Originally Posted by
Jipe
These people published 16 video's advertising lightweight travel with Helix and promoting Helix as a folding travel bike!
The Portugal and Greece travel video show 2 very different rear racks.
The one of the Portugal travel allow to fold the rear swing arm without any dismounting of the rear rack.
...
Now if you look for a folding bike with rear folding rack for full size rear pannier, front rack for low rider pannier and a Brompton front bag block, the Birdy has all these bag carrying.
Yeah you're right, they must have some sort of "in" with the company.
Birdy? Looks like a nice bike, suspension and all. But expensive. I'm cheap. I have a Dahon frame, modified for wide gearing, tall/aft rear rack for big panniers and trunk bag, low rider front rack for panniers and platform for top loads (like a 6-pack of beer), or can hang a tall bag from the aero bars there; I don't like the Brompton and similar front attachments for the 3 screw head tube mount; As a retired engineer, that puts significant bending moment on that front cantilevered mount, without much span in the bolt centers. I'd much rather strap to the top platform on the front rack, centered on its mounts, the mounting bolts close to pure shear and not much bending moment. I do like that the Brompton and similar front mounts are fixed to the frame so do not add steered mass and inertia; Early Mouton "shoppers" had integrated racks rear and front with that quality. However, the added steered mass to my folder (racks, panniers, aero-bars and drink bottle), transformed the "twitchy" steering (original, unladen) to much more calm and stable (with touring or shopping loads), closer dynamics to larger wheel bikes.