Originally Posted by
cyccommute
The first part of my comment was with tongue firmly in cheek. It is reflective of the attitude of anti-aluminum people, however...as pointed out in the second part of my post.
It's weird that you make the effort defend your offensive comments with the "It's just a joke bro" -tactic but in the very next sentence you immediately start your derisive rhetoric and as a bonus, a straw man. Also if your joke isn't apparent it's a bad boke.
It's also really funny that you'd label me as anti aluminum as my utility bike that gets regular and significant mileage has an aluminum frame. My fatbike was supposed to be aluminum but the lbs would not sell me one. I only got a steel frame when my plans to get a carbon frame fell through.
I have not put down anyone...well, not put down anyone who didn’t start the put downs. You have made similar arguments towards aluminum that are equally as baseless. Aluminum has proven itself as a tough material capable of withstanding the (rather minor) rigors of bicycling over the last 40 years.
Yes, I criticize the material in some aspects in the context of certain applications. You attack the people who do not agree with you. People who do not ride the non existent aluminum touring bikes and instead ride the abundant steel bikes are religious fanatics who choose frames/bikes based on your ridiculous strawman fallacies repairability etc.
As for baseless claims, some of them are based on numbers, some are anecdotal.
I have never owned a creak/click free aluminum frame but have also never had a persistent click /creak on a steel frame. I've had speed wobbles on aluminum but not with steel. I've had noodly aluminum frames but not steel frames. But I've also had a few stiff aluminum frames.
You do very little defending of the material properties themselves. You ignore the arguments of advancements in steel frames and always march out you dated example of the noodly miyata. You're a broken record and it is tiresome.
You are just grasping at straws now. If you can play tricks with the tubing diameter of the frame tubes, you can make a light frame out of aluminum that is strong. You can’t play the same game with a thin wire. Aluminum would be a very poor choice for a spoke unless you actually made it so that it weighed as much as a steel spoke which would mean at least 3 times the diameter at the spoke head. That would also require new hubs to fit the 6mm wide spoke plus larger flanges to be able to fit the spokes around the hub. And it would necessitate changes in rims. All of that would add up to extra weight or taking a trade off of less strength.
And yet aluminum spokes exist. Aluminum nipples exist. You can also play those same tricks regarding tubing with steel. And it is done and has been been done in the past (Columbus SLX had some interesting internal shaping)
And for your “yabuts”, I never said that steel doesn’t have its place. I just said that aluminum has its place as well.
You sure? Because to me it sound like you have a pretty strong opinion that steel does not have a place in bicycle frames. Though we've been discussing chromo which is the weakest bike steel and 6061 aluminum which is the baseline bike aluminum. Take reynolds 853 or higher grade and suddenly you have alloys which blow 6061 aluminum out of the water. Take 953 and you have a material that absolutely crushes even 7000-series aluminum in strength to weight with a corrosion resistance of 6000 series aluminum (7000- series is actually surprisingly prone to corrosion). And that's just reynolds. There are other makers too but I'm not that well versed on those.
But I'll be honest. I probably won't buy an aluminum frame bike again. Next road bike'll be be Salsa Cutthroat which is carbon. Next touring bike will be steel, because I have absolutely no idea where I would even find an aluminum one let alone one which would fit my spec requirements. They're just not very common. Dang those pesky fanatics.