Thanks Thor :)

YES !!!! the very same.... she is my youngest sister :thumb:

As you want to travel..then take yourself to Thailand and there you can buy a replica 3 speed Brompton in aluminium with fenders and a rack for roughly $350 ..You can order them thru the Lazada website online in Thailand or you can go to Worachak road and you will find some bike shops who sell them..You could get most of the other minimilast kit in Bangkok ..ie..a Vincinta carry bag for your Brompton clone..etc etc..or someone could make it for you..
Or look on the Lazada website anyway and you will find dozens on folding bikes..and they will deliver them to your hotel /address in Thailand..

Are you recommending touring on an aluminum frame with minimal suspension? I would disagree.

Thanks
Yan

I luv her videos!!! :thumb:

All other things being equal wheelbase has a lot to do with comfort and stability. The Brompton's wheel base is by far longer and is actually longer than the average hybrid bike. Throw on some bar ends to an S stem and you will probably feel less cramped than the Dahon. AFIK, as the Brompton was designed for commuting on crowded streets with a lot of cars, the M and H bars were designed to give the rider an upright position to aid in navigating traffic. If you find you are still too bent over you can use riser bars with bar ends.

She doesn't want to add one Birdy bike to her collection? (Coz she's working in Germany, home of the Birdy bike, although to be technically correct, she has to be working in Taiwan. :D)

In reply to Downtube's question..Yes I am..I have toured on an aluminium bike with no suspension..In Thailand you can probably find a workshop in most towns that weld aluminium if the frame should break..What I am saying is buy a cheap Brompton clone for $350 because it is bound to be better than the Dahon..It has a rack and fenders and 3 speed and for tht price it is incredible..You can buy a one speed Brompton clone for $275...Plenty more folding bikes to choose from in Thailand..Chevrolet make a 7 speed 16 inch wheel folding bike..cheap enough..The man just wants to tour around places not ride around the world..around towns.on taxis,trains,buses etc..

Where do you find such a beast?

Look at the Lazada.co.th website and change the language to English..Look at bikes..folding bikes..and on page 5 ..each page showing about 28 bikes you will see a Brompton Clone for 12500 Thai Baht..Lazada are like a Thai Amazon or Chinese Alibaba..
I think you would have to live in Thailand to order one..or a hotel I guess..
I have seen them in the Worachak road area of Bangkok..there are about 10 bike shops in the space of 200 yards..near Wat Saket(Golden Mount Temple)..and I am certain they are in plenty of other shops also..

LA Bicycle **********?? ???? Stage 203 (**********) | Lazada.co.th

I don't see a brompton quality fold.

Nearly as good as a Brompton fold..height adjustable handlebars,a good carrier,rear suspension,3 speed,and a very compact fold..nearly as small as a Brompton...
The original poster of the topic wants the bike for multi modal world travel where it will be put iin taxis,buses,coaches,tuk tuks,trains,motor bike and sidecars..It will get bashed about..for the price of $350 USD what is there not to like..And V brakes so you will stop a damn site better than any Brompton..I have seen these bikes up close and if they were imported into London Brompton would have some serious opposition..
And LA bikes have a very good reputation in Thailand..

From a quick glance, the drivetrain exposed after the fold will get all the opportunity to stain the surroundings with grease, tiny rolling wheels, no luggage block...

OK Ok ..I give up..if you want a luggage block and bigger wheels on the rack and a hidden chain when folded then pay 4 or 5 times the price for a Brompton in the USA..
But this comes with a damn good rack..You can put inline skate board wheels on for next to nothing and you can buy a bike bag in Thailand for made by Vicinta..fabulous bags which many Brompton owners use for $25..
I can tell you..no Taxi or bus driver in Asia will mind if his seat gets a bit dirty..majority of seats are plastic covered and many seats are wooden on trains..
For the price of $350 what is there not to like about this bike for goodness sake?

And the man wants multi modal travel...around the world..Flying to Thailand on the money you will save on a Brompton and then looking for a folding bike in the buzz of Bangkok will all add to his adventure!

Famous last words. :)

What could go wrong eh?

One word.

Warranty.

Two words.

Frame failure.

Three words.

Really bad crash.

Like you say, its an adventure, might get lucky. :)

I'd say: You get what you pay for. The difference in quality may not be as high as the difference in price - but this doesn't help if the quality is not sufficient. Especially when traveling the last thing I'd like to care about is the quality of my bike. You can get this 203 under the name "Pico" as well:

Pico 3 speed Folding Bike with Trolley Wheels | Lazada PH

https://www.facebook.com/PicoBikesPh/

And there are a bunch of reviews of this bike that do not sound too convincing to me:

********************?? NEO 203 Stage by.LA Thailand ???. ???? - ThaiMTB.com - **********??

Review ¨Ñ¡ÃÂÒ¹ Brompton ä·ÂᏴì LA Neo Stage 203 ¾ÑºáºººÃÍÁÃÒ¤ÒäÁèºÒ¹ - dvdgameonline.com (since 1998)

https://pantip.com/topic/35163867

https://www.facebook.com/notes/sek-j...7064115700000/

So while on first look it seems to be pretty similar to the Brompton it definitively lacks quality in the detail, from craftsmanship to some components (starting with the brakes - that already on the Brompton are not perfect).

There are other cheap clones around like this one:

https://wholesaler.alibaba.com/produ...535550231.html or (the most famous one) the "Flamingo Best Persuader", a direct derivate of Brompton's former licensing to Neobike at the beginning of the 1990ies: Products - GRACE GALLANT ENTERPISES CO.,LTD. FOLDINGBIKE-FL-BP01-7

https://handsonbike.blogspot.de/2012...mpton-and.html
https://handsonbike.blogspot.de/p/fl...ondon-s7r.html

In the end these clones all have one single advantage: they are cheaper. If you do not expect much (and are small) those bikes may do the job. As soon as we talk about build quality, reliability, resale value and so on you'll IMHO pretty soon end up happily paying the higher price and getting a Brompton. At least most people.

Then there is the saga of a chap buying a Neo to save money; he started regretting it the moment he wanted to pack it and it was bigger than a Brompton. He went through months of agonising about this and that and eventually got rid of it. Like seeing a train wreck in slow motion. Read All about it in this forum.

That was Hermespan, a fellow Canadian. I think your train wreck is the exact term to use. Even selling the bike became a hassle for him. His last post was picking up a Trek Transport which I think was a better bike for his purposes. He was never happy with his Flamingo except for the price which even that was pretty high for a knock-off.

Merc was selling Brompton clones on eBay in the USA and UK about 10 years ago. I recall there was lots of interest on this forum for the lighter and cheaper Flamingo clone.

I saw Flamingo at several Taipei trade shows and I was very impressed with their clones. Am I missing something? Is there a problem that I didn't notice?

Thanks
Yan

SHBR...sounds as though you would be afraid to cross the road..let alone ride a bike..

I bought a bike on Ebay for $25 USD....an old Dahon clone ..steel.6 speed..20 inch wheel..Used it in Thailand the last 4 years in the winters....Last December rode it 300kms on a weeks tour down in the south of Thailand..
You do not need a 1500usd Brompton to travel the world..My old 25USD bike spends most of its time bumping around gravelled roads in Thailand..and I mean seriously bumpy roads..
You can tour the world on anything as long as the wheels turn..

And well done Mr. Downtube...there are plenty of good quality ,cheap bikes out there especially in Asia..

1 vote for Dahon EEZZ, this bike received a lot of compliments from reviewers

If I needed to, I could make a whole bike. Do I want to? Not really - I have enough many projects on my plate. I go to the market to get something as close to my needs as possible, but also to figure out what is possible and what the reasonable needs might be. Usually I fiddle with the purchase anyway, but it is best if I do not need to it right away.

Regarding the transportation, should I also dress up myself in a plastic bag??


My first bike cost $10 at auction. Did it fulfill its role? Yes, it got me into biking, even though it was of poor quality. I could not even recognize the quality then. My current two Dahons are third-world models, on a junky side, purchased $100 apiece new. For the purposes I bought them, they fully fulfill their role and I made wonderful excursions on them. Still if I go to the market and want to buy a bike that will be of major use, I first care about quality and only second about the price. This is because the price spread out over years of use, or compared to the overall costs of world travel, becomes of reduced relevance. To add, it is very common to buy something second-rate and to start longing for something better after a while and getting the first-rate product that one should have purchased in the first place. Then buying the second-rate cheaper product turns out to be actually more expensive.

You can buy any frame, and get lucky, but if its not a major brand with warranty, good luck getting any support.

I have broken a couple of frames, both replaced under warranty. Also, both were the kinds of failures that would not have caused a serious crash. I just bought a "steel" Dahon folder, because it seems to be overbuilt, sure there are lighter smaller folders, however I'd rather not have to second guess what I am riding, especially way out in the countryside, far away from any bike shop.

shbr, which steel dahon did you get?

I searched in the forum and found an old thread where Hermespan described his experiences with the Flamingo from the moment he made the buying decision. He was not happy. But - to be fair - it seemed to a degree have been a special situation:

- reading between the lines he seemed not to be an easy customer attitudewise
- he had absolutely zero knowledge about even basic bicycle-maintenance and therefor even the tiniest irregularities let him freak out, as he needed help and could not judge on the reason and if it was a big or a small issue or a design flaw
- he paid about 1000 US$ for the Flamingo in Singapur in 2014 which to me sounds like a lot of money for this bike - far too much if you ask me.
- he had expectations that may have been challenging to fulfill even with a Brompton. Buying a "cheaply and worse made Knockoff" in a country where he didn't live from a shop with debatable service made by a company with an at least debateble level of morale and service and w/o any knowledge himself didn't make things better.

I never saw or rode one of these but judging from what you can see on pictures on the internet alone it is pretty clear that it is far from a Brompton qualitywise. No wonder if you look at the history: Brompton licensed their design to Neobike in the early nineties to serve the asian market. They supported Neobike with tooling, technical drawings, knowledge and training, Neobike promised to build up to 50.000 (!) "asian" Bromptons per year and to pay a licensing-fee for each bike sold. The contract lasted from about 1992 to about 2002. Problem was that the quality of those bikes was always way below the british made ones. As Will Butler-Adams (CEO of Brompton) said:

"[The Taiwanese-made bikes] were just crap. They outsourced various frame parts. Then the person they outsourced it to outsourced it to someone else and there was no coherent understanding of what they were trying to achieve. The thing was a disaster area - it didn’t fold properly, it didn’t sit properly, it was just shambolic and it was carrying our brand. (Source: http://www.theengineer.co.uk/in-dept...007592.article )

He repeated this on various occations, outlining that Neobike continuously took shortcuts in production that affected quality and that they did not understand the product. This was one of the reasons to end the contract (in addition to Neobike selling the bikes in countries where they were not allowed to and licensing-fees being rather low and a total lack of control about the real amount of bikes made and sold) as those Neobike-Bromptons affected and endangered the image of the brand. Neobike was as well the supplier of the Brompton handlebars that suffered from breaking in the second half of the nineties, resulting in a recall, so they even affected the original product.

Japan was one of the countries where british made Bromptons were sold along with asian made ones. Interesting was the difference in price and performance for what should have been pretty much the same bike. In an article about the Tokio cycle show 2001 you find:

"In Japan, two types Bromptons are available. U.K. made Brompton is 147,000 yen. Brompton made in Taiwan is 86,500 yen. Both have 3-speeds internal gear hub." (Source: Japan International Cycle Show 2001 Tokyo)

You can find a side-by-side-comparison of a Brompton with a licensed Neobike-Brompton here: http://mirabeau.sakura.ne.jp/brompton/brompton_21.html

So even with extensive support from Brompton Neobike did not manage to do it properly, obviously in big parts due to their attitude. Still the bikes looked pretty similar on first sight. After the end of the contract they stole the drawings and the tools and continued though various brands and companies until today. They got sued by Brompton for selling the bikes in Europe and by Dahon for theft of intellectual property. David Hon had even warned Andrew Richie back in 1992 to do business with Neobike as some of those were former employees of his and he seemed to have an idea how this was going to end. You can find a deeper look on the story here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neobike and here http://www.bicycleretailer.com/north...n-wins-ip-case

Today, Bromptons patents have expired long ago, so it is probably perfectly legal to build a bike that folds and (to a degree) looks like a Brompton. Brompton say, there is so much knowledge in the process that a knockoff will not be able to achieve similar quality. To keep it this way is one reason to keep production in London, therefore the knowledge is in Europe and not in Asia, making it harder for the copycats.

So after so many years the Flamingo is still based on the 90ies Brompton-design. In the open-source world you'd probably say it is a fork, that split off in the 90ies, lacking all the development found in the original since then. And there is a lot, though - as it is in the details - you only recognize it when looking closely and knowing the Brompton pretty well. But it makes a difference. Neobike and it's followers on the other hand continued their way of imitation and shortcuts.

With that history in mind I do not believe that their product is of even near equal quality to the Brompton, even if it looks more or less similar. Apart from the warranty- and support-situation.

So if you want something that looks like a Brompton (but does only to a degree behave like one) a clone might be ok. In pretty much the same way that a fake-Rolex bought on a beach in Thailand relates to a real one. If you do not like surprises but want quality, reliability and service I'd suggest going for the original. It all depends from your needs and as long as you don't expect Brompton-performance for a fraction of the price you might be ok. A level of (negative) surprise regarding performance and quality is probably always included when going for a clone (at least if you have experience with the original). If you want to spend your money on a product made by a company with a more than doubtable morale is another and maybe independent question.

A while ago the British BBC did a test of fake vs. original with Bromptons and Strida. Interesting to watch: