the dahon speed pro tt arrives in only one colour (mango), not a colour which cowers in the corner unnoticed. people notice this particular dahon. in common with the majority of the folding bicycle world, the frame is a compromise between rideability and foldability. the frame is constructed from 7005 aluminium alloy and despite some chunky welding, it is relatively light (9.7kg) and transportable. i'm not sure i'd take it for a lengthy walk, and you might have to indulge in a smidgeon of fitness if you intend taking it on the tube. there's often a lot of stairs to ascend or descend. however, it is a practical solution, and quite a good one at that.

folding is best accomplished in the following sequence: the bars need to be loosened by means of two recessed allen bolts, one each side of the stem clamp, allowing the bars to be folded forward. then release the safety catch at the base of the tall steerer, unhitch the clamp and fold the entire steering mechanism off to one side. there's a small, loose protruding bracket screwed to the inner face of the steerer that locates in a slot affixed to the main frame tube.

about one-third way along the flattened box section main tube is a very sturdy clamp featuring again, a safety catch which, when loosened, allows a sizeable lever to unhitch the clamp and the front of the dahon folds in half against the rear of the bike. a small, but powerful spring-loaded disc magnet keeps both halves together, needing a good heft to separate them. both platform pedals push in towards the crank and flip up, keeping them out of harms way. that enormous kore seatpost slides down inside the seat-tube, reaching the ground just before the saddle bracket stops against the clamp. set this way, the seatpost helps prevent the folded wonder from falling over.

dahon's listed people sizes are from 4'8" all the way up to 6'4". i'm only 5'10", meaning that another six inches could be apparently accommodated, and while i don't doubt the veracity of dahon's numbers, i'm not sure i'd like to have had the seatpost that much higher.

the very short head-tube conceals an integrated headset which can be adjusted via an allen bolt, revealed when the steerer is folded over. the wheels are 20" narrow section (1.10 wide) shod with schwalbe special edition black and mango tyres. the front wheel is remarkably similar to a very small rolf featuring 14 paired spokes, the nipples of which are concealed inside the rim. this presumably requires a special tool to allow truing should such be necessary, though none was included with the review model. forks are small aluminium curved chappies.

the rear wheel is built radial on none drive and three cross drive side. the rear is the interesting part of the equation; the hub is a sram three speed device fitted with a shimano pattern freehub featuring a nine-speed cassette, operated by a shimano ultegra derailleur. this way, the transmission has only a single fsa chainring up front, yet provides a substantial 27 gears. the bottom bracket is an isis compatible spindle, a standard i thought had vanished into the world of former bb standards. i confess that i didn't get as far as counting the number of teeth on that solo chainring, but dahon spec a 30" - 131" gear range.

changing is accomplished by a pair of tiagra sti drop-bar levers mounted on the lower surface of a pair of cowhorn time trial style bars. ironically, these levers feature gear indicators at the top of each lever, but mounted thus, viewing from the cockpit is impossible. the right hand lever actuates the derailleur action, while the left operates the hub gear, both in the manner expected and quite easy to get used to.

the bars offer a number of hand positions, so there's little chance of the numbness that is oft experienced on a pair of flatties. while the bars can be rotated about the clamp position, there's no real way to alter the fore and aft positioning. it seems a shame that the bars couldn't have been a pair of regular style drop bars, because as far as i can see, this would hardly interfere with the folded position in any meaningful way.

braking is handled by a set of v-style brakes rather than the calipers expected, though i'm really not too sure why. the weight of the speed pro and intended use hardly seem to demand v-brake stopping power.

the saddle is provided by kore, makers of the elongated seatpost, and it looks as if it may be of proprietary design (t-beam on the clamp, i-beam on the saddle) since the rails are substituted by a single shaped aluminium block that fits an accommodating clamp atop the post. it seems more than likely that changing the saddle, if you don't like it, might not be a straightforward option. you won't get a brooks on this without a lot of wrangling.

i presume that dahon's in-house brand is named kinetix, since the brakes, bars and wheels are all marked thus. folding bikes are undeniably festooned with proprietary technology, and it thus likely behoves dahon to solve its own problems, so to speak.

folding bikes fit one of two stereotypes, though there may be a grey area between the two; a bicyle that has been engineered to fold, and a folding mechanism that has been coaxed into being a bicycle. i'm afraid i'm inclined to fit the dahon into the latter category, though that's less of a damning indictment than it seems in shiny pixels. the dahon's name - the speed pro tt - coupled with those cowhorn style bars, not unnaturally gives rise to the notion that this bike may conceivably be intended to harbour sporting pretensions.

but who on earth rides time trials on a folding bike, particularly one with tiny wheels?

i did enquire as to the intended market for this model and the answer seemed more than satisfactory; 'the speed pro is really a bike that can offer the riding position of a more traditional road bike, but with a small fold capability. tt is something that may be a little misleading in the name, as the bars offer a position on 'the hoods', rather than a tt bar. this look inspired the name rather than the bike's intended use itself.'

however, i would take issue with the notion that the riding position could emulate that of a traditional road bike. having ridden more than my fair share of just such bicycles over the last few years, this didn't quite fit the bill, being a bit more upright than most road bikes i've ridden. that said, the riding position itself was not what you might refer to as ungainly, but i did discover why the speed pro owned such a large spread of gears.

on my regular riding, i am inclined (pun intended) to come across the occasional ascent, and when intent on emulating both robert millar (it's the ponytail) or marco, i like to stand up and give it some welly. not unnaturally, i did exactly that on the first hill i came across on the dahon's first outing, at which point a closer look at just how poor the tarmac around here really is became a distinct possibility. those 20 inch wheels do not lend themselves to stability when subjected to robert millar impersonations, and the need for such low gears became readily apparent. of course this means that riding any terrain and over any distance requires sitting in the saddle pretty much all the time. this would be less of a problem were that mango and black kore saddle akin to a parker knoll armchair. sadly, this was very far from the truth; the saddle ranked amongst the most uncomfortable my posterior has had the displeasure of sitting on.

when bicycles are supplied as complete entities, i feel honour bound to test them as such, rather than pop on a few favoured components in order to customise to my requirements. however, had it been possible, i can assure you i'd have had my brooks team pro on that seatpost faster than you can say ouch. your mileage may vary.

those endless gears were, however, a doddle to operate; i have no idea which gear i was in when, but it really mattered little: with only one forward chainring, chainline really wasn't an issue. despite the saddle's discomfort, pedalling up steep inclines was a simple procedure, and gearchanging was remarkably smooth. perhaps the advent of the new ultegra with hidden cables will make the kerfuffle at the front a tad less spaghetti junction, obviating any potential problems during folding.

it seemed slightly unfair to exempt the dahon from those islay roads we only bring out on special occasions, so the speed pro was subjected to several cattle grids and an endless stream of potholes and loose surfaces. i'd love to say it ate them all for breakfast, but in reality its little wheels did not at all care for such punishment, and that box section frame did little to isolate the rider. it's perhaps uncouth to inflict such punishment upon a bicycle patently not intended for such; there really is little need for a folding bike in rural areas, and i'd be surprised if any inner city roads resembled most of our farm roads.

however, i have been particularly vocal in attempting to persuade the great unwashed that cycling one -way to work each day would not only reduce their carbon footprint, but slope off some of those couch potato pounds in the process. since the local buses are ill-equipped to take regular bicycles for any part of a journey, a the folding variety would seem the ideal solution (many folks arriving at the island on yachts use folding cycles to get about). keen to put my folder where my mouth is, i cycled from house to bus stop, folded the dahon, and boarded the bus.

also travelling in the same direction was a woman with a large case (considerably bigger than the bike), a small case, and a child in a buggy. as she occupied the entire luggage area, i'd to place the dahon at the side of my single seat, where it created no obstruction whatsoever. on reaching my destination at port ellen ferry terminal, i unfolded the bike in less than a minute, and headed off from whence i came. in order to deflect accusations of lycra loutness, i was clad in swrve softshell and trousers, wearing a pair of dromarti storica leather shoes on the resin pedals.

replacing the pedals would have affected the foldability, though not drastically, but those fitted do not provide enough grip for regular shoes. this is islay; it rained, and every pothole hit on the way home slid feet off pedals leading to one or two heart in mouth moments. feet not on pedals at speed affected the balance more than was comfortable.

the day after the dahon arrived, i was due to cycle to the neighbouring island of jura, a journey i had intended taking on the dahon, before realising that, while i had 20" tubes in the bikeshed, they had schrader valves and not presta, since the former would not have fitted the rims. it wasn't hard to get hold of a pair of appropriate inners, but it's worth bearing in mind.

having unfortunately clouted a larger than hoped for hole in the road on the way to ardbeg, the front wheel developed a bit of a lisp. as previously mentioned, the spoke nipples on the front wheel are inside the rim, ostensibly one would imagine, to improve aerodynamics. this, were it a human trait, would be recognised as affectation; there is no way on earth that this bicycle can be ridden fast enough for such minimal aerodynamics to have any meaningful effect. this simply adds a bit of faff should wheel truing be necessary at the front.

i realise that you, poor reader, may well gain the impression that i really didn't care too much for the speed pro, and to an extent, i am not misleading you. however, i had taken the machine well outside its comfort zone, and i was pushing any envelope i could lay my hands and feet on. riding on smoother roads, the bike was actually very good fun. the folding was a simple and very effective process, and the bike was light enough to carry for short distances; certainly on and off a bus. it was capable of a reasonable turn of speed, though that little bracket on the steerer drove me nuts with its rattling. additionally, it was very nippy in the handling department; if sixpences still existed, this could turn and stop on one.

in an islay headwind, a pair of drop bars would have been a nice option, one i almost unwittingly reached for, and i can't actually see how this would affect the folded size. however, that is being a bit unfair, and it's probably just one moan too far. in practice, if you need a folding bike and have the option or necessity to travel just that bit further than normal, or the commute allows stretching of legs, this is a bicycle that could provide a bit of an advantage over the more regular fare.

please be aware that i, and many others in rural areas, have less need of a folding bike than those of urban or city domicile. and while many inner city roads are less than biliard smooth, few of them are regularly traversed by tractors of gargantuan proportions, to say nothing of the sheep and cattle who deposit agricultural fertiliser with incredible regularity. so while islay's roads are an ideal environment on which to test the mettle of any velocipede, they are hardly representative of the conduits imagined in the dahon design department.

the dahon speed pro tt retails at £1,299. | dahon bicycles

many thanks to ian philips of zyro for assistance with this review.

posted monday 14 june 2010

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