unbelievable..
so i was working on a bike the other day... an "army recon" folding bike. looks nice, but it turns out to be a department-store bike, and things start going downhill, fast.
i was seriously baffled by how awful the components were on that bike. "falcon" derailleurs, with ridiculous grip-shifters. i managed to barely get the rear derailleur to shift, but up in front, after working on it for 30-35 minutes (after a different mech. had been looking at the bike for an hour or so) we finally had to call it quits. that thing just would not shift into the big chainring -- the shifter stopped before giving enough cable tension, and that thing needed a LOT of cable tension. i believe that if it had a smaller bottom bracket, it MIGHT have solved the problem (by bringing the chainrings in), but it was really the shifters that were the problem.
it was probably -- in all honesty -- the worst bike i've worked on.
who designs these things?!