So I stopped by the local Bike Friday Tikit Agent today in the middle of my regular Saturday joyride (calling it a “training ride” sounds so boring). They have a stock size L Tikit with hyperfold as a demo bike. They swapped my Speedplay pedals over from my road bike to the Tikit and I took it out for a spin. Woohoo! 🙂
I did an 11.5 mile loop which was an almost perfect mix of city traffic, suburbia, and rural roads. There was some decent climbing and descending as well. I think it was a good test of the bike’s performance, and was long enough to get an idea of its comfort potential on longer rides.
About me, so you can qualify my impressions: I’m 6’3″ tall and weigh about 207-210lbs depending on how much carbo loading I’ve been doing. I’d guess at my size & weight, I’m probably at the upper limit of what the stock size L Tikit is designed for. In terms of experience, I generally ride between 75-150 miles per week and am probably 95% car free. I commute 5 days a week on a fixed gear and tow my two boys in a kiddie trailer behind an Xtracycle on the weekend, along with doing a 60-100+ mile “joyride” every Saturday I can talk my wife into it.
So, my impressions:
Pros:
– The bike was nimble but not twitchy. I probably hit 25-30mph on the descents and it tracked well, very similar to a normal road bike.
– The ride was quite comfortable! I think the frame absorbs a lot of shock, but I was expecting a much rougher ride than it ended up having. It was easily as smooth or smoother than my steel frame / carbon fork LeMond Zurich with 25mm Continental GP4000 tires and Rolf Vector Pro wheels.
– Out of the saddle climbing was fine once I lowered the stem to match my normal saddle-to-bar drop, and I didn’t perceive much if any flex from the bottom bracket or chainstay region, which I can definitely cause to happen on other bikes (like my Surly Cross Check fixed gear commuter).
– If I closed my eyes, I’d have thought I was on a normal flat bar-ed hybrid. A very responsive and soft riding one, but it didn’t feel especially weird in any way. What they say about Bike Friday riding like a “real bike” (whatever that means LOL) was definitely true.
– The Hyperfold is sweeet! Duh. Not much needs to be said about this, it’s just one of those “ain’t it cool” things about the Tikit. Not sure I really need a bike that can be folded in less than 5 seconds, but if I was getting a folding bike, why the heck not?
– Shifting was smooth and responsive, brakes were OK though I’d prefer Avid Single Digit 7s (which I have on both my commuter and Xtracycle). Gear range was OK, though I felt it was a little too narrow. Not quite low enough and not quite high enough.
– LOVE the bell. Nice touch. Would be classier if it was black instead of gold, but I think any bike is improved by having a bell/horn/whatever and I’m jazzed the Tikit comes with one stock.
Cons:
– There was a lot of stem flex at first, but after I adjusted the stem to the lowest possible position (which more or less matched my normal saddle-to-bar drop on my road bike) it wasn’t as bad. It was still noticeable, but better. I also found I could easily flex the stem/handlebars forward or backward without much effort. I think this helps absorb shock in the front end, and didn’t seem to negatively affect out of the saddle climbing, so I wasn’t really bothered by it.
– Most concerning negative, which may be the result of poor pedaling technique on my part, but I found there was a lot of up & down springiness in the bottom bracket area. I found this when pedaling at certain faster cadences; I’d be bouncing up and down quite a lot. I also found I could reproduce this springy/bounciness when I wasn’t pedaling, by unweighting in the saddle with the pedals stopped. That would result in 2-3 oscillations or so. Swapping in a Brooks saddle (what I run on my other bikes) would probably correct a lot of this, and having a BTO with some reinforcement in this area probably wouldn’t hurt either.
– When I tried riding hands-off (with hands hovering over the bars) there was instantly a lot of shimmy in the front end. This didn’t make the bike veer off or act crazy, but I didn’t feel like I could very easily pull off a layer or something while riding no hands. That said, it did seem like I might be able to get more comfortable with it in time. It’s not really fair to fault the Tikit here since from what I’ve read, there aren’t really any good “no hands” folding bikes.
– The stock flat bars weren’t comfortable for me; the sweep angle was too shallow and I had wrist pain after just a few miles. I’d want some bar-ends, bullhorns or possibly true drop bars to be more comfortable on longer rides.
– The stock saddle sucks – sorry to be so blunt, but it’s so soft it literally sucks your butt down into it. It feels great for a mile or two, but after five or six your rear is going to be getting sore and/or numb. As noted above I also think it contributes to the overall bounciness of the ride. I’d have to swap this for something firmer, in my case a Brooks B17.
Overall it’s a cool bike, a neat novelty that I’m not sure I really need, but was glad to be able to take for a proper test ride. I won’t hesitate to recommend this to anyone for multimodal commuting or traveling. And with the appropriate changes made (different bars & seat) I would be more than happy to ride it for 100 miles or more. More gear range would help its versatility, but there are of course plenty of options in that regard if you go the BTO route. I might need a suitably beefed up version of the Tikit for my size/weight/strength, anything that would help reduce some of the bounciness would be appreciated.
So there you have it! Maybe it helps someone considering a Tikit get a few more data points.