Cargo Bikes

I made it up the 12% climb! FFS! Dying now.

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What's the hive mind best 20x1.95 tyre, preferably one i can collect in south london / central london tomorrow?

Marathon plus.
Fynches?

I vote Marathon but I think you'll have to choose between 1.75" or 2.0"

Continental Contact Urban - they tend to come up a little narrow.

Another vote for Conti contact urban

If it’s an ebike I’d prob go for schwalbe pickup

Pls elaborate 🤔

If you do a search for estarli and the other one thats the same bike (forgot name now, but also claims to be UK built bike when its not, maybe sort of assembled) by me and others in the last year you'll find loads on this forum.
Main issue is that those two companies fit kinda cheap brakes but actually the wrong brake adapters on almost every single one I've seen, and will give you the 'SOrry, we've never heard of that happening before', when I personally by late 2023 had reported at 16 of 18 bikes I assembled and checked for customers with this exact issue. Means brake pad is only partially touching the rotor. Simple mistake, but shit response from a company, especially when its obviously a large issue.

Hub drive is fine so long as you don't have hill starts with a load, massive reduction in available torque. However upside is the hub motor is doing the work so your drive chain isn't, so chain, chainring and cassette life is much greater. Not as nice to ride etc, but as you mention, there is a huge jump in price, Tern especially a large jump in price for (WAY ToO MUCH OF THE TIME) not an increase in quality, quality control or even having a frame thats not got weld holes blown through it in multiple places*

*Yeah this is a dig at Tern, well designed bikes mostly (GSD mk2 is an insane joke of a bike, read up on why its so hard to remove rear wheel unless you got a Rohloff model, when the Mk1 was so simple, I honestly don't know why they don't employ engineers), ride well and suit the majority of folks actual needs from a family cargo. HOWEVER, their quality control and mentality of dusting off frames with holes in, bent frames, brake mounts welded in the wrong place, seat tube deformities (weld issues), headset race misalignment, appalling cable routing on some does not match their price point, especially in the UK market. Maybe since Raleigh has gone and they've moved to someone else it will be different, but I'm not holding my breath. If you get a good one without those issues, great, great bikes and ideal for your family cargo use, but if you get a bad one, just make sure you paid on a credit card and don't have high blood pressure.

Marathon Supreme but they all gone now, got killed off a few years ago. Absolutely favourite 20", 26" and 700c cargo bike tyre for UK conditions. Unless you are running heavy the entire time, then maybe go marathon plus, pickup (funny shape in 20" size so handling can be affected) or similar heavy weight tyre

A beautiful thing, only really for the new breed of Omnium packers (makes a sick long to ultra distance touring rig), but weight saving over the standard alloy one isnt' that much, pretty sure its solidly under the 1 kg mark anyways?
Unfortunately gone well off Omnium since they've been using the Nexus 5 as their standard hub, maybe its good for Denmark + Netherland environment, but for UK where your almost constantly on some sort of incline, gears are too far apart, clunky and high % of out of the box failures (similar to old Nexus 7 if any techs have recovered from the PTSD on those things), and also I'm gonna say not great for mid drive use, especially urban use where your constantly slapping gears. The nexus 5 was supposed to be a torque proof, mid drive acceptable, reliability monster, and instead, I mean I had two customers who had more than 5 replacement hubs EACH in 1 year, threatening to return entire bike under consumer law, and this went on for 3 years. Shimano just never really giving an explanation. You get a good one they are pretty solid, you get a bad one, they can explode on 1st day.

Build quality of Shimano hub gears seems to have dropped a cliff.

Agreed that the hub and chainring choice on an electric Omnium is way too Denmark specific, even with the motor. I’d have definitely bought one if it just had a derailleur.

Any thoughts on Alfine hubs? I’ve been umming-and-erring over which hub to get - it sounds like replacing an old, functioning-but-tired 8spd Nexus with a new Nexus doesn’t make sense.

If anyone is looking for a brutally over priced Load 75 Rohloff HS, mine is on eBay.

Are you using the bike professionally?
I quite like the Alfine 11 on our Bullitt. Used to carry a 1,5-year old and 3,5-year old plus associated belongings..

Probably once a week to carry a load for work (Surly Big Dummy), so not getting a daily thrashing. I think the chat above has made up my mind, 11spd plus wider range is appealing - as long as the Alfine also hasn’t had a drop in quality?

I installed mine around two years ago. Have probably ridden between 3500-4500 kms and changed the oil after the first 1000 as per the instructions. Got the A11 because I don't trust myself to disassemble the A8 to regrease - the oil change on the A11 it is very easy to do.
Would've loved a Rohloff, but it would cost almost the same as I paid for the bullitt second hand.

I have a well used 26" Alfine 11 wheel gathering dust in the shed that you're welcome to if you can come collect it from SW
Took it off my Bullitt when I installed the mid-drive but it was an unproblematic daily driver on the nursery/school run for years.

Amazing, would love to take you up on that - will dm in a sec

Would any owners of an Omnium Mini be able to share their experiences of the handling of the bike (unloaded and loaded).

Are they twitchy etc?

I get some speed wobble with a massive load of shopping in a crate on the front

Cheers Neil,

So over 10kgs I'm guessing.

Trying to gauge whether I'd benefit from one for site visits for work.
I do 5kg happily on my for mounted front rack, but don't like going over that for how it affects handling (and I imagine I can feel the frame straining).

Yeah lots over 10kg! I can put my 10yr old on it and it's fine, but I've never tried to ride no handed while carrying offspring....

The wheel base is so short that it always feels pretty quick to ride round, loaded or not.