mstateglfr 

The original price is so absurdly high that the discounted price places the frame in a reasonable range.
I could link bikes direct steel frame bikes that show similar g discounts,, but it doesn't mean the bike was worth that original cost to begin with.

I get supply, demand, and perceived value, so no need to go into all that. The Cervelo frameset's original price is simply absurd.

mstateglfr 

You can tell the difference between otherwise identical bikes where the only difference is one is welded and the other is lugged?

DwightChris49

Chromo is still around. I just bought a new bike with a chromo frame. There are definitely fewer, for sure.

Sy Reene

Of course it is.. however, just about every major bike manufacturer has a frameset that lists at around the $4k+ pricepoints. That's my point. CF can suffer much higher markups and the sellers can get away with it and be more profitable.

ParamountScapin 

Do not know. Never owned two identical except for lugged vs TIG'd. If were to guess the lugged would be slightly more forgiving due to the localized hardening of the metal at the welds that the lower heat of sil-brazing would not have.

HTupolev

Materials with higher hardness do tend to also have higher stiffness, especially when looking at non-metals, but hardening a piece of metal does not significantly affect its stiffness.

phughes

Hi, nice to meet you.

mstateglfr 

I must have misread your earlier statement then. I thought you were declaring a lugged steel bike is the most comfortable and a tig welded frame is less comfortable.

ParamountScapin 

Not much mention of wheels and their impact on the ride. However, in my experience, wheels & spokes, along with tires, have as much impact on ride quality as does the frame. Had an early set of the TOTL Ksyrium with 25s on a Ti frameset that was almost unrideable for anything but a criterium length ride. Felt every bump and crack and pebble on that horrible combination. Was better on lugged steel but they were soon gone to someone who was a sprinter. For me, the combo of lugged steel & Campy Sirocco wheels with 28s or 32s have proven most comfortable over the years (I'm 72 & counting). Speed is no longer an issue. I'll eventually get there......................

vespasianus

Wheels and tires play a huge role as do the stem, handlebar and seat post. I think I read some studies that showed that your seat post made a bigger difference than the actual frame material!

But back to the OP original question, I do believe that cost and demand are the main drivers. As most bikes are made in Asia, the lighter the bike, the cheaper the bike is to ship. Customers judge a bike by weight. A more expensive bike should weigh less.

Duragrouch

I'm late to this conversation. High strength steel like 4130, et al, in order to be weight-efficient, needs to be drawn to a thin wall, and thicker near the tube ends (double and triple butted). This is expensive to do. The thinner wall a tube is, the more quality intensive it must be. It's also a lot more difficult to weld without burning through, and few makers use lugs and brazing these days, and those that do are expensive.

A notable exception is Dahon's 4130 steel folding frames, however the tubes are not butted so they are heavier than the equivalent Dahon aluminum frame.

asmack

Salsa does a lot of steel...

elcruxio

You really went all out trying to find all those references didn't you? A few blog posts and suddenly you have a cross cut of the whole touring community. That's really something.

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That's a lot of people afraid of aluminum. The same people who might have other aluminum bikes still buy steel touring bikes because of fear or whatever. And that then drives the market?

I decided to do some digging and while I did find that for example 6061 T6 does beat annealed 4130 in ultimate specific tensile strength (strength to weight) the coin flips hard in fatigue life. It seems that the oft uttered sentence "aluminum has no fatigue limit" is pretty accurate. On the other hand it doesn't much matter because in low level stress aluminum can withstand quite a few repetitions before failing. Then again steel can withstand stress repetitions indefinitely within its fatigue limit. But what I did find concerning was how steep the fatigue curve profile in 6061 T6 was. It's a bit tedious to put into writing since I'm not an engineer, but to summarize, an aluminum frame made of 6061 T6 that wants to handle touring as well as a 4130 likely needs to be overbuilt over 3 times thicker in key areas to have acceptable fatigue life in the hundreds of millions repetitions rather than just tens of millions. Seems like a big number, but every pedal stroke and bump in the road is a stress repetition especially with a loaded touring bike.

Luckily the area that experiences most stress is the downtube near the bottom bracket and that area is typically sufficiently overbuilt in mountain bikes. However the hybrids I've used and now use again have all been underbuilt in the BB area and are honestly pretty noodly. I'd expect a frame failure with extensive touring.

[QUOTE]As for challenging conditions, no touring bike undergoes anything remotely as challenging as what a mountain bike is put through. If new steel road bikes are rare, new steel mountain are almost nonexistent. They probably exist but you won’t find them at your local trailhead.

Well yes but actually no. The most stress a bicycle experiences is from pedaling out of the saddle. I was surprised when I read that but there you have it. Also there's the issue of dynamic vs static load. A fully loaded touring bike is stacked with static weight that does not try to bend at the knees when hitting a speed bump. On the other hand an adept mountain biker can and will ride dynamically mostly to improve traction, reduce bounce but also to protect to bike to some extent. Also mountain bikes use large volume supple tires which take up a lot of the stress. And that's with hardtails. Full squishes are a different discussion entirely.

Also I've ridden singletrack with a fully loaded touring bike. That's why you want some reserve in the frame durability section.

New steel mountain bikes are a thing and not an uncommon at that. One one has offered steel framed mountain bikes for years and years and I ride a Surly Ice Cream Truck which is also made of steel. I won't do a search of all the steel mountain bike manufacturers out there but they are not really at all rare. I mean Kona has steel mountain bikes for crying out loud.

​​​​​​​Where on earth do you get this idea of the village smithy? You crack a frame you take it to a welder. I haven't ever even seen a village smithy because I don't live in the 17th century.

Holy stereotype batman!
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You do realize that one of the largest voices in the touring world rides an aluminum bike? Alee from cyclingabout is also probably one of the most experienced tourers out there because its his job. And he rides a Koga. So I'd wager the myth is just something you've thought up and decided to believe. The rest of us buy what's available.
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It still seems to me that it is you who thinks that touring short distances or with support or whatever is somehow lesser. It's you who's constantly saying it. I haven't mentioned support once but that happens too. There are even organizers who take you up the hills on a bus so you can ride the downhills.
You're doing a lot of creative interpreting of what I wrote. Have you ever toured Europe? Do you know what it is like here? Cycling is something people just do. For most it is not a hobby.

The world traveller btw isn't affordable. It's pretty darn expensive and definitely in the world crossing category. This https://www.cube.eu/en/2019/bikes/tr...19-easy-entry/ not so much.
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you're not everyone you know.


One ride was enought to grind a sizeable dent on the chainstay. That was with several millimeters of space available but mud'll do that to something that can be worked with woodworking tools.


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Sure they can. But they don't seem to happen with steel bikes with near the regularity they do with aluminum bikes. My late Rockhopper needed several regreasings of the seat collar and seat post per year to stay creak free. On my ICT it's set and forget.
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I don't think it's really fair that you get to use the all encompassing "bicycle tourist" -stereotype with which you can just state that the world works in such and such a way but when someone uses the same fallacy on you you start pulling imaginary numbers from somewhere. It's like you're not arguing in good faith or something.

And your analogy has nothing to do with the idea that steel is easily fixed.


That's not exactly something that speaks well for aluminum.

Well I ride trails with a mountain bike. Pedal strikes do happen when you ride something technical. It's either that or ditch and well, ditching is boring.


With rims perhaps it's not a great idea but with hubs it'd need the robustness of a disc rotor attachment, which isn't that much. A splined fit with 3 to 4 M4 screws for the hub flanges and the typical slip fit for the bearings.


Again yes but actually no. Aluminum has gotten fancy shapes with hydroforming which lessens the need for gusseting but essentially what has happened is larger diameter tubes. But if you compare steel frames of the past and of today you'll notice that larger diameter tubes has also happened to steel touring bikes. Pretty much all steel touring bikes today are made of OS tubing or even ultra OS tubing and some even use the ZS44 headset standard which makes the front end ridiculously solid. The ZS44 works wonderfully for aluminum but with steel its just pure and simple overkill and thus excellent for touring use. The Salsa Marrakesh for example uses that. Add to it 31,8mm seatpost and you'll have a pretty rigid rear end as well.

In terms of steel mountain bikes it's not just larger tube diameters as steel bikes have started getting fancy tube shapes as well. Not as fancy looking as hydroformed tubing but my Surly ICT has this new cool thing called trumpet tubing which means exactly what it sounds like. The tube is shaped like a trumpet so the highest load area has a larger tube diameter.

True. There's not much difference. But you seem intent on downplaying every argument anyone might have for steel and putting down the people who choose to ride it so I'll just put this out here. You can't repair aluminum. It's not properly viable as 6061 T6 will go back to T0 when welded. This means the weld affected area loses over 50 % of its strength. It can be heat treated but it needs to be done to the whole frame. Not even the professional aluminum welder in a large city will have those facilities as even frame factories outsource heat treating.
So in the end even though the welder you do find can put the frame "together" it'll be a botch job.

4130 on the other hand does not lose strength from a repair. The annealed state is the baseline after welding/heating and that's the value the frame is typically designed around. It's also much easier to botch repair steel so if that weird 17th century village smithy has a stick welder and some spare steel rods you can even use those. But if you happen to find an actual frame builder or even a seasoned welder who has experience with say, furniture, you can actually restore the broken frame.

I decided not to go into the whole 7000-series aluminum because I feel that if we discuss that it's only fair to bring in the better alloys of steel as well like Reynolds 853.

Also I think this jousting has gone on long enough.

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.


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.

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.

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.


Perhaps you should have added “but maybe” to cover all the bases

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.

As 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.

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.


“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.


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).
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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.

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.

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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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.

Not saying that I am. But I have seen a lot of bikes in my life. I have had 38 of my own that have (almost) all be crashed at some point. Very, very few of them have be crashed head one...one to be precise...and only one of them has experienced frame damage in a crash. Running a bike into the side of a car will do that.

But outside or my own bikes, I’ve also put hands on from 12,000 to 15,000 bikes at my local co-op over 10 years of volunteering. I don’t see every bike that comes into the shop but I do see a lot of them. I’ve seen bikes that have experienced just about every possible kind of frame damage that can occur in a crash and not one of them has been damaged because the bike crashed and slide. I’m not saying that it can’t happen but it would be extremely rare. Physics isn’t in your favor. The rider is going to take the brunt of any impact before any part of the frame can hit the ground. We are big water balloons that absorb a lot of the energy.


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Of the things you listed, any can occur on a steel frame and aren’t related to the frame material.

I was just responding to what you wrote. Your comment was something of a non sequitur with regards to steel repair as well.


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?

I ride trails as well. I don’t strike pedals because pedal strikes slow me down.


You are trying to fix a problem that doesn’t exist. I’ve never seen a hub failure involving the disc rotor attachment. I’ve seen very few flange failures. I know that both might happen but there’s no need to solve a problem that is very, very rare.


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.

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.

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.

CAT7RDR

I always associated aluminum frames with balloon cartoon bicycles.

elcruxio

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.

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..


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.


Finally something we agree on


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

​​​​​​ And what were the tube diameters in that miyata?

But not nearly nonexistent and not even rare.



Who? Who says that with a straight face?

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.
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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.

That's what the multitude of people think about when you talk with them about touring? That they want a steel bike? Riight.


.

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?

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.



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Yet in my experience they only tend to occur in aluminum framed bikes.

Why do you use steel spokes? Aluminum spokes are available.

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.


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.

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.

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.

DropBarFan

Yes, I don't really get the concept of picking steel for repairability on tour. If it was an expensive custom frame & repaired by a lesser-skilled tech, wouldn't one want to have the damaged part repaired again after the tour by a skilled tech? That's going to take time & money.. If a production frame gets damaged on tour the simplest & safest thing might be to have a new frame shipped.

uklaird

[Whatever the reasoning why they aren't mass produced anymore, they remain a far superior ride quality to alloys & carbon fiber. Take for example a guy in his late 20's, who rides a late model carbon bike in tri-athlon's: he recently bought a 1980 Nishiki Sport from me that I had 'Retro Resto-Mod'ed - & he was so surprised at the ride quality of the Chro-Mo frame that he commutes to work on it.

GeorgeStevens

There are pros and cons. Carbon fiber frames, in principle, can be formulated to mimic the properties people like in steel, but it is hard to find ones that say that explicitly.

pbass

I won't buy anything but a steel bike with a steel fork. My #1 is 2019 steel gravel bike. Plenty of steel offerings out there from bigger companies like Kona, to tons of smaller builders. Steel IS real. If you only go by what the big mainstream shops stock from the "big 3" (Specialized, Trek, Giant) then you're missing out on a HUGE part of the bike industry.

Atlas Shrugged

This like most frame material threads this has gotten ridiculous. Each of the popular frame materials can be tailored to suit the purpose of the bike from super stiff track bike to comfort oriented endurance machine. It’s clear that carbon frames don’t catastrophically explode under the rider at some random moment and this can be determined by a couple of facts, the lawsuits would bankrupt the manufacturers, no one has actually seen it happen to a current unmolested frame lastly they build hard core mountain bikes from carbon and they survive just fine.

Chrome moly has some disadvantages in mass production. Material availability is limited. Where each segment of a carbon frame can be custom laid up to suit the characteristics desired, metal tubing must be ordered from a manufacturer who may not have the ideal thickness, diameter and butting required for the bikes intent and size. Carbon frames have greater economy’s of scale the more you make the cheaper they get. So for a lesser cost you get a better product. Also strength to weight wise carbon is on a completely different league from chrome moly.

So the ride quality is no better if not worse. They are heavier. Costly to produce. Durability is similar. What are the advantages of chrome moly other than some Luddite fantasy.

The one advantage in my eyes is they look great which is enough for me!

elcruxio

Price and availability but mainly availability. Wanted to buy the Salsa Beargrease Carbon but because Salsa has some weird policies they didn't send any XL sizes to my LBS. Had to buy a Surly Ice Cream Truck instead.

Also very few to no touring bikes in carbon so that's a bit of a bummer

Nyah

"How can we make bicycles that have a limited durability factor?" "Aluminum." "Take the squishy material used for beverage-packaging and turn it into bicycle frames/forks." "Brilliant!" Relegate bicycles to recreation. Save the steel for the cars, which bicycle riders will still need to buy for tasks that would've otherwise been possible on a bicycle, had the frames/forks been able to accommodate cargo racks/baskets. Don't include a chainwheel guard, gotta have people wearing tights, to reinforce the notion that riding a bicycle has limited usefulness. "Sounds great!"


Chromoly wasn't completely phased out, you just have to seek out companies willing to buck the established business model. My most recent new bicycle purchase was the 2020 Kona Sutra. Aluminum has always looked to me like an experiment performed on the bicycle customer base. I started with chromoly bicycles. There was no reason for me to embrace frames/forks made out of a softer metal.

bkaapcke

The marketing department wnted to bring in TI. bk

rosefarts

The village smithy charges $95 per hour, minimum of 1 hour. You've also got to make an appointment.