Birdy (bike)
The Birdy is a folding bike from the German bicycle manufacturer Riese und Müller , which he developed over the course of three years in the early 1990s and launched in 1995 as the first full-suspension folding bike. By 2010 it had been sold over 100,000 times worldwide. It has a joint-free aluminum main frame, 18-inch - wheels and has won the product design award 2006 iF excellent.
History and characteristics
The Birdy was the first bicycle that Riese and Müller developed as young engineers, and the reason for the medium-sized investment company in Wiesbaden to award the Hessian Innovation Prize to manufacturers in 1993. It quickly developed into a best seller, which is now sold in more than twenty countries around the world and ultimately laid the basis for the development of a whole range of eight other full-suspension aluminum bicycles.
The frame has traditionally been in the early years of aluminum - pipes joined together whose main component, the top tube , was striking oval shaped. The down tube and the seat tube formed a small frame triangle, which provided stability, but unlike the diamond frame, it did not end on the head tube , but in the top tube. Since the introduction of a new generation of frames in the mid-2000s, roughly the same shape has no longer been put together from tubes alone, but instead of a top and bottom tube, an elaborately shaped frame piece welded from two shells with a longitudinal seam. This bike received the iF Award in 2006 .
With its frame construction, the Birdy was unmistakably based on the British Brompton patented in 1979 , which was the first to improve the inadequate stability and driving ability of a conventional folding bike and thus had a unique selling point in the niche market of folding bikes in the 1980s . Brompton also used a small frame triangle and the spring-loaded rear swing arm that served as a folding hinge as well as an overlong, foldable stem . All three characteristics were adopted by Riese and Müller for the Birdy.
The main difference compared to the original is the lack of a frame hinge and the use of a pushed swing arm known from motorcycle construction instead of a conventional bicycle fork . The hinge-free frame improves stability and driving characteristics and has the disadvantage of a larger pack size when the bike is folded. By using the front swing arm as a folding hinge, similar to the rear swing arm, the package is essentially limited to the length of the main frame and is therefore still quite small. Above all, the swing arm creates a comfortable full suspension that no other folding bike has offered so far.
In contrast to other competing models, the Birdy can be folded almost as quickly as the Brompton and is therefore, and with its relatively small pack size, very suitable for taking along as luggage in public transport , even if it is not actually intended to take a bicycle with you.
The rare wheel size of 18 inches is a compromise between the compact 16 inches of the Brompton and the stable 20 inches of many other folding bikes, but it reduces the choice of tires and rims , especially compared to the relatively common 20 inches .
Therefore, with a four-digit price, it is comparatively expensive even when equipped with the simplest components. This folding bike, like Riese and Müller's other model range, is aimed at above-average discerning buyers.
Technical details
The Birdy has standard dropouts , which allows the use of a variety of hubs and gears. That is why it was available from the start in three basic versions with a derailleur , a hub or a combination of both, which can be equipped with a bicycle dynamo as a side runner or a higher-quality hub dynamo .
The simplest equipment variant is a Shimano derailleur , initially with seven gears and now with eight gears. The easy-care hub gears are also from Shimano. In contrast, products from SRAM are used as combination circuits. These initially had three times seven gears and have since been replaced by the DualDrive from the same manufacturer with two times eight gears. Since its market entry in 1999, the highest equipment variant has been the almost maintenance-free 14-speed gear hub Speedhub 500/14 from the German manufacturer Rohloff. From October 2009, a Birdy hybrid pedelec variant was also sold for a number of years .
Depending on the equipment, the Birdy weighs from around 10 kg and is approved up to a total weight of 120 kg. Special luggage carriers are permitted up to a weight of 10 (front) or 15 kg (rear). When folded, the Birdy measures 68 × 57 × 35 cm. The size of this package is then comparable to most 20-inch folding bikes from Dahon , slightly larger than that of the Brompton and significantly smaller than that of Bike Friday .
By using elastomers of different hardness on the two swing arms, the damping can be adapted to the driver's weight and the preferred driving comfort.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ if online exhibition: Birdy folding bike
- ↑ Note: The lower price limit was around 1200 German marks when it was launched in 1995 and around 1200 euros in 2015 .
- ↑ Birdy Hybrid: Battery pouch needs to be checked. fahrradtest.de, accessed on August 15, 2012 .