. The stoker is leaning somewhere into the next county. Amazing sight. They did a 57 apparently.
tatanab
Posts: 5033
Joined: 8 Feb 2007, 12:37pm

Re: Favourite Bike of All Time?

Post by tatanab »

Manc33 wrote:Has it got three front wheels?
No. The rear hubs are specific to the make of axle. They have a hexagon that mates with a hex on the drive shaft.
It hasn't got a rear brake?
Paragraph 9 of the Construction and use Act 1983 allows lightweight trikes to dispense with rear braking but retain redundancy by having 2 front brakes.
I thought being hand made they would cost a lot but they aren't all that expensive
A frame starts at about £3000, remember that this includes the axle gubbins and hubs. To put a moderately equipped new machine on the road is about £4000. A decent second hand machine can be found for £500 or less.
The idea of having really low gearing and not having to worry about going off balance is so tempting.
True, you can sit and winch it up hills, stop, rest and then move off without having to fumble around picking up the pedals. At any decent speed stability is another matter entirely and one has to be a bit agile hanging off the side as Drossall has shown in his links.
My main worry would be traffic going past it, but when handlebars are 800mm wide anyway, how much wider is it going to be than that at the back, probably not much.
Conventional axle width is 700mm although there are options to go wider, generally to 750 mm although 800 has been known and is the norm for tandem trikes. Width is not a problem since my 700mm projects only 4" (100mm) either side of my elbows so cannot possibly cause an overtaking problem.
One with disc brakes front and rear would be good but it looks impossible to have it designed that way, you'd be twisting the frame no matter how it was designed, unless even more tubing was added, but even then it would still be dangerous.
Not so. Discs front and rear are possible and have been used on a tandem trike.

Usual conversation with an inexperienced bicyclist who says trike riding is cheating because it is easier ---Me - "it is obviously heavier than a comparable bicycle; there is a heck of a lot more wind resistance, I am working physically harder to keep it rubber side down than you ever do on a road going bicycle. So in what way is it easier?" Then, with a big grin I'd say "but I do it because it is damned good fun!"
Manc33
Posts: 2218
Joined: 25 Apr 2015, 9:37pm

Re: Favourite Bike of All Time?

Post by Manc33 »

Cheers tatanab that covered everything.

That leaning... I have found myself doing that on my 2 wheeled bike sometimes. Why was I doing it? I don't know! It just feels like sometimes it's a way of cornering without leaning the bike as much, or at all. It feels like you're holding the bike away from you. What drivers must think when they see me doing it, I have no idea, probably think I have escaped from a Bicycle Circus.

https://tricycleassociation.org.uk/wp-c ... nering.jpg

You shouldn't have said used ones can go for £500 :mrgreen:
We'll always be together, together on electric bikes.
Jdsk
Posts: 24639
Joined: 5 Mar 2019, 5:42pm

Re: Favourite Bike of All Time?

Post by Jdsk »

drossall wrote:I've remarked before that my favourite bike tends to be the one I am riding when you ask.

Excellent... bikefulness?

Jonathan
sjs
Posts: 1306
Joined: 24 Jan 2010, 10:08pm
Location: Hitchin

Re: Favourite Bike of All Time?

Post by sjs »

The '50s Raleigh 3-speed "all steel bicycle" that I and some friends rescued from the back of my dad's garage when I was 11, and rode for the next 10 years, including a memorable 100 mile trip home from university at the end of one term.
drossall
Posts: 6115
Joined: 5 Jan 2007, 10:01pm
Location: North Hertfordshire

Re: Favourite Bike of All Time?

Post by drossall »

My first full-size bike was an "All-Steel Bicycle", passed down from my Dad. I liked riding that too.

He eventually replaced it with my first sports bike when a teacher, who happened also to be a friend of his, saw me braking with my foot on the way to school because the roller brakes didn't work, in spite of my having by then stripped them down and replaced some parts. The teacher's view was that I nearly shot out of a side road into his car. I don't remember it like that, but there's no doubting that the brakes were not good.

The replacement was a second-hand, white Falcon 5-speed. After a bit I upgraded it to 10. The rest is history...
Post Reply