Tuesday, 11 August 2009

Black Friday

24 December 2008. Just in time for a Christmas holiday build, my replacement Tikit frame arrived in my doorstep in Australia - less than four weeks after reporting the problem to Bike Friday in Eugene.
A brace of Tikits...





You can see a few changes between the 2007 frame and the 2008 one: the beak shaped piece that forms part of the unlocking mechanism is now shaped like a dinosaur's head and is beefier than before. The older frame has a small set screw that limited the swing when folding. This could be backed off to allow an extended swing to help get the bike into a case. That's gone from the new frame.




Those adjustable dropouts look very sweet. Each dropout is fixed to the frame by two chainring bolts. The dropout pivots around the upper chainring bolt and secured in place by the lower chainring bolt, the set screw gives you very fine adjustment of the dropout position. Under load, the dropout is prevented from being pulled forward by the set screw, not by the friction of the chainring bolt.

Quite apart from offering flexibility to tinkerers like me, they would offer some production efficiency to Bike Friday. The rear triangles can be made standard and customer preference handled by bolting on the requisite dropouts: single speed, hub gear or derailleur. Different hub widths can be accommodated by fitting different spacers between the dropouts and the frame.

...and I do like that gloss black. Now, what better way to spend the holiday than tinkering with a bike?

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