Hi!

Could you folding bike fans help me make up my mind. I do quite a lot of biking. Every day I use mixed transport to get to work. It involves 5km of biking, half an hour of train and thereafter another 4km of biking. So altogether around 20km daily. The thing is that in the morning I have to pay a lot to take my bike on the train. One wouldn't have to pay for a folding bike. Even if it is quite large I could put it in a bag and would be bothered any more. As a matter of fact the train is not very crowded so I would fit in anyway.

This has made me to look for a decent folding bike. In addition to daily commuting I sometimes to longer tours during the weekends. For instance tomorrow I plan to make a round trip of about 80km. In case I get a folding bike I have to get rid of my current cross bike, since there is not enough place to keep both of them. Hence the folding bike needs to be descent and fast. Convenient to ride both on roads (most of the time) as well as for doing slight off-road biking. All my friends have good normal bikes and I wouldn't like chasing them when doing weekend trips.

So what are my options.
I discovered two Montague models at a local shop. These are Swissbike TX and Montague Paratrooper. The latter is at my upper price limit. While I like the frame of TX, it has very crappy gear set (Tourney). Hence, when going for TX I would have to spend a lot of time to upgrade it to something like Deore. Then there is Paratrooper. As I am not a military fan I do not like the look of it. Still, it has Deore and it folds. In either case the bike would get semislick tires. I have read in these forums that some Montague bikes have cheap components. What is your experience. They also seem kind of heavy.


From the Dahon line I consider mtx. Yet I am a bit afraid of this Lock-Jaw folding mechanism. I am not sure it would be good and reliable for everyday folding. In addition it requires me to carry additional tool for folding the bike.

I do not know what to think of 20 inch folders. I suspect they are not fast enough to keep me in the pack of normal bikes. Usually they do not have enough gears. At an internet shop I found Trek F400 which kind of a looks OK.

Sorry for the long post! As you see I am really confused. I cannot get a point why the choice is so limited. Why don't normal large bike manufacturers produce folding bikes?! Why do small crappy folding bikes, whit only 3 to 8 speeds cost more than my new and descent cross bike, which has all the best quality components? Give me a good 26'' folding bike which is light, has normal Shimano Deore gears and semislick tires! Not much to ask and when I would leave out the "folding" part I would be flooded with options, but no!!!

I am thankful for any advice!

Cheers!

R.