I am shocked here regarding these engineering skills as every roller wheel has a bearing. You seem to lump the concepts of a ball bearing and bearing, but friction or plain bearing is a bearing too. Nearly all suitcases come with roller wheels that lack ball bearings, yet those meant to be checked in are meant for higher loads than the weight of Brompton. So all those suitcase manufacturers produce rubbish and people should be swapping their suitcase wheels with the aftermarket ones. Well, the travel community is not this delusional.
Disk brakes on a folding bike
- Thread starter CEBEP
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I am shocked here regarding these engineering skills as every roller wheel has a bearing. You seem to lump the concepts of a ball bearing and bearing, but friction or plain bearing is a bearing too. Nearly all suitcases come with roller wheels that lack ball bearings, yet those meant to be checked in are meant for higher loads than the weight of Brompton. So all those suitcase manufacturers produce rubbish and people should be swapping their suitcase wheels with the aftermarket ones. Well, the travel community is not this delusional.
My Carlton/Samsonite suitcases operate fine for decades w/o ball bearings. I spend on average a third of the year in travel and a have a couple of suitcases always full to be able to walk out of the door. You can always throw as much money product as you want.
I travel extensively, about a flight a week before Covid and know a few things about suitcases and their wheels performance.
I also had a Samsonite suit case with single wheel design (Rimowa and new Samsonites use double) which was absolutely terrible to roll. They used same cheap crap wheel design without ball-bearings, similar type that Brompton uses as stock wheels.
R&M Birdy is also considered a premium folding bike and R&M engineers wisely installed wheels on the rack with ball bearings. Exactly what Brompton was supposed to do too.
I also had a Samsonite suit case with single wheel design (Rimowa and new Samsonites use double) which was absolutely terrible to roll. They used same cheap crap wheel design without ball-bearings, similar type that Brompton uses as stock wheels.
R&M Birdy is also considered a premium folding bike and R&M engineers wisely installed wheels on the rack with ball bearings. Exactly what Brompton was supposed to do too.
Cycleops
Legendary Member
- Location
- Accra, Ghana
Bromptons to suitcases, well that was an interesting journey 
cougie uk
Guru
Bromptons to suitcases, well that was an interesting journey
With a fair bit of handbags too.
tinywheels
Über Member
- Location
- South of hades
Wow, outstanding.
I feel you may be wasting your time, the fact someone considered those little roller wheels acceptable tells us all we need to know.
tinywheels
Über Member
- Location
- South of hades
Schwinnsta
Senior Member
- Location
- New Orleans, LA USA
I have read, I believe on this forum, that those cheap wheels that come stock on the frame and rack, are designed to fail so that if you're traveling and your bag is subject to being dropped, the wheels break before the rack or frame. So they are sacrificial.
Optional Brompton Eazy wheels are designed with same functionality in mind, to protect triangle/frame. But they roll much better and provide additional clearance if you use rear rack.
rogerzilla
Legendary Member
The biggest issue I had with the stock "rattlers" was that they flayed the skin from the inside of my calves.
berlinonaut
Veteran
- Location
- Berlin Germany
Astonishing. In this case you bought a fake Brompton b/c the Brompton wheels do have bearings.
I hope you won't find out the hard way why you are wrong. That you are wrong is out of the question.
Greed has rarely ever been a good advice. And even less, if you don't understand the aspects behind the design of a certain product or part.
In this very forum you can hear a lot of people constantly moaning that the Brompton would be too expensive. Personally, I consider it to be expensive, but well worth the price. If you added higher priced compontents, the moaners would go Berzerk (who cares) but indeed it would influence either sales or margins or both and thus either way harm the company, potentially to a substantial amount.
They don't. The items fitted are perfectly fit for purpose. They are just not shiny bling and - obviously - a compromise between price and featureset (but a good one with focus on fuctionality). A lot of those, that buy aftermarket parts effectively exchange the factory parts for parts of lower (and often very poor) quality because they are blinded by the bling. And as they don't understand what they are doing they even complain about Brompton and honestly believe that they have "upgraded" their bike. Effectively in a way as if you added chrome stickers to your car and pretended it was faster now (but those did at least not influence the technical quality and functionality to the negative).
As you, as far as I know, still have no own experience with the Brompton I would suggest to judge a little less...
I don't know if the first part of this sentence is true but I do know that the second part is not true. And as it is not true it says something about the first part...
Exactly. The story behind the Brompton roller wheels is here:
https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/project-m6l-to-m6r-on-a-budget.282618/page-2#post-6639948
But what do I know... I'm not an engineer.
No, they are not.
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tinywheels
Über Member
- Location
- South of hades
the willy waving is out hand guys, please calm down.
Brompton pedals are shite,that should reignite the discussion!
My MKS ones are fab,plus they are nice and shiny,and don't creak.
Brompton pedals are shite,that should reignite the discussion!
My MKS ones are fab,plus they are nice and shiny,and don't creak.
berlinonaut
Veteran
- Location
- Berlin Germany
Not sure if willy waving using your hands would be so much pleasing.
Not to forget that the whole story startet with you, telling us that you have the biggest willy in the world. Why? I don't think so. Right hand pedal is one of the lightest pedals on the market and at the same an utterly cheap spare part. The cage sometimes breaks after a couple of years but replacing is cheap and easy. The lefthand folding pedal is one of the best folding pedals on the market (but obviously suffers from constraints of load distribution onto the main bearing, that are typical and unavoidable with any folding pedal). It could no doubt be better, but I don't know of any existing better one and the typical lifetime with me has been ~12-15 years of intensive use, most samples last even longer (but have been not used as intensively). Then the main bearing fails (which officially is not maintainable - however: @rogerzilla has published how to exchange the bearing in such a case).
That's good. I guess that's true for other people's MKS pedals as well. Mine i.e.. But I assume you are talking about removable pedals. Much easier to construct than folding pedals - even the MKS folding pedals are not that good (and they build pedals as their main and exclusive business). On the Brompton, I do not favor removable pedals as I find them annoying in daily practice on the Brompton. I do have removable pedals (MKS as well as others) on a couple of bikes and only remove them if absolutely necessary. I do have some experience with other folding pedals than Brompton and they all quickly turned out not to be convincing.
As you did not point out what model of pedals you're talking about and why they are "fab" your statement seems to be rather willy waving than informational.
My Brompton pedals do not and did never creak, so I don't get your point. Nice and shiny is either a matter of taste or a matter of maintenance.
