Travelling without moving

Bike Friday were born out of their founder, Hanz Scholz, wanting a high performance bicycle that would travel easily. Seven years after recognising the problem, the World Tourist was born, followed later by a road racing version and the off-road model you see here.

Frame
Bike Friday's concept of the ultimate folding bike has its foundations in a very different camp to the Airnimal and the Reise und Müller. While the other two bikes rely on aluminium's inherent stiffness to fight the forces of flex, Bike Friday have to be a little more inventive with their choice of steel as the main frame material. The 4130 cromoly is unglamorous and bumps the bike's weight up to 27.5 lbs., but the material is strong and easy to work with. Each Air Llama is custom built in the USA to the specific requirements of the customer, using either the rider's dimensions, or measurements from their current bike. Bike Friday have made Air Llamas to fit riders from 4'6" to 7'1', so nobody should have a problem getting the right fit. A 90-day money-back guarantee should help ease any fears about getting the wrong fit.

Tight tubular triangles at the bottom bracket and downtube/toptube junction replace the aluminium drainpipes of the other two pedal-powered packages. Creative cross-bracing dissipates forces around the frame and there are considerable joints between many of the tubes such as the headtube junction, pivot area and chainstay bridge. Stiffness is optimised by the use of ovalizing throughout the Air Llama's frame, from the cantilevered chainstays to the toptube and downtube.

Whereas the Reise und Müller and the Airnimal concentrate on suspending both wheels independently, the Air Llama isolates the rider while everything behind the headtube moves around beneath them. This is done with a huge cantilevered titanium beam inserted into a socket on the toptube, and is the complete antithesis of complication. As a material for Bike Friday's beam, titanium is an obvious choice; it's light, naturally flexible and its high yield strength means it can sustain repeated movement without fracture. When a bump is ridden over, the unsupported end of the tube flexes under the weight of the rider and the force of the blow.

The Air Llama's front suspension is made by Action-Tec, and looks and functions much like a pocket-sized Cannondale Headshok. The spring (a steel coil) is housed within the steerer tube of the fork and the 2.5 inches of travel is controlled by an oil-damping cartridge. To prevent the telescopic steerer from spinning, the interlocking steel tubes are splined. The fork blades are clamped to the steerer with cinch bolts, allowing them to be removed during folding. We were pleasantly surprised to see that the Air Llama has two bottle cage mounts and eyelets to fit a standard pannier rack.

Ride
Like its other small wheeled stable-mates, riding the Air Llama was an exercise in suspending disbelief. The idea of being able to tackle any serious off-road seemed laughable, until we actually shrugged off our inhibitions and got out into the dirt.

We rode the Air Llama on one of our favourite loops, one that we know every root, every hole, every rut, and even with the trail in a saturated condition the bike coped with everything.

The front suspension was faultless, giving excellent flexfree steering and a very effective, controlled performance within the limits of its travel. We could detect some flex from the 11 inch stem extension but the Air Llama was still stiffer than the Birdy. The tracking felt as good at the back as it did at the front and the whole bike felt surprisingly solid out of the saddle.

Your arms aren't the only part of your body that the Bike Friday pampers; the titanium beam completely eradicates all of the small, high-frequency stutter bumps that are so good at interrupting your pedal stroke, meaning we could stay seated and spinning on fast singletrack. As effective as it is in these situations, the simplicity of the beam runs into problems as the bumps get bigger; medium sized hits cause the undamped tube to rebound with equal force, which would see us bucked out of the saddle like a smalltime rodeo rider. Instinctively, we would stand up to tackle most downhills, rendering the suspension idle, and essentially making the bike a hardtail.

Although the 20 inch wheels are larger than the Birdy's, they still suffer from similar problems to the German bike. Momentum was always hard to maintain and the ground would push and shove the wheels around much more than a normal mountain bike set, dropping into ruts and sliding down cambers without warning.

Folding
Unpacking the Bike Friday, we felt like Edward Fox in the Day of the Jackal in the scene where he builds the rifle out of the crutch. Flicking open the combination lock of the hard plastic suitcase (wheeled at one end, with a pulling grip and a carry handle) reveals the Air Llama, packed in tighter than a tin of sardines in the queue for Madame Tussauds. All of the major components of the bike are individually packed in their own custom bags, and further probing of the black case produced an instruction booklet and video, and a tool wrap with everything needed to put it together including a pair of black gloves, to complete the cloak and dagger experience.

The case is strong, and the addition of an aluminium spacer prevents the case from being crushed. It's easy to wheel around, making airport life much less stressful, although at 431bs with the bike inside we wouldn't want to lift it around too much. There's also enough extra room inside to stash a pair of shoes and some cycling clothes.

Assembly is basically a matter of bolting on the wheels, seat tube, seat post, fork legs and stem combination. The gears and brakes remain adjusted even when the bike is packed so there's no need for fiddly adjustment at either end of your journey. From box to bike, the entire process takes about five minutes when you know what you're doing. Once built the Air Llama feels as solid as a standard mountain bike, which is testament to its build quality. Packing the bike is a bit more difficult because everything has to go back in the right bag, and although there are several ways to fit it all in, getting the right order still takes a bit of experimentation. On average we were putting the Air Llama together in between 10 and 15 minutes.

Parts
Our Air Llama is the cheapest of the three in the range and comes with Shimano LX shifters and rear derailleur with a single ring chainset and SRAM 3x8 gearing. While we liked the pedal-less gear change on the Birdy, off-road it meant we had to back off on steep climbs to shift down, which often made the difference between riding and walking many hills. The inclusion of a seat-tube stub on the Air Llama gives the option of using a standard triple chainset, though.

Conclusion
Without a doubt the Air Llama is very well built and thought out, and the depth of the concept becomes apparent when you unpack it. The fact that it is so compact when folded almost completely removes the hassle of travelling with your bike, however this also makes it the most time consuming to pack. The small wheels are something of a disadvantage on the trails, but, the bottom line is that despite these problems the Air Llama handled almost everything we threw at it, and more importantly, it was great fun to ride off-road.