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.

Both look cheap but serviceable designs. I actually like the tyres more that the U frame folder came with. Out of character with the bike I'm sure but they look like comfy thick profile BMX tyres. A bit of furniture polish and a nail brush would have bought them up a treat. Obviously a true gentleman giving the wife the bike with gears.

Here they are all geared up:


They weighed about 80 lbs each fully loaded. We rode them for a total of 40 miles over a 1600' pass, camping near the summit for the week.

I managed to snap my rack in half in a ditch, but it was easily repaired with some paracord:



Held up all week, too! Other than a flat tire, we really didn't have many problems out of them. I'll post the full story once my photos come in from the lab.

They were, but the forks were just too narrow for them to fit without rubbing. I gave them to a neighbourhood kid for his BMX.