cannondale hooligan?

saltyman

anyone own one? what are they like?

tempted to get one for the wife for easy rides and for me for local commuting, ie gym, town bike etc.

jay12

no, but i would never buy that, it's very strange

supersonic

Fashion over fuction - bigger wheels are generally better for the road.

cat_with_no_tail

:shock:

*reaches for the eye bleach*

Do you not like your wife or something?

saltyman

biff55

whats wrong with a proper bike ?
reminds me of a circus clowns stunt bike

redvee

Looks like one of their flying V frames with a disc mount added on the rear and a pair of 20" wheels insteadof 26".

irn_bru_ce

ive had a hooligan for over a year now , i got the the end of the 08 range called the 2008.5 , its most of the 09 bike but with the 08 stem and hubs and brakes.

mine is the hooligan 1 with the alfine hub , the first thing i noticed compared to my other bikes is how central the mass is , and with the super clearence of the frame , it just encourages you to stand up and accelerate any time you have to slow down

the handling is quite twitchy , and can make it very manouverable in the city , you can switch from kerb side to road centre through very small gaps in the traffic , the alfine 8 speed hub gears make perfect sense on a city bike where you might have to suddenly stop , as the gears can be flicked doen while stationary then as soon as you can move off you just stand up and blast away in a low gear from drivers that are still sleeping

using disc brakes on a city bike is usually useless due to the narrowness of the tyres , but by using 2.0 BMX tyres , there is plenty of traction. some people might look at the avid juicy 3 and think they will be rubbish as they are bottom of the range , but becasue they are acting on a 20" wheel and not a 26" they are surprisingly powerful

when i first got it i thought it would be no good at longer trips , but i have since done a few 18 mile routes and its fine , you just have to get used to the alertness of the handling , not a very relaxing ride , but its not designed for that , its for city riding

the only down side i have is the lack of top end gearing , i dont like to spin my legs that fast , so i have a 55t chainring to replace the 42t , not fitted it yet but hopefully soon , other than that i also fitted gusset slim jim pedals from new as plastic pedals can never be trusted when wet

any more questions or informationrequired then ask me

saltyman

superb, are they light? i take it they are........and what about reliability? any issues with the rear hub?

irn_bru_ce

very very reliable , the alfine hub is a refined lower friction version of the nexus 8 , it has very long cable pull per gear click , which means once its setup its unlikely the cables stretch could ever interfere with the gear changes

the cable has a quick release from the selector arm on the hub , so taking the wheel out of the frame takes about 5 seconds longer than a normal wheel. if you ever have to renew the cable , just line up the yellow dots when the thumb shift is in 4th gear and its all set up

initially the hub felt a bit draggy compared to my XC bike , which is a scalpal with X0 setup , but after a few months it settled in and now hardly any drag. the hooligan is heavier than my scalpal , i dont have any road bike or other commuter bikes to compare it to , the tyres on mine are the schwalbe crazy bobs which are super thick at 700g each , i plan on getting some KHE tyres which are half that , so that will make the bike accelerate much faster , the latest bikes come with schwalbe kojaks , which are only 200g each , but they are only 1.3 so i dont want to go that skinny

i had a few instances of the eccentric bottom bracket slipping round when new , but its the same as what the tandems use so read up on the forums and cured it , just needs the correct orientation and quite tight , hasnt went sack again. advise from the tandem people tho is to remove the eccentric shells and clean and re-grease them every year , becasue sometimes the seize in and without grease they can corrode and never come out

mroli

I've got a Dahon Hammerhead which isn't a million miles away from the Cannondale Hooligan and it is a great short city commuter - nippy, quick, light and manouverable. Not as quick as my road bike, but you wouldn't notice the difference. Problem with the Hammerhead is that the cabling is a bit "severe" - have gone to barend shifters and bar top brake levers.

I think Dahon are coming out with a load of these (and they will fold in half - previously there were seperable and before that fold flat) - whether or not the UK will get any is debatable. This type of bike is called a mini bike or minivelo I think - they're popular in Japan esp. I think JE James have some GIant bike that is like this too - Mini?

Get one - they're good fun!!!

mroli

Here is a review of the mini. http://road.cc/content/review/3119-giant-mini-0

26 to Life

C+ shoot review for it here.
Some great shots in the mag for that review. Where have they gone?

The Northern Monkey

erm... is it just me.... but those crank arms.... are going to be very very VERY close to the floor when pointing downwards

They're like 250mm or something?

Paul 8v

I refuse to believe cannondale could make something so hideous, then I remembered the roller skate bikeamathing http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_CeukNfCFp3s/S ... 005-28.jpg
Actually that looks better..
I know a bike shouldn't be about looks but it's just wrong, it does look a bit better on the review where it's just white.
Sorry

irn_bru_ce

bigbenj_08 wrote:

erm... is it just me.... but those crank arms.... are going to be very very VERY close to the floor when pointing downwards

They're like 250mm or something?

the cranks are 170mm , and ive never managed to clip a kerb yet