Originally Posted by
cyccommute
Those few blog posts (and your own words) are not the only references I’ve seen to “steel is easily repaired while aluminum isn’t so I will never trust aluminum” statements. I’m not going to survey the entire touring community but I’ve heard this (incorrect) argument all the time. Have you tried to have a frame repaired at a local welder? I have. The welder was surprised by the thinness of the metal and how easy it would be to burn through. A welder who isn’t experienced with steel bicycle frames...and most of them aren’t...has no idea going into the repair how thin the metal is. They have no way of measuring the thickness to tell them how delicate a touch the welding takes. Do you have any idea of how thin the metal is? I do. It’s about the thickness of a soup can. Welders are used to welding thick materials. 1mm would be thin for most welders. Bicycle tubing is 0.3mm thick.
that's a lot of false statements in a short piece of writing. Never trust aluminum? Pretty hyperbolic don't you think?
I've lived on a farm so I know which welders can handle which repairs. Professional welders are the people you want to look for. If the farm thing confuses you, farmers do all their own repairs or know the people who can do it for them if it's too difficult.
I actually know pretty well how thin the metal is. Typical wall thicknesses for bicycle chromoly tubing are 1/0,8/1 or 0,9/0,7/0,9 millimeters. Not many spots on a touring steel frame with a wall thickness of 0,3mm but nice try.
Yes. Exactly. People who may have aluminum mountain bikes that they beat on rocks daily will probably tell you that they wouldn’t ride an aluminum touring bike because it can’t be repaired in the field. Never mind that they don’t notice that they don’t have to repair their aluminum mountain bikes all the time.
At this stage this is getting pointless. You ha e a pretty strong belief that you know what people want or think. From reading the internet I presume..
All bicycles...well bicycles of any quality...are overbuilt in areas of stress. Bicycle tubes aren’t just cylinders with the same wall thickness from one end to the other. Aluminum touring bikes like those made by Cannondale have (slightly) heavier frames than their road bikes because they are buttressed in stress areas. Steel touring bikes do the same thing for the same reasons. This is all stuff that any frame builder or designer should know.
no true scotsman and all that. Big brands make bad bad es which will not withstand touring. Trek for example made a frame which had a fantastic ride unladen but suucked when loaded. It was the reason I bought the LHT. Anyways that's also kinda the merit and detriment of aluminum. Enough fatigue life means a stiff harsh frame whereas a nice compliant ride means that the frame is ultimately pretty flexy / weak.
An aluminum frame of any kind is built to withstand the stresses they are designed for. You can’t just put a load on any bike...steel or aluminum...and expect it to perform like a well designed and build touring bike will. Lots of people (and you’ll probably have issue with me saying that) say that “you can tour on anything”. While true, they say that there are some bikes that do it better. A race bike that has been built to be as light as possible will be noodly and won’t carry the load as well. It is likely to develop a death wobble because the frame tubes are light to withstand the side to side movement of the extra load. Same with hybrids. They aren’t necessarily designed for touring loads.
Finally something we agree on
I agree with your statement for road bikes (and road touring bikes). But even the most adept mountain biker is going to put his frame through more stress than any road bike ever experiences. Mountain bike frames are heavier for a reason. Suspension has been added to mountain bikes to take the stress off the frame. But the frame still goes through more punishment than a road bike will.
You seem to go by the assumption that touring is road biking. While it mainly can be I'll be willing to bet that some of the stuff my tourer has had to ride through on tour exceeds my average rough mtb ride. And those are typically rougher than your average DH-ride.
Some european bicycle touring routes could easily be classified as mtb routes
for out of saddle riding, that’s one of the first things I noticed when I switched from a steel touring bike to an aluminum one. The steel bike (a 1984 Miyata 610) was never stiff enough ride out of the saddle with a touring load. If I did get out of the saddle, I had to pedal straight up and down with zero body movement side-to-side or the bike would wander all over the road. The Cannondale has no problem with normal out of the saddle riding.
And what were the tube diameters in that miyata?
New steel mountain bikes are a small part of the market, just as steel road bikes are only a very small part of the market.
But not nearly nonexistent and not even rare.
“That's a joke, I say, that's a joke, son.” And the village smithy didn’t go out of business in the 17th century. They didn’t go out of business in the 18th. There were still some around in the 20th century. The “local welder” is just the village smithy with electricity.
But I use that image because that is the image that most people have about steel and steel repair. “It’s simple and can be done with simple tools” is what a lot of people say about steel but they don’t have any experience with trying to get a steel frame fixed. Most people don’t have any experience with frame repair.
Who? Who says that with a straight face?
Not a stereotype. Try telling someone that you are going to buy an aluminum touring bike and watch the horror rise in their eyes. You have pretty much said the same thing. You wouldn’t ride an aluminum touring bike because (place unreasonable reason here).
The people I know would not care. So the reality is actually that if you told people that you're getting an aluminum frame touring bike their response would be "...and?"
I don't like aluminum for a multitude of reasons. For me it's always been creaky. The threads are weak. It has poor wear and denting resistance and that matters because I don't live in a perfect world where my bike won't get dinged or rubbed against things. Transporting bikes on a train can be a nightmare in that regard.
No, I don’t realize that “one of the largest voices in the touring world rides an aluminum bike”...mostly because I didn’t realize that there is a “large voice” in bicycle touring. I have no idea who Alee is nor am I really all that interested in what he does. Good on him for riding an aluminum touring bike but I doubt that will make a difference to getting companies to marketing aluminum touring bikes nor to people buying them.
Maybe before stating you know what people or bike tourists think you should acquaint yourself with the works of people who have some actual pull in the touring community. Like Alee.
As to what’s available, again, it’s a chicken and egg thing. People don’t buy aluminum touring bikes because there aren’t aluminum touring bikes available. Aluminum touring bikes aren’t readily available because people won’t buy aluminum touring bikes. I’ve had numerous discussions with people who are thinking about touring. Nearly the first thing out of their mouths is “I want a steel bike.” When I ask why, “the ease of repair” is the first thing they say. These aren’t people who have ever toured or even have had a frame break on them much less tried to get one fixed.
That's what the multitude of people think about when you talk with them about touring? That they want a steel bike? Riight.
So you didn’t say what I quoted you as saying? I used your words exactly as you wrote them. They seemed kind of dismissive. You said that the aluminum bikes used for touring in Europe are only suitable for riding on relatively flat routes and aren’t “world crossing calibre.”
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Yes well the relevant part is bolded. Read the words, not what you want to believe.
Also the rest of this paragraph is super confusing. There's some serious twisting of words going on by you but most pressingly: bikes are not people. If the bikes aren't world crossing calibre what does that matter? It does not reflect on the people riding them in any way. At the risk of repetition: it does not matter what people ride.
I
spell this out for you. People ride a lot of river routes in europe. The bikes they use are typically european trekking bikes. These bikes are typically aluminum framed. These bikes are usually not suitable for circumnavigating the globe.
Where did I specifically mention flat?
No one said anything about cost. As for the Cube, well, no. Just, no. That’s not a touring bike of any caliber. That bike might struggle as a picnic bike.
And yet that bike is the kind you used a lot by europena bicycle tourists. It even has touring in the name.
Have you ridden the europena river routes? You should. They're quite nice.
Of the things you listed, any can occur on a steel frame and aren’t related to the frame material.
Yet in my experience they only tend to occur in aluminum framed bikes.
I suspect you ride aluminum cranks knowing that they can break and can’t be repaired. You have missed my point, which is that if you are so worried about the failings of aluminum, why do you use it in critical areas where failure can result in injury?
Why do you use steel spokes? Aluminum spokes are available.
I ride trails as well. I don’t strike pedals because pedal strikes slow me down.
Correction, you ride easy trails if pedal strikes aren't an issue for you. Even the best riders get pedal strikes, that's one of the big facts of mountain biking.
Making the tubing slightly over the size of what was done 40 years ago isn’t that much of an advancement. Steel bikes are still (mostly) straight tubes of steel. There just isn’t any reason to change the shape. That’s partly because of the strength of the material but it’s also due to the lack of use of the material. It also has a lot to do with the difference in how the material can be worked. Steel is much more difficult to form. Aluminum is much more ductile and does so at much lower temperatures.
You're dodging the point. Advancements are still made in steel and even in chromoly. Better alloys exist. As to aluminum advancements, all the same stuff is done with steel but in less flashy fashion. Bent oversized shaped tubing can be found in steel bikes as well. They're typically just not as pronounced.
There's also new things in the horizon, like 3d printing which can be done with steel and titanium. Probably with aluminum too but haven't seen a single article about 3d printed aluminum. I think there were already prototypes of both 3d printed steel and titanium frames.
It's neat stuff and can potentially bring metals back in the game against carbon fiber.
I’m not putting down people who ride steel. I’m putting down their arguments that aluminum is inferior. The amount of strength an aluminum alloy loses depends on several factors that would make an estimate of strength loss difficult. If you are talking about replacing a frame tube, yes, it will likely lose a large percentage of strength. But the less heat that is used and the less duration of heat, the less strength it loses. Field repairs aren’t going to be tube replacement. Field repairs are going to be crack repair which means short duration and less heat applied. Even if the frame lost 50% strength at the part of the frame affected by the break, it is likely enough to get you to someplace for a more permanent solutions...like a frame replacement.
Aluminum is inferior in some ways. It's also superior in others. But you label people pointing out the inferior properties as ignorant or hysterical or whatever. If those properties do not matter to you, fine. They can matter to others. You claiming universally that a certain material property does not matter and should not matter to anyone is the the epitome of arrogance.
Why do you even ride aluminum? You should ride carbon. If you don't you're ignorant and all of your reasons for not riding carbon are wrong.
As part of my looking for quotes above (post 113), I ran Information that said steel repair isn’t going to have the same strength as the original tubing. It has an effect. As for field repairs of steel, how many frame builders do you think there are in the world? In small towns where frames tend to break? I had a frame repaired by a “seasoned” welder. The guy builds pressure vessels which require a level of skill that some yahoo with a stick welder won’t have. He was the one who was surprised at the thinness of the metal and told me that it would be easy to burn through the metal. All welding experience in the world will mean nothing if you aren’t familiar with the material. Again, most of these guys would have problems with welding 1mm steel. If they are trying to weld something that is a 1/3 thinner without knowing that fact makes them...well...a yahoo with a stick welder.
You ran aground by not understanding the bike. Bicycle frames are like furniture as the tubes are of similar wall thickness. You should have sought out a professional welder who knew how to weld furniture tubing. It ss weird that a professional welder would be surprised by thin material. But you didn't say professional. You said seasoned. To me that kinda sounds like a hack.