Bike Check: Rachel’s Mint Felt Brougham
Felt has developed a reputation for producing quality bikes for a good price. As far as bike-for-your-dollar value goes, their Brougham is dialed. Instead of building another crazy fancy bike full of all the latest technology, Felt’s stripped the Brougham down to the essentials and focused on doing those essentials well. The foundation of the Brougham is a reliable Cro-Moly frame and fork, tough enough to survive whatever weather and abuse you put it through, but with the ride quality of steel. The Brougham keeps things simple and functional with a singlespeed drivetrain – which you can set up fixed, with a freewheel, or both. The flip-flop hub lets you running fixed gearing options, or one side fixed, once side freewheel. It can also be set up with one, both, or no brakes, depending on how safe you want to be on the roads. The few other parts are spec’d to work well, for a long time without being really expensive.
Felt Brougham is a resilient bike, and it comes in a buncha different options, which is nice. It also means you can change the bike around quite a bit to match your needs. Set it up with flat bars and brakes, or brakeless with drop bars, or whatever else you can think of. Rachel’s needs were: Mint green; front brake; receptive to stickering. The Broughem complied nicely.
Does this colourway remind anyone else of mint chocolate chip ice cream?
For their minimal steel bike, Felt’s outfitted the Brougham with a nice, metal headbadge
Felt offers the Brougham in a couple different builds. Rachel’s gone for riser bars
Minimal and subdued branding, and very external cable routing, in case you want to ditch the brakes
Superflash, for Super-safety. Double zip-tied. Also for Super-safety
Simplicity of the fixie, and ‘track tension’ slack chain. Just because
Felt ships the Brougham with a flip-flop hub, Rachel can run her’s fixed or with a freewheel
For a bike about town leather toe-straps and metal cages, they’ll hold whatever shoes you want
“You have to get that pink cable end!” and also the steel fork, and front brake option
And the stickering starts – minimal branding means you can make the Broughem look like your own easily
Vittoria Randonneur tyres are tough and grippy as all get out
Super comfy seat, since you’re probably not wearing your padded shorts under street clothes. Probably
The stickering continues. That’s just rude, Rachel. We don’t condone this message
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