blinki

I snagged one of the Fuji Origami's off of ebay a few weeks ago for under 200.00 , This is a sweet bike and great ride and only 24lb. For something more substantial, they the Durban Street 24".... another nice ride and also under 200.

blinki

It would be hard to go wrong with a DownTube..... they have been around a long time. I once had one, but I go thru bike like some people go thru relationships.

Hexley

Just received my Downtube Nova today and dropped it off at my local bike shop for tuning and check over. It's a much deeper pearlescent British racing green than the aqua blue looking green bike in most of the Nova's photos on the Downtube website, those are washed out. I folded it a few times but find the main hinge quite stiff, hopefully my local shop can lube that up a bit. So far very pleased.

Bonzo Banana

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogset

downtube

Bonzo,

I think almost all active members of this forum know the difference between a freewheel and cassette. I found your claim about my lack of knowledge troubling, and several members reached out to me privately about it.

I did not want to respond sooner because I found the conversation disturbing.

Thanks,
Yan

Bonzo Banana

No offence meant. I only clarified it because you didn't seem to understand the error with your comparison page but that has now been corrected so no problem. Many companies seem to go out of their way to confuse freewheels with cassettes to make their bike spec's look better. When I look at Tern and Dahon spec pages I often have no idea what is actually fitted on their entry level models. I think often they are incredibly vague about it in order to allow people to assume it is a cassette. I've seen forum postings where the buyer thought they had a cassette fitted only to find it was a low end freewheel when they wanted to change the cassette. For me the consumer should always be fairly informed regarding a bicycle specification.

downtube

The Nova product page always stated it had a freewheel.

Thanks,
Yan

Bonzo Banana

We have already covered this I thought. It had conflicting information as per earlier in the thread with cassette mentioned in 2 places. Which made it confusing for the end customer which for some not knowing a huge amount about bicycles could come away thinking freewheels were the same as cassettes. Anyway its fixed now.

downtube

The product page is at https://downtube.com/downtube-nova-l...-folding-bike/ . The page you are quoting is within our FAQ, under Bike comparisons, then under Downtube specification table ( it is not a prominent page ). Additionally at the top it states, "(A big thanks to David Richardson for compiling this information in one table)". A customer made the page and allowed me to share it with others. Hence I can not understand what all the hoopla is about.

Thanks,
Yan

Rick Imby

I owned and ran a bicycle shop for 30+ years. I totally disagree with you. Never mind the fact that you can get wider gearing on a Cassette hub, there is a huge difference in axle strength --even just going down a curb with a freewheel can be an issue. 20 inch wheels are much stronger than larger skinny wheels. Why keep the freewheel/axle as a weak link in a much stronger wheel? The price difference on most of these folding bikes is like $20 for a cassette.

By the way---BMX cassettes just came around in the last few years when they wanted to use smaller gears in the rear to give better clearance with smaller chainrings.---Cassettes are Not a strength issue with BMX.