Folding Bicycle Hobby Life

Currently, the most wide spread brake is V brake. The merit is easy maintenance, light weight, and low cost. However, it is not effective in raining.

Oil disc brake has light brake touch and strong against mud in off-road. Even rim is distorted, it is possible to ride the bicycle. The demerit is you cannot put your bicycle up side down.

Mechanical disc brake operate using wire and do not need to get nervous compared with oil disc brake.  However, stop ability is less.

Finally, side pull brake is lighter and mainly used in road bike.

As you know there are many various size wheels in bicycle. Do you know why? MTB is normally 26 inch. Road bike is normally 27 inch. When wheel size is smaller, it is lighter and easy to start and to climb. On the contrary, when wheel size gets bigger, it is harder to start, but once bicycle run at reasonable speed, it is easier to keep that speed. Therefore, large wheel has advantage for long distance travel. So, why do many folding bicycles use small wheels? One of the reasons is obviously to reduce size. But, other reasons using small wheels are to ride in the city where it has many stop & go point due to the number of traffic signals. In other words, small wheel is easier to start running.

What do you think top 10 bicycle trouble you likely to face?

This is generic bicycle trouble ranking.

Chain Trouble

Chain comes off when riding rough road. Or chain break suddenly.

Puncture

For MTB, main puncture is rim hit puncture. For road bike, main puncture is penetrate puncture.

Brake Trouble

Brake pad wear out and the holder start to hit rim and to generate noise.

Gear Change Trouble

Gear does not respond due to poor maintenance.

Wire Trouble

Inner wire gets rust, and can be broken.

Loosing Grip Trouble

While raining, suddenly grip started to loose and taken off from handle bar.

Disc Brake Trouble

Put bicycle attached oil disc brake up side down. Afterwards, brake does not respond anymore.

Tubeless Tire Puncture

Many people think tubeless tire never puncture, but it does happen sometimes.

Loosing Bearing Part

Handle part or hub gets old without rider knowing.

Crank Trouble

This happens when pedal is installed improperly.

The person I know started folding bicycle rental service business in Brisbane, Australia. I want to talk about it with my thought. Here is the address.

Bicycar Rental - Folding Bicycle with Car Travel
http://www.bicycar.com/

According to him, Australia is huge and it is important to have a own car to travel around. Tourist popular spot is very busy normally and hard to find enough car parking there. Even though public transport in Brisbane is sophisticated, it is still hard to use it for new comers. Then, he started to use folding bicycle experimentally with his car. The result was marvelous and therefore he started to start folding bicycle rental service for tourists. I took content from his website.

I myself may be want to try when I buy folding bike. Especially, I want to go somewhere like the following:

Cleveland Market and Scenery
http://www.bicycar.com/?page_id=20

However, my place environment maybe a bit different from his place. It is because there are many slopes around here. If not, then I want to try it. Probably his place is more convenient for riding bicycle.

Anyway, I hope my friend succeed with his business.

I bought few new 12 inch folding bicycle since it was very spacial deal and imported from Japan.

I am planning to play around with this bikes.