Brompton bikes are pretty pricey. While fans of these innovative folding bicycles will tell you that they last for years, it’s not always easy to justify the purchase of a folding bicycle that costs well over $1000.
How long does a Brompton last? With proper care and maintenance, Brompton folding bicycles can last for decades. They have a 7-year warranty on frames, and Brompton provides parts for models up to 20 years old or even more. Parts like chains, brakes, and tires may need to be replaced once a year or once every 5000 miles. Wheel hubs, rims, and parts of the groupset need less frequent replacements.
Here’s a quick rundown on how much use you can expect to get out of a Brompton so you can figure out if this brand of folding bike is right for you.
Brompton’s Legendary Longevity
Brompton owners often use their bikes for years. It’s not uncommon to run into Brompton enthusiasts who have ridden their bikes for a decade or more.
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Bromptons last long enough that the company makes spare parts for models over 20 years old, ensuring that the brand’s supporters can stay on their favorite cycles virtually forever. Each bike comes with an impressive warranty of 7 years for frame parts (when registered) and 2 years for everything else.
Brompton only guarantees the replacement of parts that have “material or manufacturing defect[s],” but they’ve got a reputation for being very generous when it comes to their interpretation of this clause.
What Parts Will I Need To Replace On My Brompton?
Normal wear-and-tear on your Brompton will necessitate the replacement of common parts every so often.
The frequency of these replacements will be determined by when, where, and how you ride. Factors like underinflated tires, dirty chains, and steep hills can have a big impact on how often you replace various parts.
The specific parts you’re most likely to replace include the chain, the sprocket, the brake pads, the tires, and the hinge clamps. Expect to replace these parts at least once every 5,000 miles.
While these aren’t the only parts you’ll need to replace, the other parts on your Brompton will generally need to be replaced less frequently.
Things like the wheel hubs, your rims, the shifting mechanisms, and the brake levers will have issues occasionally, but not as often. Again, when, where, and how you ride will determine how often you need to replace which parts.
The Hidden Maintenance Factor
Brompton fans are quite rabid in their love of both cycling and their small foldable cycles. Many of them use their Bromptons in lieu of cars, putting hundreds or thousands of miles on their bikes each year.
This puts a tremendous amount of wear on the bicycle, but it also ensures that the Brompton’s owner immediately recognizes any looming maintenance items quickly. As the bikes serve as the main means of transportation, this maintenance has to be taken care of, keeping the bike in tip-top shape.
This maintenance isn’t free.
Brompton owners often put hundreds of dollars per year into maintaining their bicycles, and that’s not including optional accessories. While this might sound scary, the number is largely due to the sheer amount of use these bicycles see, not because Bromptons are expensive to maintain.
Brompton enthusiasts on social media tend to estimate the cost of Brompton maintenance as about $0.05 per mile ridden, which is significantly less than the numbers quoted for cars.
In other words, a Brompton that’s been ridden for 20 years will have had many, many part replacements. If it’s actively ridden a lot, the owner might have replaced the brake pads 30 times, the chain 20 times, and the hinge clamps 10 times.
These are inexpensive parts that are easy to replace yourself, but you will need to replace them if you intend on riding your bike for thousands of miles.
What “Issues” With My Brompton Are Actually Fine?
You’ll occasionally hear new Brompton owners complain about “problems” that are entirely benign.
Brompton bikes have innovative design features and unusual components that work a bit differently than the parts you find on a normal bike. This means that you might think your Brompton is in urgent need of important repairs when it’s working perfectly well.
Two of these common “issues” related to the folding of the bike.
First, the rear part of the bicycle is firmly attached by a hinge, but the other attachment point is a somewhat springy latch. This second attachment point has quite a bit of play, enabling it to help absorb the shock of riding your bike over uneven terrain.
Before 2007, Bromptons didn’t even have a latch, instead of relying on the springy stopper alone. Modern Bromptons have a twistable stopper that can lock the rear triangle in place somewhat, although it still has quite a lot of wiggle.
New owners will occasionally assume that the amount of play when latched is the sign of a faulty clamp, leading to unnecessary repair attempts.
The second “issue” has to do with unfolding your bike.
In order to unfold the rear triangle, the seat post on your Brompton must be ALL the way up. Many new riders will only partially extend the seat, leaving the retractable seat tube in a position where it blocks the rear triangle from swinging upwards. The fix here is simple: just pull the seat up a bit more until the rear can fold up.
Finally, the internal gearing mechanism used on Bromptons is a bit noisy. It sounds different in different gears, it’ll make noises while you coast, and when you’re in some gears, the internal parts will shake about and make some noise. This is normal.
While it might sound like you’ve got loose parts in your hub, the gearing mechanism requires the parts to be loose while you’re in certain gears. When you’re in other gears, they’ll lock tightly into place and change how your bicycle chain interacts with the hub.
New owners will sometimes think that the rattling or the change in noise means that their rear shifter is in need of repair, causing unnecessary inspections or part replacement.
Final thoughts
With proper care and regular maintenance, Brompton bicycles can last for decades. You’ll still have to maintain your Brompton, though, and if you use it a lot, this can mean lots of replacement parts.
While the cost of these replacements can add up, that’s only because you’ll be doing a lot of riding. Riding a Brompton is still lots of one one of the most fun, an incredibly high-quality foldable bike to ride, and one of the cheapest per-mile modes of transportation around.
