Background:
Short version:
I purchased a new Bike Friday New World Tourist (NWT) to replace on I purchased on Ebay in 2019. That bike was a bit too big, and I replaced it so the slightly smaller size would put more of my weight on the front wheel, hoping that would make the bike a bit less twitchy. One of my goals was to have one bike that could do everything I needed, allowing me to get rid of all other bikes.
While I haven’t done any baggage carrying touring, I have done a couple thousand miles of around town day rides – some as long as metric century (100 km / 62.14 miles), so I have a pretty good feel for the bike.
Based on this riding, here are my thoughts. The sizing Bike Friday made was based on my existing 700c Touring bike. Overall, the bike rides well, and is a good choice for bike touring, especially when more complex logistics are involved. The bike can also be ridden in a more “spirited” way for day rides, though my experiences say this isn’t the most idea use case for it.
At normal speeds, say 10-20 MPH (16-32 KPH), the bike rides a lot like a bike with “normal size wheels. As many have said, it is a bit twitchy, though as is said, I do mostly get used to it. But once the speeds exceed about 20 MPH, it becomes more unstable. It doesn’t matter how long I ride it, I never feel comfortable at those higher speeds. To some extent this is mitigated by adding a front load, but it never feels totally stable.
Is this an issue? That depends on how you use it. For touring it is fine. And for more spirited day rides, it is OK unless higher speeds are involved. But when descending a steep hill on my other bikes, I can just “let it go”, I can’t do that on the Friday. It starts to get scary at about 25 MPH, forcing me to brake where I’d feel fine at 40 MPH on a regular bike.
I suspect I am pickier than most here. Perhaps that is due to having a road bike that is totally balanced, even at 55 MPH. Again, for touring, the NWT should be OK, since the front load will help stabilize it, and there is little reason to ride that fast anyway.
Speed and performance are OK, again for touring purposes, though not for faster riding. Bike Friday says “a small wheel is more efficient than a large wheel in speeds up to 16 mph, equally efficient in speeds from 16 to 33 mph”. But my experiences is that for a given amount of effort, my NWT is about 10% slower than my other road bikes. This is similar to what I have read on the Bike Friday Yak forum. Again, this should be OK for touring.
The gotcha for me is that one of my goals was to have one bike that could do everything I needed. So in the end, while the NWT will cover the touring end of my usage spectrum, I will still need my road bike for the faster end of the spectrum.
Finally, again, since this is intended to be a “do it all” bike, I was looking for the ability to do around town duties. The inability to fold, and therefor be taken into places with me, while not as great, is not a deal breaker. I can easily enough lock it outside. But again, the inability to use the large Brompton bag is disappointing, though I can use panniers instead. So the Friday can do around town duty, it’s simply not in the same class as the Brompton. But really, nothing else is.
If you want details, read on.
Long Version
Also look here.
/bikes/Brompton-Review.html
In March I received a new Bike Friday New World Tourist (NWT). This is my second NWT. The first one I purchased on Ebay in 2019. Having little to go on as to size, I purchased one that looked to be the right size. I used it to ride the ACA Pacific Coast route (My Journal) in 2019. While it worked OK, based on my experiences doing this ride, I wanted to make some changes. For one, I found the bike twitchier than I had hoped – even when fully loaded. A discussion with Bike Friday suggested more weight up front. I surmised that some of the issue here was that the size of the bike I bought was a bit too big, putting less weight on the front wheel than desired. Beyond this, I wanted to have disc brakes, and a folding seat mast, rather than the “Easy Pack” version Bike Friday # 1 had. That would allow me to us the “Quick Fold” capability.
Individually, these aren’t worth the cost of a new bike, and even together, they're questionable. But while perusing the Bike Friday site, I discovered that for $150, they would add a Brompton luggage block fixture. A nice, convenient way to add a quickly removed front bag. Still not enough to convince me to buy a new bike, but then Bike Friday offered a 20% discount to make a purchase in November, for a March delivery. That made the purchase make more sense, so I bit.
What I chose was the New World Tourist (NWT), upgraded to Disc Brakes (+ $100) and 18 speeds / double front crankset (+ $80). Total with Disc brake and 18 speed upgrades: $ 1975 (before the 20% discount).
Beyond this I specified a few changes:
Changes made to the "standard" build:
The standard rims specified on the NWT are Weinmann Zac 30 rims. I wanted stronger rims for touring, so I chose to upgrade to Sun Rhyno Lite rims. Cost: $40
The tires specified on the standard bike are 1.75 inch (44 mm) Schwalbe “RoadCruisers”. I have some spare Marathons already, and since I am also using the bike for faster rides at home, I decided to upgrade to 1.35 inch (35 mm) Schwalbe Kojaks. I’ll switch to Schwalbe Marathons for touring, and winter. Please, no flames for my choose of tires here! Added cost for the Kojaks: $48
The disc brake calipers in the base build are zoom (Sensai) models. I chose to upgrade to the well reviewed TRP Spyke calipers (the mountain version of the TRP Spyres). Cost: $182
I choose to go with drop bars instead of the flat bars specified as default. This required adding Cork Bar Tape, using different Brake Levers (Tektro RL520), and different shifters (microSHIFT Bar End). Total additional cost: $43
Lastly, I elected to add the Brompton block bracket — a braze on bracket that allows use of Brompton bags. This means I don't need to mess with traditional Handlebar bag mounts, and my handlebar "real estate" is preserved for things like speedometers, lights, and bells.
Cost of these Upgrades:
Some folks have felt that Bike Friday charged too much for upgrades (full retail for parts substituted, while giving little credit for parts being replaced). I decided to run some numbers to see how all this came out for me. Here is what I found:
This stuff should be in table form in the section at the end...
The Changes:
Total, including Bromton fixture: $ 463
Doing a quick internet search, retail/listed prices for all of this (less the Brompton bracket) is about $489.
What Bike Friday charged me for these upgrades is $313. Savings = $ 176
That makes the amount I paid to be ~ 65 % of retail for the upgrades. Decent.
But because I took advantage of the 20% off for ordering in November for a March delivery, my actual costs for these upgrades was $250.40, so the real cost is about 50 %. So the upgrade cost is actually pretty good.
As noted above, I added the Brompton front bag attachment braze on as listed above. This cost was $150, but since there is no after market alternative, I didn't include it in the above calculations, nor did I include the discounts for deleting the saddle and pedals. Oh, and again, 20% off, so in the end, the Brompton bracket cost me $120
All in all, what would normally be a $2,428.00 bike, cost $1,942.40. Not cheap, but given the utility it was planned to provide, decent.
Initial Thoughts:
Before I go into too much detail, let me give a basic review of the bike. While I haven’t done any baggage carrying touring, I have done a couple thousand miles of around town day rides – some as long as metric century (100 km / 62.14 miles), so I have a pretty good feel for the bike.
When I gave Bike Friday measurements for them to duplicate, they were from my existing Touring bike – a Medium sized 2016 REI “Novara” Randonee. REI’s equivalent of a Surly Long Haul Trucker, or Trek 520. That means a fairly upright position, although having a long steer tube means I can handlebars to be lowered of raised, though I haven’t done so.
Overall, the bike rides well, and is a good choice for bike touring. Especially when more complex logistics are involved. While the fold-ability/pack-ability isn’t an issue in all cases, when it is, it’s nice to have that capability along side of a bike that for the most part rides like any other touring bike. While the NWT doesn’t have the insane number of mounts that a gravel bike has, it isn’t aimed at off road touring. If you want that, go get one of Bike Friday’s “All Packas”. But the NWT does have attachment points for fenders as well as front and rear racks. Bike Friday also sells folding rear racks, and disassemble-able front racks, so you can ride loaded, and pack small.
The NWT can also be riden in a more “spirited” way at home, though my experiences say this isn’t the most idea use case for it. Given this initial into, here is some deeper thoughts.
Three pluses given for Bike Fridays are 1) They can fit in a standare suitcase, to the avoid airline oversize baggage fees, 2) They ride just like your regular bike, and 3) They are custom made.
So yes, they avoid oversize fees, but I don’t think they ride quite like a regular bike, though perpaps close, and I’d say they are more like semi-custom. So like me explain.
While folding and unfolding (i.e. assembling and dissembling) and packing into the suitcase (or a similar sized box) for travel certainly isn’t a 30 second task like a commuter type of folding bike, it isn’t intended to be. The design is more aimed at beginning and end of trip logistics. For that, while my experience is that it takes an hour or so at each end, it does what it is supposed to do, and is a valuable skill, especially for shorter trips.
At normal speeds, say 10-20 MPH (16-32 KPH) I do feel that for the most part, my NWT rides much the same as my other bikes. They are a bit twitchy, though I do mostly get used to it. But in my opinion, once the speeds exeed 20 MPH, they become unstable. It doesn’t matter how long I ride it, I never feel comfortable at higher speeds. To some extent this is mitigated by adding a front load, but it never feels totally stable. Is this an issue? That depends on how you use it. For touring it is fine. And for more spirited day rides, fine unless higher speeds are involved. But when desending a steep hill on my other bikes I can just “let it go”, I can’t do that on the Friday. It starts to get scary at about 25 MPH, forcing me to brake where I’d feel fine at 40 MPH on a regular bike
Issues with the bike as delivered:
The front derailleur cable was routed over the under bottom bracket cable guide instead of through it, requiring me to re-route the cable.
Rear shifting into the largest cogs was pretty poor. When attempting to shift into the largest cog, it would "hunt", and go back and forth between the largest and second largest cogs. In addition, shifting between the two *smallest* cogs was touchy. I adjusted the cable barrel, and three derailleur set screws. While this didn’t solve the issues, it did make shifting work palatable.
The rear derailleur (MicroShift Marvo) as delivered has a fairly long arm. This resulted in the bottom pulley being less than an inch from the ground when on the largest cog, and nearly touching the tire. This is the shortest arm available for the Marvo MTB derailleur, but I wanted greater clearance to the ground, and especially to the tire. Currently I am using 35mm wide bald (Kojak - get it ;-) tires, but I plan to use wider and knobby tires for touring.. The quarter of an inch difference on each side of the tire will put the sidewall precariously close to the lower derailleur pulley. And given the knobby nature of more aggressive tires, that could result in a bad day.
What to do? The max cog allowed by the stock derailleur is 36 tooth, and the total wrap capacity is 45 teeth, while the largest cog used on my bike is 34 teeth, and the total range of gears needed is only 39. Since the cost was only about $20, I decided to replace the stock derailleur with a MicroShirt "R9" medium cage Deraileur. It's max cog and range match the gearing on the bike, and gave me an additional inch to the ground. Further, because the cage sits higher, it it is now parallel to the rim, not the tire, so going to a wider tire should be a non issue.
For reference, my previous Bike Friday has a 52, 42, 30 crankset, and an 11-28 cassette so the total wrap is even larger (39 teeth), Bur since it only has a 28 tooth large cog, it works just fine with a slightly longer arm Shimano Deore derailleur.
The handlebars the bike came with had too big a drop for my taste. This was changed to a Dimension brand, short drop compact bend bar, which has 128 mm of drop; About what Bike Friday had thought the bars that came with the bike had. In reality, the drop for those bars are ~ 150 mm; Almost an inch more. Making this change made it much easier to shift without having to drop my shoulders to reach the levers. It also made riding in the drops more comfortable; Something I actually do now!
None of these issues are serious, even if a bit disappointing.
Now for the review:
I bought this new bike in an effort to meet all my needs in one bike. So what are they?
Over all impressions - how well does the new NWT meet the above requirements?
The Spyke disc brakes are amazing! Very good stopping power!
Fast Day Rides:
But, the handling is no better. And in fact, in some ways it is worse. I attribute some of the "worseness" to the decreased wheel inertia from the Kojaks, which are 1/2 pound lighter that the Marathons on the old NWT. I can get it back to a match to my old NWT, but no where near the improvement I had hoped for. And I have found that the new bike is still slower (figure 10% at equal effort). This makes for a poor club ride bike.
When I asked on the Yak how many people only had a Bike Friday, I got very few (N0?) yeses. And one person found that he also had trouble keeping up on club rides, so he ended up buying a road bike to go with his NWT for faster rides.
Well, I found much the same thing. Plus, the NWT is unstable (almost scary) at speeds over 25 MPH (40 KPH). So, I too found myself buying a road bike - A Connondale Synapse - an "endurance" road bike. $2025 - 20 % end of year discount = $ 1620. This also replaced my "Vintage" road bike.
One nice feature is that I can use my small Brompton block bag on rides. This plus the rack trunk I already had (stolen along with racks from my older Friday) does allow me to stash my jacket(s) when it warms up, and a lock and book so I can go to the gym when done with the ride. I nice feature.
Verdict? Mostly fail. The Brompton bag is definitely nice, but probably not enough value add to offset the other issues.
Touring:
Touring is what the NWT (the "T" in NWT of course stands for Touring) does best. While it not as good as my big wheel touring bike for long trips or carrying a full load, that's not what I expect to do going forward. Again not as good as the big wheel bike, but significantly easier logistics. That doesn't matter if the trip is 3 months long, but it does matter if it's 1 or 2 weeks. Thus the NWT is perfect for that use case.
The Brompton block works with my 8 liter Vincita Mini Front Bag", but the distance between the block and top of the bag is too small to allow my Brompton “Large Borough rolltop bag” to fit. The height from the top of the block, and the top of the bag itself is 5 inches for the Vincita, and 9 inches for the Borough. the 4 inche difference is just too much for the Borough to fit, even by raising the handlebars. While there are other ways to carry the smaller load required for “Credit Card Touring”. This is disappointing as I had hoped to be able to do this type of touring, with just this bag, allowing me to tour with no racks.
Verdict? Pass, but with limited improvement over the old NWT
I also planed to use the NTW for around town trip. I had hoped to use the Borough bag for shopping as I will hold about 2 grocery bags. While I can use panniers, the big bag is very convenient. The Brompton also has a “Shopping Cart” mode (when it is partially folded). This makes locking the bike outside unnecessary. It is also more convenient. I knew I would have to forgo this convenience to replace the Brompton with the Friday, but negating the Brompton bag is a disappointment.
Verdict? Not really a replacement for the Brompton, Limited improvement over the old NWT, and frankly, not really better than the Synapse should I add a rack to it (for which it does have frame mounts.
So, overall, the new NWT will work for Touring, and can with limitations do day ride and around town duties. So if I were to accept it’s limitations, it could be my only bike… But so could my old one. In other words,
So my stable is now: My Synapse for club and day rides, the NWT for touring, and the Brompton for around town, and shopping. So much for "culling" my heard!
All in all, I’d say the new bike should be good for touring, and
I live in fairly tight quarters, and have too much junk in my garage. My goal is to cull my stable to 1 bike (maybe 2). Currently I have a "vintage" road racing bike, a traditional 700c touring bike, the older Friday, and a Brompton. Clearly the older Friday will get sold. While I like my racing bike, I'm getting too old for a bike with the bars 2 inches below the saddle, and with a 40 gear inch lowest gear. So while it is a great bike, and has amazing handling, I just don't ride it that much, as I prefer a more comfortable bike. My touring bike has been my faithful companion for 16,000 of the touring miles I have clocked. But I'm unlikely to do another "epic" multi-month ride, and for the rides I *am* likely to do in the future, the expedition touring capabilities are overkill, and given it's 32 pound weight, I find that for local rides, while comfortable, it's a bit "ponderous". That leaves the Brompton. I could use the new Friday with my small 8 liter bag, but not the big 28 liter bag I use with the Brompton for shopping. bag block, but the convienience of bike that folds in 20 seconds into a package that fits easily on the landing of my stairs. Also, that I can take in to most businesses just can't be beat. But it's no match to my other bikes for longer and/or faster club rides, and certainly for serious touring. So where does that leave me? If I *had* to pick just one bike, it would probably be the Friday. But seeing that the Brompton takes up so little space, and provides such great utiliity, keeping it as a second bike makes sense. Plus as I said above, it fits on the landing of my stairs - while the Friday can fit in the entry. So the Garage can go back to being a garage :-) Touring Bike
Background:
Short version:
I purchased a new Bike Friday New World Tourist (NWT) to replace on I purchased on Ebay in 2019. That bike was a bit too big, and I replaced it so the slightly smaller size would put more of my weight on the front wheel, hoping that would make the bike a bit less twitchy. One of my goals was to have one bike that could do everything I needed, allowing me to get rid of all other bikes.
While I haven’t done any baggage carrying touring, I have done a couple thousand miles of around town day rides – some as long as metric century (100 km / 62.14 miles), so I have a pretty good feel for the bike.
Based on this riding, here are my thoughts. The sizing Bike Friday made was based on my existing 700c Touring bike. Overall, the bike rides well, and is a good choice for bike touring, especially when more complex logistics are involved. The bike can also be ridden in a more “spirited” way for day rides, though my experiences say this isn’t the most idea use case for it.
At normal speeds, say 10-20 MPH (16-32 KPH), the bike rides a lot like a bike with “normal size wheels. As many have said, it is a bit twitchy, though as is said, I do mostly get used to it. But once the speeds exceed about 20 MPH, it becomes more unstable. It doesn’t matter how long I ride it, I never feel comfortable at those higher speeds. To some extent this is mitigated by adding a front load, but it never feels totally stable.
Is this an issue? That depends on how you use it. For touring it is fine. And for more spirited day rides, it is OK unless higher speeds are involved. But when descending a steep hill on my other bikes, I can just “let it go”, I can’t do that on the Friday. It starts to get scary at about 25 MPH, forcing me to brake where I’d feel fine at 40 MPH on a regular bike.
I suspect I am pickier than most here. Perhaps that is due to having a road bike that is totally balanced, even at 55 MPH. Again, for touring, the NWT should be OK, since the front load will help stabilize it, and there is little reason to ride that fast anyway.
Speed and performance are OK, again for touring purposes, though not for faster riding. Bike Friday says “a small wheel is more efficient than a large wheel in speeds up to 16 mph, equally efficient in speeds from 16 to 33 mph”. But my experiences is that for a given amount of effort, my NWT is about 10% slower than my other road bikes. This is similar to what I have read on the Bike Friday Yak forum. Again, this should be OK for touring.
The gotcha for me is that one of my goals was to have one bike that could do everything I needed. So in the end, while the NWT will cover the touring end of my usage spectrum, I will still need my road bike for the faster end of the spectrum.
Finally, again, since this is intended to be a “do it all” bike, I was looking for the ability to do around town duties. The inability to fold, and therefor be taken into places with me, while not as great, is not a deal breaker. I can easily enough lock it outside. But again, the inability to use the large Brompton bag is disappointing, though I can use panniers instead. So the Friday can do around town duty, it’s simply not in the same class as the Brompton. But really, nothing else is.
If you want details, read on. Long Version
Also look here.
/bikes/Brompton-Review.html
In March I received a new Bike Friday New World Tourist (NWT). This is my second NWT. The first one I purchased on Ebay in 2019. Having little to go on as to size, I purchased one that looked to be the right size. I used it to ride the ACA Pacific Coast route (My Journal) in 2019. While it worked OK, based on my experiences doing this ride, I wanted to make some changes. For one, I found the bike twitchier than I had hoped – even when fully loaded. A discussion with Bike Friday suggested more weight up front. I surmised that some of the issue here was that the size of the bike I bought was a bit too big, putting less weight on the front wheel than desired. Beyond this, I wanted to have disc brakes, and a folding seat mast, rather than the “Easy Pack” version Bike Friday # 1 had. That would allow me to us the “Quick Fold” capability.
Individually, these aren’t worth the cost of a new bike, and even together, they're questionable. But while perusing the Bike Friday site, I discovered that for $150, they would add a Brompton luggage block fixture. A nice, convenient way to add a quickly removed front bag. Still not enough to convince me to buy a new bike, but then Bike Friday offered a 20% discount to make a purchase in November, for a March delivery. That made the purchase make more sense, so I bit.
What I chose was the New World Tourist (NWT), upgraded to Disc Brakes (+ $100) and 18 speeds / double front crankset (+ $80). Total with Disc brake and 18 speed upgrades: $ 1975 (before the 20% discount).
Beyond this I specified a few changes:
Changes made to the "standard" build:
The standard rims specified on the NWT are Weinmann Zac 30 rims. I wanted stronger rims for touring, so I chose to upgrade to Sun Rhyno Lite rims. Cost: $40
The tires specified on the standard bike are 1.75 inch (44 mm) Schwalbe “RoadCruisers”. I have some spare Marathons already, and since I am also using the bike for faster rides at home, I decided to upgrade to 1.35 inch (35 mm) Schwalbe Kojaks. I’ll switch to Schwalbe Marathons for touring, and winter. Please, no flames for my choose of tires here! Added cost for the Kojaks: $48
The disc brake calipers in the base build are zoom (Sensai) models. I chose to upgrade to the well reviewed TRP Spyke calipers (the mountain version of the TRP Spyres). Cost: $182
I choose to go with drop bars instead of the flat bars specified as default. This required adding Cork Bar Tape, using different Brake Levers (Tektro RL520), and different shifters (microSHIFT Bar End). Total additional cost: $43
Lastly, I elected to add the Brompton block bracket — a braze on bracket that allows use of Brompton bags. This means I don't need to mess with traditional Handlebar bag mounts, and my handlebar "real estate" is preserved for things like speedometers, lights, and bells.
Cost of these Upgrades:
Some folks have felt that Bike Friday charged too much for upgrades (full retail for parts substituted, while giving little credit for parts being replaced). I decided to run some numbers to see how all this came out for me. Here is what I found:
The Changes:
Total, including Bromton fixture: $ 463
Doing a quick internet search, retail/listed prices for all of this (less the Brompton bracket) is about $489.
What Bike Friday charged me for these upgrades is $313. Savings = $ 176
That makes the amount I paid to be ~ 65 % of retail for the upgrades. Decent.
But because I took advantage of the 20% off for ordering in November for a March delivery, my actual costs for these upgrades was $250.40, so the real cost is about 50 %. So the upgrade cost is actually pretty good.
As noted above, I added the Brompton front bag attachment braze on as listed above. This cost was $150, but since there is no after market alternative, I didn't include it in the above calculations, nor did I include the discounts for deleting the saddle and pedals. Oh, and again, 20% off, so in the end, the Brompton bracket cost me $120
All in all, what would normally be a $2,428.00 bike, cost $1,942.40. Not cheap, but given the utility it was planned to provide, decent.
Initial Thoughts:
Before I go into too much detail, let me give a basic review of the bike. While I haven’t done any baggage carrying touring, I have done a couple thousand miles of around town day rides – some as long as metric century (100 km / 62.14 miles), so I have a pretty good feel for the bike.
When I gave Bike Friday measurements for them to duplicate, they were from my existing Touring bike – a Medium sized 2016 REI “Novara” Randonee. REI’s equivalent of a Surly Long Haul Trucker, or Trek 520. That means a fairly upright position, although having a long steer tube means I can handlebars to be lowered of raised, though I haven’t done so.
Overall, the bike rides well, and is a good choice for bike touring. Especially when more complex logistics are involved. While the fold-ability/pack-ability isn’t an issue in all cases, when it is, it’s nice to have that capability along side of a bike that for the most part rides like any other touring bike. While the NWT doesn’t have the insane number of mounts that a gravel bike has, it isn’t aimed at off road touring. If you want that, go get one of Bike Friday’s “All Packas”. But the NWT does have attachment points for fenders as well as front and rear racks. Bike Friday also sells folding rear racks, and disassemble-able front racks, so you can ride loaded, and pack small.
The NWT can also be riden in a more “spirited” way at home, though my experiences say this isn’t the most idea use case for it. Given this initial into, here is some deeper thoughts.
Three pluses given for Bike Fridays are 1) They can fit in a standare suitcase, to the avoid airline oversize baggage fees, 2) They ride just like your regular bike, and 3) They are custom made.
So yes, they avoid oversize fees, but I don’t think they ride quite like a regular bike, though perpaps close, and I’d say they are more like semi-custom. So like me explain.
While folding and unfolding (i.e. assembling and dissembling) and packing into the suitcase (or a similar sized box) for travel certainly isn’t a 30 second task like a commuter type of folding bike, it isn’t intended to be. The design is more aimed at beginning and end of trip logistics. For that, while my experience is that it takes an hour or so at each end, it does what it is supposed to do, and is a valuable skill, especially for shorter trips.
At normal speeds, say 10-20 MPH (16-32 KPH) I do feel that for the most part, my NWT rides much the same as my other bikes. They are a bit twitchy, though I do mostly get used to it. But in my opinion, once the speeds exeed 20 MPH, they become unstable. It doesn’t matter how long I ride it, I never feel comfortable at higher speeds. To some extent this is mitigated by adding a front load, but it never feels totally stable. Is this an issue? That depends on how you use it. For touring it is fine. And for more spirited day rides, fine unless higher speeds are involved. But when desending a steep hill on my other bikes I can just “let it go”, I can’t do that on the Friday. It starts to get scary at about 25 MPH, forcing me to brake where I’d feel fine at 40 MPH on a regular bike
Issues with the bike as delivered:
The front derailleur cable was routed over the under bottom bracket cable guide instead of through it, requiring me to re-route the cable.
Rear shifting into the largest cogs was pretty poor. When attempting to shift into the largest cog, it would "hunt", and go back and forth between the largest and second largest cogs. In addition, shifting between the two *smallest* cogs was touchy. I adjusted the cable barrel, and three derailleur set screws. While this didn’t solve the issues, it did make shifting work palatable.
The rear derailleur (MicroShift Marvo) as delivered has a fairly long arm. This resulted in the bottom pulley being less than an inch from the ground when on the largest cog, and nearly touching the tire. This is the shortest arm available for the Marvo MTB derailleur, but I wanted greater clearance to the ground, and especially to the tire. Currently I am using 35mm wide bald (Kojak - get it ;-) tires, but I plan to use wider and knobby tires for touring.. The quarter of an inch difference on each side of the tire will put the sidewall precariously close to the lower derailleur pulley. And given the knobby nature of more aggressive tires, that could result in a bad day.
What to do? The max cog allowed by the stock derailleur is 36 tooth, and the total wrap capacity is 45 teeth, while the largest cog used on my bike is 34 teeth, and the total range of gears needed is only 39. Since the cost was only about $20, I decided to replace the stock derailleur with a MicroShirt "R9" medium cage Deraileur. It's max cog and range match the gearing on the bike, and gave me an additional inch to the ground. Further, because the cage sits higher, it it is now parallel to the rim, not the tire, so going to a wider tire should be a non issue.
For reference, my previous Bike Friday has a 52, 42, 30 crankset, and an 11-28 cassette so the total wrap is even larger (39 teeth), Bur since it only has a 28 tooth large cog, it works just fine with a slightly longer arm Shimano Deore derailleur.
The handlebars the bike came with had too big a drop for my taste. This was changed to a Dimension brand, short drop compact bend bar, which has 128 mm of drop; About what Bike Friday had thought the bars that came with the bike had. In reality, the drop for those bars are ~ 150 mm; Almost an inch more. Making this change made it much easier to shift without having to drop my shoulders to reach the levers. It also made riding in the drops more comfortable; Something I actually do now!
None of these issues are serious, even if a bit disappointing.
Now for the review:
I bought this new bike in an effort to meet all my needs in one bike. So what are they?
Over all impressions - how well does the new NWT meet the above requirements?
The Spyke disc brakes are amazing! Very good stopping power!
Fast Day Rides:
But, the handling is no better. And in fact, in some ways it is worse. I attribute some of the "worseness" to the decreased wheel inertia from the Kojaks, which are 1/2 pound lighter that the Marathons on the old NWT. I can get it back to a match to my old NWT, but no where near the improvement I had hoped for. And I have found that the new bike is still slower (figure 10% at equal effort). This makes for a poor club ride bike.
When I asked on the Yak how many people only had a Bike Friday, I got very few (N0?) yeses. And one person found that he also had trouble keeping up on club rides, so he ended up buying a road bike to go with his NWT for faster rides.
Well, I found much the same thing. Plus, the NWT is unstable (almost scary) at speeds over 25 MPH (40 KPH). So, I too found myself buying a road bike - A Connondale Synapse - an "endurance" road bike. $2025 - 20 % end of year discount = $ 1620. This also replaced my "Vintage" road bike.
One nice feature is that I can use my small Brompton block bag on rides. This plus the rack trunk I already had (stolen along with racks from my older Friday) does allow me to stash my jacket(s) when it warms up, and a lock and book so I can go to the gym when done with the ride. I nice feature.
Verdict? Mostly fail. The Brompton bag is definitely nice, but probably not enough value add to offset the other issues.
Touring:
Touring is what the NWT (the "T" in NWT of course stands for Touring) does best. While it not as good as my big wheel touring bike for long trips or carrying a full load, that's not what I expect to do going forward. Again not as good as the big wheel bike, but significantly easier logistics. That doesn't matter if the trip is 3 months long, but it does matter if it's 1 or 2 weeks. Thus the NWT is perfect for that use case.
The Brompton block works with my 8 liter Vincita Mini Front Bag", but the distance between the block and top of the bag is too small to allow my Brompton “Large Borough rolltop bag” to fit. The height from the top of the block, and the top of the bag itself is 5 inches for the Vincita, and 9 inches for the Borough. the 4 inche difference is just too much for the Borough to fit, even by raising the handlebars. While there are other ways to carry the smaller load required for “Credit Card Touring”. This is disappointing as I had hoped to be able to do this type of touring, with just this bag, allowing me to tour with no racks.
Verdict? Pass, but with limited improvement over the old NWT
I also planed to use the NTW for around town trip. I had hoped to use the Borough bag for shopping as I will hold about 2 grocery bags. While I can use panniers, the big bag is very convenient. The Brompton also has a “Shopping Cart” mode (when it is partially folded). This makes locking the bike outside unnecessary. It is also more convenient. I knew I would have to forgo this convenience to replace the Brompton with the Friday, but negating the Brompton bag is a disappointment.
Verdict? Not really a replacement for the Brompton, Limited improvement over the old NWT, and frankly, not really better than the Synapse should I add a rack to it (for which it does have frame mounts.
So, overall, the new NWT will work for Touring, and can with limitations do day ride and around town duties. So if I were to accept it’s limitations, it could be my only bike… But so could my old one. In other words,
So my stable is now: My Synapse for club and day rides, the NWT for touring, and the Brompton for around town, and shopping. So much for "culling" my heard!
All in all, I’d say the new bike should be good for touring, and
I live in fairly tight quarters, and have too much junk in my garage. My goal is to cull my stable to 1 bike (maybe 2). Currently I have a "vintage" road racing bike, a traditional 700c touring bike, the older Friday, and a Brompton. Clearly the older Friday will get sold. While I like my racing bike, I'm getting too old for a bike with the bars 2 inches below the saddle, and with a 40 gear inch lowest gear. So while it is a great bike, and has amazing handling, I just don't ride it that much, as I prefer a more comfortable bike.
My touring bike has been my faithful companion for 16,000 of the touring miles I have clocked. But I'm unlikely to do another "epic" multi-month ride, and for the rides I *am* likely to do in the future, the expedition touring capabilities are overkill, and given it's 32 pound weight, I find that for local rides, while comfortable, it's a bit "ponderous".
That leaves the Brompton. I could use the new Friday with my small 8 liter bag, but not the big 28 liter bag I use with the Brompton for shopping. bag block, but the convienience of bike that folds in 20 seconds into a package that fits easily on the landing of my stairs. Also, that I can take in to most businesses just can't be beat. But it's no match to my other bikes for longer and/or faster club rides, and certainly for serious touring.
So where does that leave me? If I *had* to pick just one bike, it would probably be the Friday. But seeing that the Brompton takes up so little space, and provides such great utiliity, keeping it as a second bike makes sense. Plus as I said above, it fits on the landing of my stairs - while the Friday can fit in the entry. So the Garage can go back to being a garage :-)