Spoonrobot 

Oh I forgot to add - I found out later the Straggler frame weighs ~40 grames/1.5 ounce heavier than the Double Cross Disc I purchased. Had I known that I'd have just bought the Surly. And probably ended up with a Midnight Special instead of a Fog Cutter and a Krampus instead of a Juice. Oh well.

2manybikes

Tolerance stacking. Everything manufactured has a tolerance of some kind. Years ago when I was building one for my bikes, I researched all the parts very carefully.
I noticed that Shimano was smart enough to list average weights of their parts. If you build a bike where most of the parts are on the heavy side of the tolerance, you have a heavier bike. If you have parts that are all on the light side you end up with a lighter bike. One cannot make tolerances go away.

Everything that goes into a bike has weight tolerances. There is no one "weight". The differences may be very small on some things, and bigger on other things.
I don't have any interest at looking at all the parts now to see the weight tolerances. The finished bike makers can't control what the parts all weigh separately.
The fact that no one mentioned average weight and we are all talking about "weight" is a problem. It already is a negative for a bike retailer if anyone in this thread were buying a bike from them and looking to be very picky about the weight. The different tolerances stack up in either direction (or not) as each part is added to the finished bike.

Sy Reene

A simple footnote on weights is all that's needed, eg "listed weights are average, based on values supplied by the component suppliers, subject to manufacturing variances" or somesuch. However, as already mentioned, most finished bike makers don't even provide their own frameset weights for each size. If they did, at least then folks might be able to do their own calculated complete weights if they wanted to look up all of the individual bits and add them together.

bcpriess

As weight goes, I mostly want to know if a bike is generally closer to 20, 25, or 30 pounds. If a mfr said bike x generally weighs between 25 and 29 pounds, that is helpful, and specific enough since that is within the range of water bottles and other gear impact on total weight. But I don't care that much as it turns out or I wouldn't ride what I ride.

Kapusta

Well I guess that blows the theory being passed around this thread that companies not publishing weighs have something to hide.

Also, it took me about 1 minute of searching to find a claimed weight on the Straggler.

“Frame weight is a claimed 2.27kg (5lb) and the fork sits at 2.3lb (1,050g). “

Spoonrobot 

Here's your link you forgot: https://www.bikeradar.com/news/surly...eurobike-2013/

The example I saw weighed at a Surly dealer in 2016 was 4.4 pounds for the 54cm frame and 1.9 pounds for the fork uncut. Looks like something changed in the 3 years since your quoted source and/or the production run. In this case it really seems like obfuscation is a net negative, potentially false information is online but could be easily cleared up with the proper value specified on the manufacturers website.

Kapusta

Except that weights on manufacturers websites are notoriously unreliable.

My 48cm Fog cutter was around 4.5 lbs.... a quarter pound over claimed weight.

I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that it is more honest to give an unreliable number and say “this is the number” than to say “we can’t give a reliable number”.

To me, a company that chooses to do the latter is the one being more honest. They are not making any false claims.

Weight as a spec is totally different from something like bottom bracket size. The bottom bracket type is a categorical value, and what they tell you is exactly what it is.

Geo numbers are also known quantities, if you know the fork length being assumed. I have a far bigger beef with geo charts that leave off the assumed fork length than companies that don’t give a weight.

If you ask me, being that obsessed with the weight (especially on a budget brand like Surly) is just a bad idea. Most frames of similar material, size, purpose and price are going to be well within a pound of each other. There are so many other factors that matter far more: geo (many factors there), frame stiffness, ride quality tire clearance, brake type, bb type, axle type, mounts, cable routing are all things that I find far more compelling than small differences in frame weight.

FWIW, I’ve got two Surlys (Karate Monkey and Wednesday) and one Soma (Fog Cutter). I never even considered the weight of any of the frames. I knew none of them would be light. What I did notice is that the quality control on the Soma was pretty bad, and the ride quality is not quite as good as the Salsa Casseroll it replaced. Those are things that actually matter. Knowing what frame is a half pound heavier or lighter? Who cares?

If you want to make frame decisions based on claimed weight differences, and avoid brands that do not publish (even though you can usually find the info elsewhere) go ahead. Some people like to be lied to. Its your loss, IMO. You even said you would have bought the Surlys instead.

Trakhak

People who've been around a while in the bike industry remember that, back in the '80s, bike tire manufacturers used to manipulate naive weight weenies looking for the lightest tires by marking tires as wider than they actually measured; e.g., tires that measured 23 mm wide inflated on the standard rim were marked 700 x 25, etc. Compare the weight of that "25-mm" tire to the weight of a real 25-mm tire, and of course you'd buy the lighter one.

Continental unilaterally ended that game by earning a reputation for manufacturing very high quality tires and marking them honestly.

If I ran a bike company, I'd be highly tempted to leave the weights of the bikes unannounced, just to avoid having to participate in those kinds of games.

Sy Reene

ahh.. we're being saved from ourselves. That's why some bike company's size 56s are the same real size as another company's 58s, or god forbid the sizing is in S/M/L/XL.. we'd never be able to figure it out for ourselves and would buy the wrong size bike based on the wrong weight information etc.

livedarklions

This isn't an advocacy issue. The question is why so many manufacturers and sellers won't supply the information. You're rejecting the explanations most often offered, so what do you think is really going on?
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livedarklions

Well, isn't that the point? Most of us understand that the measure of size is usually of only one part of the geometry and go and actually try riding the bike to see if it actually fits. If you're that obsessed with the weight of the bike, go weigh it yourself.

Sy Reene

More industry apologizing and deflecting to making it seem that to want to have some info available, that should be available, is a character flaw.. BTW there's a whole WW forum that I think was founded on this stuff. Trek can publish at least one size weight, why can't others? Heck, Trek even goes to 2 decimal points on the frame size they've chosen to supply the weight for (which is in the neighborhood of +/-10 grams). The explanation I think most offered in this thread that there's a fear of being sued or some sort of ridiculous supposition of liability if they publish an incorrect weight. Trek is shaking in their boots.

Kapusta

It proves what can be done? It proves that they can put up some number and nobody cares if it is accurate.

guachi

I won't buy a bike if the manufacturer can't give me a weight. I bought a Domane and Trek doesn't hide that the bike is a bit of a porker. But at least they gave me that information.

I-Like-To-Bike

That is to be expected, BF has a whole gaggle of posters who are would-be legal experts/armchair sleuths, posting all sorts of wacky suppositions about legal issues.

Why not? After all, some lawyers feel free to pontificate on non-legal issues on BF.

Maelochs

The premise of this thread is that bike companies are doping something wrong by not publishing the weights of their bicycles. So every post based on that premise is attacking the industry, and everyone who offers answers to the OP's question is insulted as being "industry apologists."

Fact is, few if any of us have dogs in this fight. Most of us ignored the inherent bias in the formulation of the question and tried to offer possible answers. For this, were were insulted. Welcome to the internet.

Bike manufacturers are under no obligation to provide any information about their bikes. Any information they provide, they provide because they think it will increase sales. Any information they do not provide, they do not provide because they do not think it will increase sales, or might hurt sales. Simple as can be ... except when the conspiracy theorists let their tinfoil hats get slightly askew, the aliens' thought-wave machines start making them think suspicious thought about Everything.

There is no conspiracy. People in the marketing department looked over the competition's ads, decided how much they needed to include, and left out the rest. Obviously (see Giant's different policies in different countries) different marketing departments in different regions came to different conclusions about what would be best included or omitted.

I am not saying that people who see conspiracies everywhere, and think that any business employing more than three people is inherently evil, that their points of view are ridiculous. Really I am not.

Sy Reene

Not really people claiming conspiracy theories. Go back and read the the first dozen or so reasons provided, which implied either a) Impossibility; b) final product could differ from specs provided on their own websites; c) legal disclosures necessary would require 16,000-word diatribes. Your own post #28 in this thread subscribed the reasons to to a, b, and c. However, I think the real reason is as you're now saying.. ie. it's a marketing decision. Piled onto this, plenty of posts implying that people are way too obsessive about weight, and if you want to know the weight of a bike you're buying that there is something wrong with you.

And it's not that they're doing something wrong, it's more that they're not making available information that they could. I don't see anything wrong in people asking for more information out of the bike companies -- especially the ones who comparatively (to other bike companies) don't provide any.

wolfchild

I purchased 3 different bikes long time ago and never even considered checking how much they weigh...Now 13 years later and after riding thousands of miles on them I still don't know how much my bikes weigh.

Gconan

Why don't people want us to know how much a bike weighs before we buy it?

Rollfast

In CCCP you ride it, period?

Rollfast

Did you ask your wife what she weighed before proposing?

Okay, that is your WIFE.

I know what that implies for the N+x crowd. We are happy..

BengalCat

This thread is new to me having just seen it. So, my apologies if the following has already been posted. Trek on all their road bikes, (three lines), and the one line of mountain bikes I checked gave the weight from the cheapest bike to the most expensive: For the road bikes all were 56 cm frames and the one mountain bike was a medium-size frame.

livedarklions

Anyone ever actually check Trek's weight figures for accuracy?

Spesh and Giant don't do it, Trek does. Liability for false claims is a real thing. Companies weigh legal risk vs. marketing benefit. It doesn't make us wrong about why if one company makes that cost/benefit calculation differently.

I don't care whether you feel a need to boycott bikes without published weight claims. That wasn't the question in the OP. I do think there's very sound reasons to believe that the published weights aren't going to be very accurate.

indyfabz

I don't worry about bike weight for touring. For road, I go custom, so there's no pre-purchase weight to list. But some of y'all keep up the handwringing.

Last ride 76 

Go to the Weightweenie site (at starbike.com I think) I always just Google weightweenie.com.... You will see manufacturers have been misunderstanding components and frames since the first scale was invented. Risk? It's just not necessary for them to do. It could be done. Even with baseline caveats like "as equipped", "as specified", or as pictured". Consumers,' taken as a whole, don't make it a demand, as part of their purchasing decision. So they skate.