hey brompton fans Brompton today reached the sub eight kilo and seven and a half kilo
barrier they call this the T line i assume for titanium because the entire main frame
is made out of titanium which a lot of people anticipated it's also two kilos lighter than
the P line. I found these photos posted on the facebook brompton bicycle group and it turns
out all the black parts you see are carbon and you know that brompton already has a titanium
fork so i expect this black fork, this carbon fork is lighter than the existing titanium fork
the seat stem is made out of carbon but it has a thin layer of quote-unquote "steel armor" and
that's actually done out of necessity because if you were to move the seat post often which
is what you do as you fold it will wear out the carbon tubing hence the very thin layer of steel
the seat saddle i heard is is also carbon based and also has carbon rails they also went through
the trouble of getting lighter inner tubing called Tubolito i recognize the orange valve immediately
these are 34 grams [each] compare this to the Schwalbe inner tubing which is 90 grams
having two of these together you would save over 100 grams of weight there is there is
a bit of a warning though these S-tubos that they use are prone to harm by potential heat
it's not meant to go through long hard breaks or if you happen to be cycling through india
at 40 degree [Celcius] weather definitely consider changing them out.
Mud guards are plastic the original ones are plastic but they use the titanium stays to
ensure that their light is possible this really implies that you should keep dirt away from this
because otherwise they would have removed this as well but they didn't. They also replaced the
folding pedal with a quick release and you could see that by the red button i assume they did this
to reduce the weight again because the folding pedal is definitely more convenient or faster
than having to pull this out and then storing this here i also assume that they're worried
about increasing the folding time so this thing is actually magnetic which is clever to make it
quick. So there's a rainproof cover for this you gotta open this and then you gotta put it in you
can see from the comments that people who saw this really bashed into the aesthetics of the welding
this comment here actually is in the right direction where they're considering other
reasons... There's got to be reasons why they have the welds that way and it's to balance the
weight the strength and the feel. What he meant by feel is probably the flexibility of the frame
i'll throw in another consideration which is balancing out the manufacturing cost
because if you look at this the bottom part here is blue and here which is the crossbar that they
put in is showing a bit of stress so that bottom part is stopping the stress from the crossbar from
spreading the joins here are smooth there's no welding and this implies that this is done
with injection molding they could choose to inject mold the entire thing like all the way up to here
and weld it at the top but this could be extremely expensive they could you know instead create a
single bar cross bar here and then weld it here instead to make it look nicer versus welding it
here but obviously they did this because this is a stronger weld than this. They are not.. I
mean they're not blind, they definitely want it to look good but due to strength or the flexibility
in the previous comment they chose to weld it here you see that at the very top of the bar
that it requires a much wider surface area to attach it so if they were to weld it at the bottom
where the joint is they would need much more space which they don't have i notice also that there
is a missing weld here in this photo. So i do have some suspicions that this could be photoshopped
because there's a clear welding line in all other photos and that includes you know this CAD model
here. i found this photo in a major cycling publication you can see the crossbar is smooth
there and you could also see that it is smooth in their marketing material as well and i have
a feeling this is their pre-production line and until they realize that it was costly to produce
something like this and then this is why we ended up with a launch video showing all the welds
existing in the crossbar i was also impressed with how they're trying to minimize weight by hollowing
out certain areas so this is the bottom of that join and like you said we're adding material
where it's needed and taking away where we don't need it so this blue bit is probably thicker than
this bit where they want the flex to be here and then the strength to be here. This used to be the
area where they punch in the frame number and they decided to hollow this out to save weight.
Holes in the frame bother me because it rains a lot in England and then if they were to put a
hole here i mean the rain water can go in and then collect here as well i mean these are made...this
frame is grade nine titanium which is marine grade which is anti-corrosion which is great but
you still don't want, you know a pool of water collected inside i was checking if there was a
hole at the bottom. But you know these things are curved so it could go in and then it'll collect
so i'm curious how that turns out so there's a hole here in the frame this is the where
the crossbar is so perhaps it's going down it's meant to funnel down and leak down and what about
this hole like when it rains i mean will there be a pool of water here or going into the head
um yeah these are questions i have. Here's some additional weight saving features just like the
p-line they kept the external hub which is lighter than the internal hub by sturmey
archer that's that's nearly a kilo and this one i estimate to weigh about 300 grams because the
equivalents out there by the third party... are by third-party producers are roughly about 300 grams
the derailleur is 60 grams so it's about 360 grams in total compared to a kilo they also
went for hollow pin chains which is lighter but at the same time you're riding through
mud you will collect mud through these things and it's not fun to clean. Well
be prepared to use your old toothbrushes they also decide to cut weight on the easy wheels
as well which there are of course some sacrifices to that because you can see that the rubber ring
is relatively thin it means it could only go on smooth surfaces if you were to hit a rock
and there's not enough clearance i mean a small pebble even it would chip this
away i definitely prefer the old easy wheel which is which has thicker rubber it's higher clearance
and the reason why they wouldn't put you know a thicker rubber here is because once you turn this
if this rubber is too thick this will definitely pop off which i've seen in the third-party
versions they also included the P-line suspension block which i heard is stiffer and they could
afford that or actually is a good balance to the titanium frame which also offers some flexibility
the specs indicate that this is a hollow axle this is similar to Sshimano's hollowtech
axles and you can see the similarities of the bottom bracket with the spindle on the outside
you see that silver thing over here correlating to that and what this is it's a lighter higher
performance easier to maintain axle and bottom bracket configuration it's just modern bicycle
technology this is a cool bit of technology where are laser etching the logos onto the bike
this is very cost saving for brompton you don't have to buy any more stickers the
technologies used in fruits and veg i've seen that printed onto the skin i mean they used to
use stickers um this is definitely the way forward when it comes to putting logos onto
products brompton is definitely aiming to compete against the hummingbird which came
out several years ago having the title as the lightest folding bike
it is 8.2 kilos for the multi-speed [4 Speed] and it uses a Sturmy Archer internal hub the single
speed version is 6.9 [kg] so it hasn't quite beaten it yet with the stripped-down version
so it still holds the title. Hummingbird can easily swap this to you know an external hub
and make this a lighter bring it down to seven kilos if it wants to and this has a lot of
cool features like a carbon belt drive here are the specs of the t line you got the one
and the urban the top i took out the top specs as the different ones
you get of course mudguard multi gears versus single gear and this is the features that
they share in common so the four thousand dollar question is which one should you get the brompton
electric or the brompton t-line urban you could definitely get either if you top off with another
two grand you could add a ARCC kit [requires replacing the carbon fork with a metal one] to
the titanium as in electrify it or if you wait a few months spend about one grand or less
and get the new Swytch kit [requires replacing the carbon fork with a metal one] which is a
lot more compact and a lot lighter which would complement that titanium bike and
you could have an electrified titanium bike that could be less than 10 kilos which is
amazing it really comes down to the hill situation can you overcome the hill with the titanium
bike if you can definitely get the lighter one because on a flat you could definitely surpass
15 miles an hour which is the speed limit of the electrified brompton. On all bikes because that's
the legal limit when it comes to maintenance of course the electric brompton which is more
complicated will likely to require a bit more investment, time replacement of consumables
and in during transitions let's say from riding to walking to carrying it around having a lighter
bike is definitely much more convenient how many just think about like what floor do you live on
does it have a lift [elevator] if you have any more questions just leave in the comment box below
i hope you enjoyed this meta review hopefully i could test ride this and i could actually give a
proper review if you like these reviews just like and subscribe and i'll see you next time