I hope you enjoy the Merc as much as I do. It is a wonderful little bike, and of my three bikes this is now my favourite ride.

Like 14R says, you'll probably do fine. How you get on may depend on stuff like the terrain you need to ride over - steep hills, and you may find it a trifle over geared, but Anita at Merc will supply smaller front chain rings for laughable money (£4.50). Mine has been VERY reliable all told, but you may find the following small niggles with a new one:

* The seat post may slide down a tad as you ride.
* The stock brake pads are dire and need replacing
* If you are a VERY strong cyclist, you may snap the odd rear spoke
* You will sooner or later find that you break the horrible plastic chain tensioner.


These things can easily be changed and will lead to a VERY nice little bike.

1. Wipe off excess oil from the seat post and it will stop sliding down. Tightening the bolt won't stop it.
2. Buy some koolstop salmon pads for caliper brakes. They will transform braking performance. While you are about it, get some 3 in 1 oil into the brake cables where they do that 190 degree loop back. This is particularly worthwhile on the front brake.
3. Keep an eye on the trueness of the back wheel. First sign of wobble, attend to it. You may find you have a bust spoke. Neglect this and you will find you have four bust spokes, like I did. If you do break one, replace it with a stock Brompton 13 gauge spoke. These are slightly thicker, MUCH stronger and cost about £0.26. They go straight in, even though as you first start to thread them through the hub they may seem a little tight.
4. Order a new aluminium chain tensioner NOW before you need it. Anita has them on the Ebay shop at £12.50, though the ebayshop isn't always there. I can only find it when she is selling a bike on ebay which they do regularly for £330. The alli tensioner is a WONDERFUL upgrade and will ensure reliability. You can't have your commuter let you down on the way to work EVER. I'd replace the plastic one NOW, then you will never have any trouble. Putting this in perspective, I ran about 1200 miles between breaking my last two tensioners. The aluminium one will never break - that's the way I want my bike. I sometimes tour on it and I can't afford a breakdown.

I have also modified my 3 gear Merc into a 6 gear one, by putting on a 39 tooth chain wheel inside the 52 tooth one. You have to do away with the neat little alu chainguard ring, but to me, getting up steep hills is important. I bought a front mech and a specially engineered Brompton clamp made by a specialist called Steve Parry. It didn't take much trouble to fit the whole thing and I now have easy changing. To be honest though, fitting a 39 tooth sprocket alongside the big one is all you NEED to do. You can change it by hand, but it's a mucky doing it. If you do run the small chainwheel without shortening the chain (which you can't do obviously if you want to be able to use both chain wheels) then you MUST upgrade the tensioner to the metal one. The plastic one is all the more likely to break if the lower chain run is slacker than the way it was supplied to you, which it obviously will be if you put on a 39 tooth with the same size chain. The plastic tensioner breaks in my opinion when the bottom run of chain 'lashes' on bumps and either a doubled up link tries to go through the small gap between the fixed jockey wheel and the rear cog, or the chain tries to ride off the side of the cog because of lash. There is NO GIVE in that space between the fixed jockey and the rear cog at all and a very small gap. The only thing that can happen if you are pedaling enthusiastically is that the tensioner snaps. If that happens, you can't ride it properly - the chain rides over the back cog if you apply any power beyond crawling along.

Don't be put off by any of the above. I love the bike and have done over 1300 miles on it.