Of course having now got a Tikit: a bike which is first and foremost designed as a commuter, I naturally set about turning it into something slightly different ;-)
I think that I've taken the "pre-production" description of this particular bike to heart and am keen to find out just what it can do.
My commute doesn't see any big hills and my riding style is to get out of the seat and hammer over them, so round one was about tweaking the position and tightening and lifting the gears.
Scoring a 60T chainring from Kraynick's in Pittsburgh was one of those things you do because you "just never know when you'll need it". A $10 price tag probably helped, too. Seven years later ... I needed it! Match that with 11-21 on the back and I've got some reasonable gears again.
Postion dialled in by dropping the bars, a longer stem and bar ends to get me stretched out. And add the fairly minimalist Selle Italia Nitrox seat.
(In these photos, I've still got the 53T ring on there as well as the 60T. You could do this to retain a set of lower gears for hilly riding, but I've really only kept it on there because I didn't have any single chainring bolts to hand!)
The bar ends (and longer stem) do compromise the folded size a little and this wouldn't be ideal for a commute that involved public transport. However my commute is a mix of cycle and a company shuttle bus, so it's not a problem for me. I guess a folding bike has the usual trade-off of any bike: the tradeoff that can be summarised as "light, strong, cheap: choose any two". A folding/commuting bike adds another triangle to be balanced: "fold fast, fold compact, ride well". My demands rate ride and folding speed over folded size.
3 comments:
Hi Paul,
I am looking for a 60t chainring as well. 10 bucks from Kraynick sounds like a really good deal. The cheapest I am able to find on the web is running for about $40. I wonder if they still offer this deal at the store, do you know?
btw, have you thought about putting a front deraileur on the tikit? I don't see a place where that can be mounted on. Do you have any suggestion?
$10 for any chainring is a bargain. I just collect them when I see them at a good price. $40 for a 60T ring is still a very good price - these large chainrings can be very expensive.
The guy at Kraynicks (Gerry, I think) was happy to let me poke around in the two other floors that are just packed with stuff - with no obvious organisation. I don't even know if he knows what's in there.
I don't think there's any place on my frame for a front derailleur, but it looks like Rob English has got one on his Speeding Tikit.
In fact I've just gone through the exercise of taking my Tikit back to single speed. There will be a whole separate post about that soon.
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