Foldable Bikes – Part 2

Our first post of 2021!

Beyond our certainty that we needed two bikes and of the foldable variety, we knew otherwise little about bikes themselves. At this point, and several days after picking up the LitePro and 3Sixty, we’re still finding out about handling, maintenance, and accessorising. So, just brief and random notes about the two bikes for the moment, and I’m sure I’ll have more to write about in the months to come.

Of the two, 3sixty seems to be the somewhat more ‘premium’ brand, even if it’s not quite where Brompton sits. From what I’ve gathered, 3sixty is a Korean brand that was established in 2012. Neither the invoice nor Passion Gadgets’ product page stated the exact model on the manufacturer’s web site, but my best guess is that this is their M3 model. A first look at the model reveals it to be largely a Brompton clone in how it can be collapsed into a compact form for ease of carrying around. The 3sixty can indeed be folded into a pretty compact package, and without seats, handle bars or other things sticking out too much. Possibly in part also because we’re still getting used to collapsing the bike, it routinely takes us a minute or two to completely fold it into this:

Folding easily into a completely compact fashion is quite a different story once I mounted all the additional accessories though, including a water bottle holder, bike headlights, bell, bracket for a front-facing bag etc. In fact, it takes several minutes now to fold/move out of the way those accessories just to collapse the bike for the car boot. I guess the folding contraption is close to a Brompton, but not quite exactly there yet. Still, I’ve got no complaints about the 3sixty’s weight and handling: we have a portable and handheld weighing scale somewhere in the house so that I’d be able to get a more precise fix on how much this bike weighs. For the moment, I judge it to be perhaps around 9 to 10kg.

I haven’t found much information about Litepro as a bicycle manufacturer though, though they seem prolific in making accessories and compatible parts for other bike brands, including Bromptons. Easy to carry as the 3sixty is, this Litepro foldable is significantly even more lightweight at 8.2kg. Hannah has been the primary user of this bike, and she loves it. Collapsing it for storage and carrying around though is a very different matter: firstly, it doesn’t collapse neatly, and secondly, the collapsed form is an odd irregular shape:

The seat tube was also too long and offering only a little clearance off the floor when Hannah was seated, so we had the shop saw off 4cm off the tube. We also bought new seats to replace the factory supplied ones; these were memory foam types and super comfy.

We did our first trial ride the last Saturday late afternoon: our Minton home sits right along the Jalan Pelikat park connector network, so we took off from it and rode along the Central Urban Loop and finished off at Punggol Park. The next morning, we did half of the North Eastern Riverine Loop – about 45 minutes and 6.4km, before Hannah raised the white flag.

We’ve also done the requisite ride along the long East Coast stretch, but that was a nightmare on account of the hordes who had the same idea on Christmas weekend. The entire area was packed with cyclists, joggers, people just out for a walk. The bicycle rental areas were particularly dense even, and we had to queue for 20 minutes to rent a bike for Peter to learn.

Singapore island has seen almost round the clock rain for the last several days now, so we’ve had to postpone further cycling trips in the last stretch of the December school holidays. Still, on the overall and from the couple of cycling outings we’ve done so far, we’re quite pleased with these two foldies. Though now we also have a different problem to deal with: once the weather clears up, how we’re gonna do cycling as a family of four now without relying on rental since the car boot can only fit two foldables!