Originally Posted by
chemeleon26
I think I've met one of your mates Caterpillar. I saw him in Tryon the other day and he was riding a modded MIT V8 with color combo of Red & Black. You can see the bike has been through a lot. He has really pushed that bike. If I recall, he has at least 4,000km on that bike.
Some of the mods he made made use of Brompton accessories like the L fender and the Front carrier block. He uses an S Bag. Some things he mentioned was that there was chain rub in the chainstays and he had to put a spacer in the bottom bracket. He also put some sort of clamp in the handlebar post to improve stiffness he says. Lastly, he complained that the rear fender seems to be interfering with the rear wheel. He was having his wheel respoked.
Anyway, I find it quite impressive how the folding bike market has grew. Back in 2009, I viewed folding bikes as unreliable. The only ones available were in Toby's sport shops and they were pretty hard to handle. Nowadays, for even less money, you can get better quality folding bikes. How things have changed.
That's probably, Edward. That's our group member. We just rode together last Sunday. Covered about 100km from Quezon City to San Pablo, Laguna (about 5+ hours). Then did another 20km within the city of San Pablo. Visited the famous lakes of the place. As you can see, that's how much that bike gets a log in mileage. I wouldn't be surprised his 4,000km is probably more than that. Those guys log in 400-600km a week. They use the bike to work and almost anywhere they go.
This April, Holy week, they plan to bike from QC to Matnog, Sorsogon in about 5 days. They say it's just 588km. I'd say it' s more like 700-750km. And once they reach there, Edward is recruiting others to cross the sea to Samar and maybe up to San Juanico bridge. We'll be going bimodal and meet him at Sorsgon City and escort him to Matnog. I am a native of Sorsogon so we have our ancestral house there where we can stay. But who knows? I might just go with him to Samar just for the heck of it. It would be a treat to cover 150-200km going to the Samar. Then bike again on the way back and go RORO to cross the channel back to Matnog!
That effort alone is probably going to be close to 1,000km. So, the bikes we're using here (V8, Firebird, Storm, Light Storm, Enda Glide, Giant Expressway) shows you the true mettle of these bikes.
BTW, he said that v2 of the V8 is in the works. It should correct all the problems of v1. But we'll wait and see about that.