My wife and I have our 10th anniversary coming up and we decided to go camping for a week up in the Pacific Northwest. Since we're flying and we don't want to rent a car we decided to take our bicycles with us. Normally we ride road bikes, but I did have a couple of foldings bikes in the back of the garage. So, I dug them out and got them fixed up. I figured y'all might want to take a gander at them since they're a bit unusual.
I'll start off with mine. Here's what it looked like when I bought it:
What little I've been able to discover about the "Exklusiv" brand suggests that they were a Yugoslavian brand in the 80s that mostly made these Graziella knockoffs. Even their name is a knockoff - there's a German brand called "Exclusiv" with a different logo and spelling. The brake, assuming it's original, dates it to 1981, which seems about right. Front brake is a Weinmann 1020 with a Suntour coaster brake on the rear. The rims don't match - I think the rear is a replacement. One thing I found real interesting is that it has a Thompson bottom bracket. I'd never seen one in the wild before.
Anyway, here it is as it sits now:
I added SKS fenders, properly fitting tires (20x1.75 is the widest you can fit on there) lights, grips, and a Brooks saddle. I also repainted it and rebuilt the hubs and bearings and whatnot. The rear sprocket has been changed from an 18 to an 11 tooth to give it a bit more oomph.
My wife's bike is a lot newer:
Nanuri was a South Korean brand in the mid 2000's. Given that all the safety/instruction labels are in Korean, I'm going to guess it may have been brought back by another serviceman. This one actually has a date on the label so I can be certain of the year - 2007.
My wife didn't like the short cranks, so I swapped them for the current anachronistic set. It's a 6 speed rear freewheel with a SunRun copy of a Shimano Skylark on the back. Yeah, it's friction shifted. In 2007. Go figure. Front brake is a generic stamped affair, though it works well. The rear brake is a weird leather band wrapped around a drum thing. I'll have to get some closeups - never seen anything like it before.
Once I get the rest of the bags and whatnot in I'll take some photos for y'all of them all geared up.