Anyone got a bike with them or had some fitted to an existing frame? What’s are they like to ride and travel with?

Thanks.

Mrs and I have them on a couple of Roberts road bikes, only actual used it on one of those. We have the s and s suitcase for them and they go in fine, although there’s a bit of a knack to it. Once in they can be checked in as normal luggage and we’ve never had any issues with the bikes being transported in it. No noticable detriment on handling, you wouldn’t know they were there and they look quite cool. 🙂

We got them quite a while ago when the Mrs was travelling a bit for triathlons and tbh if you don’t have space constraints and can check in bike bags I’m not sure I’d bother with them now and maybe just invest in a good quality bike bag.

Nice those. Just considering it as an option as I might be looking at a bit of work travel in a new role and it’d be handy to be able to take a bike to train on while away for a night or two. Bike bag is a major faff what with fitting it into a taxi at the other end and hotel rooms etc. Maybe a folder is the way to go.

For what you described they’d be very good otherwise it’s an airnimal for decent training not sure I’d use my Brompton for training

Riding, you simply don’t know they are there. It’s the same bike, same frame, additional weight is marginal. We did have a phase of one starting to loosen a bit when riding, but probably just cos I’d not torqued it up enough (this was a tandem MTB so perhaps a bit more flex going through the frame than most applications). Anyway that hasn’t happened in a few years now.

As for packing and unpacking, it’s not a particularly easy or efficient process IME. I doubt it would be a good choice for a regular bike/train commute, for example. It’s a big bulky heavy object even when packed into a hard case (which weighs about 7kg in itself). Ours gets used mostly for decent length holidays, usually flights but sometimes train where a full-sized tandem often just won’t fit. On the train we’ve got away with just splitting the frame in two and strapping both parts together.

Depending on how you travel and how fussy you are about the bike, a proper folder might be a better choice.

I’ve got them on my Vaya. IS mount disks and full outer cables make whipping the brakes off easy. Down tube shifters prevents hassle, although I guess you could run full outers and a 1x so no front mech.
Its not s 10 minute job breaking and packing or building it back up, but could be worth it for a couple of days riding.
Glad the Vaya is stainless as it would be pretty scratched by now else.
What you want, on or off road?

The wife’s bike the red one in the picture up there shows the cable splitters that you can use on gear and brake cables makes that aspect fairly easy

Are there splitters for brake cables these days? Originally they were only for gears (lower tension, less of a problem if it slips).

Yes they are on both

It’d be road bike. I’d probably be Di2 so easy to split those. May go disc brake if they don’t mean hassle.

It’d just be for occasional travel, a day or two overseas, not train commuting.

I see that Shand offer an S&S coupling option on their frame, now that is quite tempting.

Dash D20

I was in the same position as the OP a few years ago. Bought an airnimal Joey. Worked for me. Not travelling as much now so up for sale if interested. Will post an ad on here at some point but please PM if interested in the meantime

Thanks. I’ll wait and see how the travel pans out but thinking new proper frame for the training bike with coupler would be way to go as I was considering a new frame anyway. Shame they can’t retrofit them to aluminium frames.

May go disc brake if they don’t mean hassle.

Don’t Formula or someone do a hydraulic connector for brakes? Or would a SRAM connectamajig work?