Get some of those long handled brush cleaners, hot water and vinegar down the tray inlet and get your pipe cleaner in there as far as possible. Keep doing it, bit of hot water bit of vinigar.  The hot water from the wash doesn’t do anything above the drum so years of folk ramming stuff into it eventually builds up.

Once a month do all the dirty towels and cloths in the house (cleaning stuff) on a 90 with whatever chemicals are to hand, never in my life had a smelly washing machine.

Everyone I know who is an eco person (eco ‘focussed’ but not actually informed) washs cold, 30, maybe 40 once a year and they go through washing machines like absolute crazy, like never heard of so many folk with broken and faulty machines. Mates also tend to ram 10 kg of stuff into a tiny machine and then wonder why stuff ain’t clean, smells, and machine is never lasting more than a few years.

Lucky to live in an area where drinking water is in such abundance that it just doesn’t matter what you do with it. Have a 1990’s zanussi machine, only 4 kg I think, but WOW does that thing WASH CLOTHS. Uses an absolute tonne of water, electric consumption a tad higher than modern machines, but the constant rinsing and huge amount of water it uses makes everything feel nice, clean, soft and zero smells ever. Vs had a few new machines in rentals and have to put half a load on a full cycle, pre wash and extra rinse every single time, and even then, bang it back in for another rinse as can still feel the soap on there. So uses surely more water and energy than the old machine?

Body wise, yeah rust in all the usual places, 20-30 year old vehicles now that for the first few years weren’t looked after as was just a work van.

1.9 or 2.5. I have a 2.5 with many mods. THe downfall of MOST of them, is people who do the belts and especially the timing belt do not have a **** clue what they are doing, resulting in weird timing issues (top end not timed right compared to bottom end, and then fuel pump timing way adv/rtd despite ‘showing’ correct on the gauge. People reusing the single use crank bolt, diamond washer and most commonly, not tightened enough, you absolutely need 3/4″ tooling to do the crank pulley on this engine. IF the mechanic doesn’t own one, he hasn’t done the job right and needs to be redone.

Internally the 2.5 (various codes) is an absolute UNIT, I replaced cam shaft and hydraulics (worn lobes due to garage putting wrong oil in it and age) at 275k miles and went to to do an in frame rebuild just to satisfy the inner perfectionist in me. Mains and big ends, literally barely measurable difference from new specs. Neighbour is an ex sulzer engineer and machinst of 5 decades experience. Looked at all bearing surfaces, oil pump, measured the bores, looked at the rings, his advice ‘remove squirters so that can clean every orifice, clean everything, fit new rings, refit those original bearings, they are totally fine’.

In stock form they will do 0.5m miles no bother. Saw one for sale with 715k miles on it, rust was insane, engine was fine!

Modified you can make modern amounts of power on them without spending a fortune and internally they don’t really mind unless you are going in to triple original power territory, then you need a block girdle and some other internal works.

The VAG guys are buying them up for the block, crank and other goodies for very high power 5 cyl petrol applications (same block as 80’s/90’s audi 5 cyl turbo that everyone loves).

Its just rust and old vehicle stuff you’ve got to keep on top of.

Newer T5 engines seem to be pretty weak (and gearboxs?) by comparision, and they also LOVE TO RUST! Newer doesn’t mean better.

OSOPRO. Think its a Taiwanese company? There are also knock offs motowolf (and others) that are pretty damn close and work fine. Only osopro uses the genuine 3m pad, all the others its something less good, if your phone is heavy, scrape it off and fit real 3m pad.

On motorbike use I  this guy https://gsports.vn/mua/bo-khoa-kep-da-nang-chong-rung-osopro-lku121/

Phone is heavy, like 250g big fat 2024 brick of a phone, bikes been crashed, crashed into, ridden offroad extensively, phone is attached with a genuine 3m pad (included) to a normal case, never budged, even in 45c heat + strong sunlight and then crashed into various terrain. RECOMMEND.

But for MTB maybe tad too heavy. They do also have just the bracket and you can stick that on some normal bars, 31.8, won’t go to the 35 standard though as you don’t see that big in motorbikes, only dirt bikes, who puts a phone o on a dirt bike?

Got a 2021/22 X2 and been the perfect shock for me, Zero issues but from everything I’ve heard guess I must be the lucky one. Makes an annoying ‘zip’ sound which is just the air seal on the kashima coating kind of a noise. Pre 2007 old school ever lasting fox products used to have a very strong coating, but also very smooth, no noise! But all the newer stuff either wear out in a season or kashima which is noisy IME.

Ah I see, so being north side of Holmfirth to avoid the bottle neck of it, gotcha.  Somewhere canal adjacent or close to would be ace, means a nice level ride with no cars into town, maybe slower than roads but less stress is the way to go.

Will look up Halifax as well, not been there in 15 years so probably nicer than it was!

Pubs are a rarity where we were and where we are now, bars are popular but not the same thing. Ability to park your wet muddy ass on a dog blanket and get a pint of something warm and malty whilst keeping an eye on your bike is the dream.

Excellent specific info! From not really knowing the area, but just scanning around google maps its hard to tell whats decent and whats to be avoided.

Seems like quite a few of you folks around there, originally from way more north than this area so never ridden in it, just occasionally driven through.

Weather not an issue, was back in UK a few weeks back and was expecting it to feel cold compared to VN but not 12-14c cold in June! Its all gonna be dark, grey, chilly and wet compared to what currently used to.

Saw Hebdon bridge has become a bit of a place but not a direct train into Huddersfield, so somewhere easy bike commute, train, bus or drive at the worst into town would be ideal.

Always found living up a steep hill or over the other side of a steep hill = less crime, less hassle, less people causing trouble. Theory, the difficult people of this world CBA walking up a steep hill to rob stuff.

That bronze colour hub shells you’ve got there look very similar if not the same as the gold colour hope used to do from about 2004-2015.
Unless you’ve got other components from the same supposed colour group it won’t matter too much anyways. My hubs were only clean from when bike was photographed upon completion until about 7 minutes later on first bit of trail. I’m a stout believer in not washing bikes, as a mechanic most of my ‘work’ on higher tier MTB and Road bike is from customers who enjoy the pressure washer at Glentress. Only clean whats needed and minimally. My BB, lower headset, freehub and frame bearings genuinely last ages vs anyone I know that operates a ‘clean bike’.

Burgtec bronze is super nice though BTW, dark and rich.

NX rear mechs are made of some kind of soft cheese, seen them wear out and become so floppy they need replacing within the time 1 chain is worn, GX which looks identical is much better. Deore/SLX/XT are all similar to GX in longevity, i.e. fine.

If you can’t get the B axle adjustment to get the RD to the right place, you need more or less chain links. Shimano tech docs has all the info you need.

Very experienced with cargo bikes and yes Tern’s are popular, but please look beyond their very pretty marketing imagery and read some of the forums on these.

I would only recommend the Tern GSD in the long tail segment as my ‘top rated long tail type bike’ IF, and thats a BOLD CAPITAL IF…
One of your riders/pilots is short, i.e. less than 5’3. The GSD is the only bike that genuinely fits everyone from 4’11 to 6’4 without needing tools to alter things, everything is QR clamp.
You are going to use that ‘stand on the tail and fold the bars’ design. I know and regularly deal with around 20 of them around Scotland. None use that feature, bike is too heavy and awkward to get up on its back end without it falling over and destroying your hall way in the process of doing it, or because as you walk on the floor, it deflects and the bike comes crashing down behind you.

Problems with mk1. Frames that aren’t made straight, impossible to mount a rear brake to without it rubbing constantly, frames with holes in them due to incomplete welding, frames with cracks propagating from those holes due to incomplete welding, headset cup recesses machined poorly or not at all (so your headset goes loose in one direction, and binds up in the other), wrong way around chain tensioner (easy to fix, but come on, really!), tricky cable routing around bosch gen2 motor mount for the rear hydro brake (often found twisted/knotted/and constricted from factory). Quality of accessories OK, no real failures, but for the money, they are a bit underwhelming. The ‘side stand’ provided on mk1 as standard are a travesty and honestly a few folk were thinking of going trading standards with them, brand new £5k ecargo bike with stand that either bends to death, snaps or seizes within 3 weeks of new? Pathetic tbh and reflects bad on our industry as a whole. The ‘double kick stand’ was much better, but very frustrating that they did not offer to existing customers as a replacement, instead asking for around £150-170 additional.
I know a few former dealers of Tern who have packed in their accounts as they’d had enough of receiving bikes with glaring defects and each and every time the response from Tern was ‘we’ve never heard of that before, can you send us photos’ and then them dragging their feet a fair amount more than normal (pre pandemic).

Mk2. Many improvements, frames better so far, routing better, same size and handling etc. Few issues still, rear brake mounts aren’t that straight, so you have to face them, have access to the Park tools and the VAR disc face tool, none really fit the frame because of its design.

Main issue with Mk2 GSD. If you get the medium size black foot rests for the kiddo, which bolts on in 3 or 4 places, try and remove the rear through axle for the rear wheel. You can’t. You have to upend the bike, unbolt at least 2 of the 3 bolts, and 1 of these might be unable to remove due to the kickstand, so you end up loosening the kickstand too. In order to get the rear wheel off in the event of a puncture etc. This is a staggering oversight. Other issues we still have with mk2 and mk1, the plastic chain guard behind the cassette gets caught on the freehub body retaining component, and unscrews it causing the freehub to pack into the frame causing at the least the chain to keep getting thrown off, at the worst the rear wheel locks up and throws you off.
Maybe not an issue, but a point of note. For MK2 you will need a very long chain, around 150 links IIRC. The mk1 at least used a 138 link chain (easy to get in 9 or 10s), but for the mk2, you’ll be buying 2x e bike chains every 1000 miles*. Last point, suspension forks, yes they make the ride a bit plusher, but I can’t imagine any of them lasting more than 2 years of hard use in the UK.

*All mid drive cargo really go through chains quite quickly.

If your gonna get a mk2, have just the bare frame foot rests, or the big flop down jobs, the medium sized bolt on one is literally stupid.

Benno eBoost is mechanically better than GSD mk2, accessories are far nicer made (and same price pretty much), riding is more confidence inspiring, handling is genuinely neutral. Priced similar/a little cheaper. Downsides are they don’t really work for riders/pilots under 5’3, and require an allen key to change bar + saddle positions. Amazingly they weigh less than a mk2 GSD once you’ve put like for like accessories on them. And the sizes of the overall bike are very similar, Benno is maybe 2-3cm longer overall, but the back seat area is quite a bit roomier, the seat pads are far far better quality (made of Santoprene I think, vs Tern is regular sofa foam wrapped in vinyl with a stapler).

This isn’t a rant, this is a public message to help folk make more informed decisions rather than blindly following some pretty marketing images with some actors kids. Yes longtails work very well for kids aged 5-12 years + shopping + daily life. What I’m saying is please do not blindly go and buy GSD because a magazine said its best in class, those people aren’t owners, mechanics or have any grasp really of the real life issues that these bikes *can* have.

If your on a budget, (still £3-4.5k!) Yuba Spicey Curry is really also worth a look, does everything the above do, some economies are made obviously, Surly and Kona also do some good longtails.

Magura’s old stuff, forks (have some Wotans from new that were amazing once a few internals swapped about, and are still going on a back up bike), rim brakes etc.

Most folks problems are that bikes sold online/distance just come out of a box, then a random end user is using a torx for the first time (or just hammer a 3 or 4mm in there) and ‘tighter must be betterer’ kind of attitude = split master cylinder.

They have a bad rep for leaks too, usually hose/olive/barb/union type of leak rather than pistons crack n fail like shimano (again often down to end user hamfists), and many bike shops do not stock or even have access to the right parts from magura, instead jamming some shimano jobs in there, which are close, but not quite.

When working well, the e5/e8?? series of Magura 4 pots are epic, but many folk through in the towel before they get that far.

My only gripe with them is the 4 pots run very close to the disc, so alignment has to be several times better than most can manage. Many bikes need a proper facing before they go out with these brakes, any misalignment in the mount at all = infinite annoying pad rub

DVO Topaz is what now works on them really well, have a ripmo v2 carbon with a current gen X2 with the VVT and its amazing. But its basically a £1k for a shock, which will meet its end on a rock or when fox can’t get an o ring for it in 2 years time rendering it scrap lol.

DVO topaz or some kind of coil, RS?

AT95 is one of those good ones, don’t cost much, have to spend a lot more to noticeably better it. But depends on your tastes, some folk want bass, some folk want the high end. Anything is better than a worn out, distorted, smoke damaged manky thing thats decades old.

The more you spend generally the better they get, but with MM type there is a ceiling (about £3-500), then above that you need to go MC, but that requires a better pre-amp and better everything in between TBH.

No point putting a £1k carbon crankset on an apollo Y frame from 2001. Same in the audio world. It defo becomes snake oil at the high high end.
For a reasonable MM cart, spend £60-200, get a £4 protractor to make sure it sits in the right place, then never worry about it again until you mangle it when the cat smacks it.

Is this new? Then there is a problem. Thru axles if everything is square and not bent/mangled, shouldn’t need much at all to hold them in place, many customers kill their hubs by tightening the absolute hell out of them.
If its more than about 3 months old bearings probably failed due to 1) they aren’t very good in UK climate 2) you wash your bike too much/aggressively 3) “hunt”/bitex hub tolerance is a bit variable. Literally fed up with the number of new hunt’s that the barrel of the hub body or freehub is too tight = premature bearing failure, hard to get out, hard to get new ones in square despite 25 years experience at this! and then new bearing feels shite = they have a tolerance or QC problem.

This isn’t slamming that company as a whole, just a note that they more than most, have tolerance issues. Loads of folk happy with their hoops.

Love that madeira has become an MTB mecha. Went about 6 years ago just for a random break, borrowed a bike off a guy we were staying with and used one of the buses to get above town. Could see there was so much just hidden out of view.
Not sure who all the operators are, but its one of those just spot on places, people are great, coffee is good, those tiny bannanas are amazing and the cake is always waiting at the bottom.

I’m on an Ibis Ripmo, newer one, mean’t for 160mm single crown up front which gives some amount of degree’s of slack trail riding epic’ness. Didn’t want a fox, no DVO available last year, couldn’t stand the bright red of the lyric’s so put a RS pike 150 on it.

Absolutely ruined the handling, dropping it from 160 to 150mm has turned it into a road bike basically, only able to ride it on the forest roads to avoid the front end washing out. Wouldn’t recommend anything less than 20mm over mftr suggestion and an angle set on all bikes all of the time.

Will be likely pull the end cap off (use an expanding tool on the inside of them to prevent damage to them, Unior Hub genie for example), then drift axle out which pushs one bearing off, then drift out or use a slide hammer with expanding wedge to tug the other one out.
Some hubs use a 8/10/12/14mm allen key on one end and a cone spanner on the other to unthread the axle from its retainer on the far side.
Have found Hunts munch bearings pretty quickly, they don’t have much water ingress protection so keep hose pipe away from them. Though had a customer last week who’s wheels were new in October, bike never washed (so not hosepipe/pressure washer/solvent related), but probably done about a thousand miles on and off road and F+R bearings are all wrecked. Replace with Enduro stainless and never look back I think is the way forward!

Will happily move away from wood fuel (80% of mass is wind or dead fall, 10 to 15% is diseased, 5% to 10% i buy), if someone will pay the £35k+ it will cost to install a gas main…. (i use the fully considered co2 model, i. E how many years and extra work and all of the carbon will it take for me to get £35k+ install costs vs continue using what I already own, same for getting a latest euro 6 car, not worth it on that model for the 5k miles a year i drive)

I know some guys who just did the west highland way in one day, I think you’ll be fine on that with 2.5 days 😀 Just get up early and take your time.

Only time mech hanger is ever considered for FOC/warranty is when it breaks on the first ride, maybe upto about a week. Even then, its at the retailers discretion as they won’t be getting anything for it from the mftr.

If there was a manufacturing fault it would fail first time round.

BETD goldtec used to make extra beefy mech hangers that won’t break until much more force is applied (with a carbon rear ended frame I would NOT want this).

Most common cause of failure is short chain, chain wrap tweaking it and crash damage. Even being dropped on its side (more for road bikes) is enough to start the hanger weakening.

Wheels are the best place to spend money vs. difference noticed.

Start at tyres + tubes, something light yet puncture proof /appropriate for your riding, then get the lightest tubes you can stomach. Outside of the wheel makes the largest difference!

TBH upto about £500 doesn’t buy you a lot than £150 on some Mavic aksiums doesnt. Its only once you start getting into that £500-1000 bracket do things start to get interesting.

Mavics upper quality wheels have that ceramic serrated machined surface that uses special pads, the difference in braking is night and day vs. any other rim. For the often wet/gritty conditions of the northern UK/Scotland, I would value that over absolute weight/stiffness, the ability to stop is a useful one! Mavics upper quality pre-builts are also mostly very good, bearings & freehubs are amoungst the best and their warranty & service in the UK is cracking.

Why does it need glowplugs to start? OR is that normal for common rail dervs? My direct injection starts immediately without glow plugs unless its well below zero or I’m running veg and its very cold.

Anyone? 🙂

Unicrowns are pretty much always heavy.

Folded a few of them (generic 90s unicrown) playing polo. There are some nice ones (old cannondale pepperoni?) but mostly cheap heavy stuff. My commuter bike has a nice tange triple butted frame, comes up on the scales (yeah I weighed it) at 1850g, fair enough for a steel hybrid! Unicrown chromo fork it came with? 2.3kg. Thats more than my 160mm enduro proof forks on mtb weigh*

*But its a commuter and its job is to go into potholes and come back out the other side in one piece and not face down on the tarmac.

£430 on a Btwin Triban 5 (full sora 9 speed which is a great groupset)

Then spend £145 on a pair of new Mavic Aksium wheels to go on it = perfect budget road bike for a whole bunch of money less than anything else.

Weak point of any budget road bike (just about anything under £1000) is the wheels. Just about all run on the cheapest of cheap joytech hubs, which usually aren’t remotely smooth of the box, freehubs commonly become permanently free after a very short period of time, then laced to a no name non eyeletted rim with naff spokes. Fine for very occasional use at entry level, but any sort of mileage or weather on them and your back at the shop buying new wheels. Hence just get Aksiums or shimano RS right away, you’ll likely get a good discount too

Dci is common rail right?

The fact it runs well eventually suggests its a fueling issue and not compression

So it’s either delivery or timing of fuel. Common rail are timed electronic so could be a sensor on the fritz = ecu will just pick a starting map based on air/ fuel temp, so it’ll start eventually but not as crisp as it should be.
Or delivery = dodgy injector, ie it’s leaking back overnight. Not bad enough to cause a running issue, just in the morning. Could also be leak off pipes if it has them. Leaking doesn’t mean diesel coming out, more often just air getting in or one has collapsed. They cost about £5 for a metre of the stuff and you need about 30cm. cheapest and easiest thing to try before you start getting into injectors!

I was actually there and saw the incident and the times it took

Not saying you weren’t! Just a lot of what I was hearing wasn’t strictly fact 😉

Sort of echo’ing those above, unfortunate injury, but to me looks grand that some folk have put the time & effort in to surface those lower bends as they do see a fair amount of use and a LOT of water.

Totally depends on the car, different cars (and models within them, i.e 1.4 petrol is a lot different to the 2.0 diesel in terms of weight for a start) and conditions.

I tend towards tyres that are very good in the wet, as it generally is wet round these parts, and thats whats likely to throw you into the ditch.
Uniroyal rain expert 3? Around £120-130 a corner so sort of mid priced tyre, great for winter, little noisy in the dry maybe (?) but soft sidewalls, good for conforming to chopped up ridged water logged roads, bad for sharp cornering on hot days.

In the car tyre world, anything under £100 for 16/18″ size is probably a really cheap tyre, usually you need to be in the £120-150 range to get something ‘of quality’

Not according to the marshall at the bottom of the stage. I got caught up in the crash and I reckon it took us 20 minutes to get down past the injured guy and on to the end of the stage. At the bottom of the stage the marshall was asking riders if they’d seen the ambulance. Someone said it was up at the top of the “out of stella” climb and they were sitting having a cup of tea. The marshall asked riders to go up the climb and tell the ambulance to come down asap. The ambulance eventually passed us about 5 minutes later. After that they would have had a considerable climb to get to the crash site.

First medic approached from the fire road just below mid-stage, the second attempted from the bottom a fair bit later AFAIK. First medic was there as sharpish as possible on that terrain.
There was a lot of Chinese whispers out of some of the riders, one said there was blood on the trail above where the casualty was, so you have to take hearsay with a pinch of salt sometimes, although almost all riders were very helpful* 🙂

* 2 or 3 slipped through and didn’t’ offer assistance.

Run times, I saw low 3 mins for a few stages for the fast guys. Mostly in the 3.5-6 min mark, stage 2 would have been in the 5-6 min mark for the fast guys?

Superstar?

Not sure if the newer generation rotors are made of a different material, but had some that looked like this

And no choice of pads (OE and aftermarket sintered, then SS kevlar (which on that caliper and original hope rotor were amazing)) would work on them, dug out an old shimano rotor and boom, back in business.

Yup, get it done by a shop with a proper tool. They cost a lot £2-900, and your unlikely to find those taps outside of the bike industry.

I once lent my BB chaser tool to a mate who supposedly knew what was doing, demolished him frame by using the non drive tool in the drive side, despite the fact they have it written on them which is which (and its very hard work to drive the tool the wrong way). Thankfully the tool survived.

Then refit with loads of quality grease, and empty your frame out after every properly wet ride. Proper anti-seize is what you want, not hub grease, I’ve used waterproof marine grease before on a commuter bike and the BB came out of it very easily 2-3 winters later.

Good to hear someone had success with a seized seatpost. For a while lots of lower end road bikes would come with a ‘carbon seatpost’ that was really a cheap uncoated alloy job with a thin wrap of carbon material around the outside. Moisture gets into them very quickly and they swell up like Rawl plugs, killing the frame. Thankfully you don’t see those posts much anymore.

@NW, I probably met you on saturday on the top, bad knee chat? If not, you weren’t the only one 😉

will look for that FB page, cheers.

I don’t have any experience with Enduro to really comment, but I can see the enduro ‘lite’ category being there maybe not to ‘up’ the game of the full fat course, but allow more folk in at a lower technical ability to get in on some of the action and actually stand a chance of winning something, not being absolute last on a list of 3-500 competitors?

As for Evac, medic’s were guided to the right place very quickly after the incident, but its remoteness makes communications tricky, though in that instance that wasn’t a factor, getting a casualty down pro-spacker after 300+ riders have been down it twice is an utter mission as all those on hand will have witnessed.

Recently gone 1×10 + NW + zee med cage clutch, taken the bash off for now (because show off the bling ring!?) not dropped a chain once in the last few weeks and I love braking bumps/washboards.

Chain growth is likely the issue with certain frame geometries, if you already have a problem with it then you likely already have a proper top & bottom chainguide already.

Good weekend out that, never attended an Enduro before, and I think for a few riders that was their first, and even for some experienced folk it was pretty challenging, in terms of climbing and the mud chute on S2.

I was marshaling both days, saturday was pretty nasty for all who survived through it and sunday for the most part was pretty nice if a bit windy. Spirits on top, despite the wind and hail and que to get down S3 were really high and I think just about everyone enjoyed it, even if they were crying inside a little from all the climbing

Wheres best to bump photos upto, was there a FB page for the event?

Good weekend out that, never attended an Enduro before, and I think for a few riders that was their first, and even for some experienced folk it was pretty challenging, in terms of climbing and the mud chute on S2.

I was marshaling both days, saturday was pretty nasty for all who survived through it and sunday for the most part was pretty nice if a bit windy. Spirits on top, despite the wind and hail and que to get down S3 were really high and I think just about everyone enjoyed it, even if they were crying inside a little from all the climbing 😉

Wheres best to bump photos upto, was there a FB page for the event?

The new mech hanger? Have you used a hanger alignment tool to check? Your symptoms sound like the hanger is not straight even though it’s new.

This.

If your 100% there is no compatibility issue, your cabling is perfect (10 speed road, not 10 speed MTB dynasys/sram pull, is highly strung, someone farts two streets over and it’ll not shift), and not the cable exit problem, and not a cassette spacer in the wrong place.

Then issue still lies with mech hanger/ rear end. Is your wheel in the dropouts straight. Mech hanger on the frame with no dirt/grit trapped under it.

yeah aware they dont fold quite as small as a brompton, but for most folk the actual folded size isn’t the primary appeal, its merely ‘it folds, therefore I can take it on a peak train’.

A pair of real life hairy biker dopplegangers came into my shop and bought a pair of them, must have been 19-22st sort of weight each, neither came back with any problems so they are more than strong enough.

Yes getting spares for those clamp things is sometimes slow, more of a problem with Euro distribution than anything else. The only time I’ve seen them damaged is when people don’t understand how a QR lever works.

BC – modified bromptons are ace.

Mechanical flaws – personally fed up of replacing back ends when the bushs go, and then cannot be removed without killing the rear triangle. And those rear clamps, think they have updated them now, as well as the £5 pressed cranks, but I see a few a week that need attention in at least those areas*

*On the positive side, these issues are due to wear, so hows that they do get some proper miles on them, not just a 0.2 mile trundle to the train station.

Decathlon Bfold 7, hands down, nothing else comes close. £250!

They run on 20″ wheels so larger than most, but still fold down to about the same size and weight as a brompton (bare in mind it has full mudguards, rack and heavy tyres on it, vs. a cheaper brompton has none of these things).

They are made by Dahon for decathlon (you’ll recognize the shape and clamps from the Dahon range).

We had two on our euro trip this year, left them folded up in the back of the car and did a bunch of touring + city + bike polo + MTB on them.

Best part is apart from the weird narrow front hub (most folders have these) all the other parts are regular MTB/hybrid parts, so if you smash a derailleur, shifter, brake lever, caliper, chain, freewheel then its a cheap easy fix to get spare parts. Not so with the majority of folders.

And did I mention £250?
I do like the brompton concept, but £1000 for a folding bike with many mechanical flaws, really?

A lot of it has to do with education.

Those who have driven a passenger car, a van, a motorbike, a bicycle, walked a dog in an urban area, been sat in a truck, will have FAR greater appreciation, respect for other users and awareness then someone who only drives around in a yellow corsa.

Modern passenger cars/vans/trucks leave you so far removed from whats actually occurring in the big outside world that you do shut a large portion of your senses down.