and STILL They Roll In!

I had come to the conclusion that perhaps I needed to stop bringing bikes home...Good Luck with THAT one!

I have not one, but 4 folders come in over the winter months. The latest being a pair of Dahon Classic III folders. My lovely bride found them at a thrift shop, sent cellphone pictures. Of course the question was..."how much?" "They don't know, make an offer." I told her I would have to go down and see them first. She shows up at the house an hour later with them, the manager told her to just take them home and if we didn't want them to bring them back later or bring the money. Got both for $100, parts are a bit difficult to find, but not totally impossible. They apparently were made for two different markets or in two different factories. The red one has a Sturmey-Archer AW 3speed and a full chain guard, the blue one has a Sachs Torpedo 3 speed and a bash guard, there are several other differences too. I have already put new fenders and a rack on the red one so I can use it when I travel, I think of it as a poor man's Brompton. :-D

The other pair are from my LBS, someone brought them in for a repair estimate and decided to pass on the repairs and asked if anyone would buy them...yup, this sucker right here. :-P

The red one is a Rixe made in Germany, the gold one is an Atala made in Italy. Both  have some interesting features and I will have to go a bit more in depth in a future post. For what it is worth the Atala is a better built bike than the Rixe. Both of them are single speed, Rixe has a coaster brake, the Atala a free wheel.

Another one joins the "fold"

Sorry couldn't resist :-)

Found this out in the Stuff etc store in Coralville, IA. Too good a deal to pass up, even though I already had two other bikes with me.

It is a Rolling Rock beer promo bike. As best can be determined from the late 90's. It was apparently made by Dahon, there is a single sticker on the downtube that says not to ride it until it has been properly serviced by a Dahon service agent. It has very low end equipment on it, but that doesn't really matter it is slated for conversion to a folding city bike with IGH, coaster brake, fenders and lights.

Anybody know their Dahon models well enough to know which one this is based on?