kidshibuya

Marketing at its finest here:

The bikes we proudly sell are going to snap clean in half, so give us money for this too...

Seriously I like Dahon bikes and I think my frame is just fine, but holy crap. Marketing is meant to make you feel better about a product, not put horrible thoughts into your head.

The official marketing:

sweeks

And you're supposed to do this every time you fold the bike? Good luck with that!
Steve

dahoneezz

Are they now putting those anchor points on new bikes?

tds101 

Ok, so we install this, and it adds strength via a cable downtube. It says in the YouTube description that it doesn't interfere with folding either.

[Quote]

Published on Aug 30, 2017
Most folding bicycles have front frames with single beams. Frame breakages are frequently reported on the Internet. Without interfering with folding/unfolding, the Safeline, made of flexible cable, completes a triangle where it matters most. Vibrational test results are always increased several folds as a result and safety standards are passed with ease.

DELTEC
1. Highlights
a. Completes a triangle, creating high safety standards and
protects the welding around the mid-hinge from cracking,
where stress concentration is most serve.
b. Exceeds strength testing by more than 3 times, and has a
10 year lifespan
c. Deltec forms a downtube to take on most of the strain and
tension in the frame beams, making frame breakage almost impossible
d. WeightAn additional 100 grams only
e. Does not interfere with folding/unfolding
f. Conceals rear brake and rear derailleur cable, looks simple and beautiful
g. High quality and high safety standards.
h. DAHON exclusive, bing the first to invent and manufacture.
2. Serviceable range Folding bicycle frames with single beams
3. After-sales Policy: With proper use, can increase DAHON frame warranty period from 5 years to
10 years

[Quote]

If it really does work I'd be interested,...

tcs

Uh, do what exactly every time you fold the bike, Steve?

safeline-diagram.jpg

This is an OEM forward fit, not a consumer retrofit. It's a patented item Dahon is offering to other folding bike manufacturers - perhaps those many who thought they knew what they were doing when they attempted to copy Dahon's designs, or maybe a manufacturer who has picked up an infamous, unenviable reputation due to past frame failures.

dahoneezz

Or Dahon suddenly realizes that their bike design, aluminium , with midframe hinge (where stress are highest), plus circumferential weld (no gusset), could possibly go Tern's way.

Hence the band aid.

Fatigue failure takes time, and cable stretch over time. So probably need to take bike and recalibrate the tension ever so often for warranty to be valid.

sweeks

I was being a little cynical about it since the video went into such great detail about how to remove it... they could have just said "reverse of installation".
But the cable, which appears to be in the mid-line of the bike, forms the hypotenuse of a right triangle whose short side is the distance from the frame's mid-line to the center of the hinge pivot. It would have to stretch slightly for the bike to fold. There is probably enough mechanical advantage in the frame segments to accomplish this. It *does* make me wonder how much additional reinforcement the cable provides, as to my knowledge frame/latch breaks in the Dahon line have not been reported with any frequency. I wonder if the little "ears" holding the forward end of the cable will be subjected to enough stress to break off.
FWIW, I have 2 Dahons, both of which have suffered (non-fatal) frame fractures, though none in the area of the frame hinge. I also have a Tern which did not have a frame hinge (or any other) fracture in its first 4,000 miles or the 1,000 miles since its frame was replaced.
Steve

Bonzo Banana

I'm always curious about these comments about Dahon. When Dahon launched in the eighties folding bicycles were well established for many decades. They bought out a radical redesign of the folding bike to launch the company which they then abandoned and started making copies of european and other countries designs. None of the chinese manufacturers or the rebranded versions nowadays give any mention of IP of Dahon etc and most if not all seem to have greater weight capacity and lower frame failure rates. What exactly is the Dahon bit on folding bikes that they have IP for? When you look at fuji-ta the largest manufacturer of folding bikes in the world although not exclusively folding bikes they have many frame designs which seem to be resold as Dahon models in many markets.

I mean take this bike. Is it a Dahon or is it a fuji-ta?

HANMA8 - Tianjin Fuji-ta Bicycle Co.,Ltd.

How does the largest bike manufacturer in the world making very high quality state of the art bikes for big brands like Cannondale to their IP and many others get away with just ripping off Dahon designs? Was it jointly developed or does Dahon just buy the frames from them or a minor variation of the above?

It just feels to me there is a huge b*llsh*t factor to Dahon. Tern is now demonised for so called dishonesty and poor business practices but until Tern split from Dahon surely the same people with the same business practices were running Dahon and they would have learnt their business ethics from Dahon's founder.

Has Dahon ever successfully prosecuted a company for using its IP and what was it?

You only have to put in vintage folding bikes into google and look at the images to see a huge number of different designs from the sixties and seventies which cover most of the design principles for future folding bikes.

Another factor is their IP even any good with Dahon frequently mentioned for having frame failures. Maybe other manufacturers don't use their IP at all for the simple reason its rubbish. I say that because the device mentioned here looks rubbish and no substitute for making a decent frame in the first place.

badmother

Danish Biomega introduced the wire downtube many many moons ago...

Biomega bike by bad.mother@ymail.com, on Flickr

zebede

Biomega states in the video, that there bike will fail if ridden without the cable. In addition the cable doubles as a lock, Genius!

I agree with OP poor marketing by Dahon, Sounds like engineers were allowed to write the marketing lit.
Call it a "completing the triangle" to stiffen the frame for the performance series. Its name gives the clues "delta" + "technology". Game changer?

tds101 

I highly doubt it's a game changer, but I do think it does add a bit of strength to the folding joint area. It would be useless in the case of a Tern frame failure, as that's a bad weld that apparently sheared off.

As for Biomega,...I have the rebranded non-folding Puma Nevis. I didn't like the cable setup on that folder, and their other folder looked a bit strange to me. All the same, Biomega makes some excellent bikes.

smallwheeler

1983 Slingshot BMX:



1992 Slingshot mtb:





Slingshot Bikes | Bikes for the Mountain, Cyclo-Cross, and Road

mirfi

Nope, nope, nope

Bonzo Banana

Wow look how much stronger the anchor points are, it looks properly designed for that cable. Why isn't Dahon giving credit to Biomega or which ever company came up with this design. Is this another example of Dahon IP?

ThorUSA

hahah you guys always seem to look for problems or some hidden agenda or worse...
Dahon has its own testing lab where every frame design gets tested to the point when the frame or fork or whatever breaks. Usually this is way way beyond any aggressive use for 10 or more years. ( no I hear somebody saying 10 years and they will break ? )
Dahon being copied from almost everybody out there ALSO test their competitors ( but NEVER release any data of course ) Dahon just want to make sure that if a bike looks like a Dahon that it will meet at least minimal standards, otherwise the Dahon name gets ruined. Makes sense doesn't it ?


Now Dahon is also not just resting on their laurels, they are continuously working on solutions to make folding bikes better. I am continuously asking for a bike which can handle a 300 lbs person for example, and although we are not there yet. The engineers are working on that. A small step into that direction is the deltec system. Dahon is working on a model which can be installed on many different bikes. of course it folds without any hassle, put it on and forget about it. I like the idea to be able to retrofit the deltec system ... lets say you are on the upper weight limit, or you plan to make a loaded bike expedition, or you occasionally ride forest paths away from smooth asphalt roads... or you have a different make of bike and want the additional peace of mind.
Hence get your negative thoughts out of your mind and just see this what it is ... an additional piece to make all folding bikes better and even longer lasting.
thor

Bonzo Banana

What actually did Dahon come up with design wise that was copied by these other bikes? When you look at the Dahon history they initially came up with a radical redesign of the folding bike and this was their main design for many years which wasn't really copied and then they themselves abandoned it. The later design was pretty much the classic european folding bike design with a horizontal fold but using a similar design to the Brompton where the handlebar stem folds down. You still see many budget chinese folding bikes which pretty much don't have a handlebar stem that folds which are more akin to the older folding bikes. But a lot more that fold like a Brompton of sorts. I don't see obvious Dahon influences. There are a huge number of chinese factories producing millions of folding bikes who make no reference to Dahon including the world's largest manufacturer of bicycles fuji-ta who I believe make a million plus folding bikes per year out of something like 17 million production.

Also all bikes sold in Europe and likely US and many other countries have to be certified so they are either tested inhouse or tested externally by a dedicated test house. Many believe certification should be done by an independent test house. Dahon may have a comprehensive quality testing regime in-house but so does fuji-ta who have much more advanced manufacturing facilities than Dahon.

When you look at the evolving design of folding bikes it just looks like they have evolved from the european designs and Dahon is more of a blip that came in with their own radical redesign which they dropped and then adopted the design of folding bikes used by other companies rather than the reverse. Surely if Dahon had influenced folding bikes their own original designs would have caught on and we would have many clones of the california and other early Dahon models. In fact that design seems to have been completely rejected by other companies including Dahon themselves.

I just don't get what is the Dahon influence on folding bikes. Maybe its more under the skin in the manufacturing process itself because it isn't obvious externally.

Joe Remi

The main influence from Dahon is they sell a huge stack of folders every year. I don't know about the rest of the world, but in the USA Dahon is the Standard Universal Folder, with most cheap Chinese models mimicking the same single-beam fold-in-half design.

Bonzo Banana

Why are they mimicking it when such folding bikes existed a long time before Dahon even existed?

Horizontally folding bikes have existed probably since the fifties or possibly a lot earlier. Huge number of examples out there from the Raleigh Stowaway to NSU. How about this dutch bike.

kidshibuya

That kind of defensiveness isn't helping. The correct response is to say yes, this is horrible and heads need to roll in marketing and proceed to explain why dahon bikes aren't going to break as dahon say they will.

Don't be as bad as whoever posted that video.

ThorUSA

sort of kidding my friend ?
get this in your head
the deltec was mainly developed to keep cheap copies of Dahons breaking and giving Dahon a bad name.
they willalso work onexpensive other bikes
and they will work on Dahons which are used beyond their design parameters

end of story

Joe Remi

They're mimicking the design of the frame, including the folding handlepost. Most knockoffs look like the straight steel or aluminum arc Dahons.

kidshibuya

No, just the beginning of the story. You don't seem to understand marketing. It doesn't matter what it was designed for, Dahon is presenting it as a way to stop their frames from failing (and they demo it on their frame). Which leads people to believe they will fail. Just look at the video comments.

It always does my head in how people working for these companies can't see the forest for the trees. They are meant to be experts.

ThorUSA

Meaning your header for this thread is not marketing ? sensationalism at best ? We have enough of these fake news in our country.


Its not about semantics or some wrong words used by our friends in china making this vid. Its not even about patents or anything like that, its an open source product, which competitors are able to buy from Dahon at cost. Dahon had patents at one time for their handleposts, but allowed Brompton to use them as well. It is all about making folding bikes BETTER for people who otherwise might not be able to ride them. Its about getting MORE people on bikes ( no matter what brand ) and be safe or safer than without.
Would that not be of interest to us all ?


I agree that the video could have been done different. Dahon would never show a different manufacturer frame to do this, besides the frame shown has special braze ons, while the real Deltec has clamps to fit almost every bike.


Instead of being positive about this you seem to want to turn this around and say that Dahon frames are breaking ....


Isnt there enough negativity on this board ?


Thor

Bonzo Banana

Why on earth would competitor's bikes failing give Dahon a bad name and looking at the evidence those competitors look less likely to fail with the exception of Tern of course. It's like saying because my General Motor's car has failed it effects Ford's reputation. Surely great for Dahon's reputation if the competitor's fail. If every other bike is failing except Dahon I'm buying a Dahon. It just seems like Dahon's importance is massively over-stated.

Bonzo Banana

I can't say I agree with that at all but maybe from a US perspective it seems true. I'm not questioning the importance or significance of Dahon as a brand of folding bikes I just struggle to see the enduring significant innovation many claim.