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Columbus foco question.

Old 05-19-19, 08:18 PM
  #1  
Jonnyd613
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Columbus foco question.

Hey folks I’m currently looking at a bike in Columbus foco tubing and am questioning the durability of it. I rid a mix of well paved bike paths and sometimes rough city streets. The bikes I’ve ridden in the past have been vintage steel that have handled the roads ok but I are heavy and would like to try newer shifting and lighter weight.
My question is if anyone has experience with foco tubing in their bikes and if I should be nervous about the thin wall tubing. Is it safe to strap to a bike rack like my old bikes or do I have to transport it in my car? Any help is greatly appreciated!
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Old 05-19-19, 08:58 PM
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Nessism
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Foco is pretty thin in the middle of the top and down tubes. I wouldn't carry a bike like that on a bike rack unless there are features in the rack that spread the load and don't create pressure points on the frame tubes.
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Old 05-20-19, 07:46 AM
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Originally Posted by Jonnyd613
Hey folks I’m currently looking at a bike in Columbus foco tubing and am questioning the durability of it. I rid a mix of well paved bike paths and sometimes rough city streets. The bikes I’ve ridden in the past have been vintage steel that have handled the roads ok but I are heavy and would like to try newer shifting and lighter weight.
My question is if anyone has experience with foco tubing in their bikes and if I should be nervous about the thin wall tubing. Is it safe to strap to a bike rack like my old bikes or do I have to transport it in my car? Any help is greatly appreciated!
Your vintage steel bikes (and mine) were most likely made of these commercial steel products: Reynolds 531, CrMo, or Columbus Cyclex (their branding of CrMo). These have roughly the same strength. You can only make a tube so thin and still expect it to resist denting and crumpling, aka buckling. The stronger the steel, the more resistance to crumpling a tube will have, the bigger wrench you need to hit it with to make a dent in the tube wall. So for a given desired resistance to crumpling, stronger steels can be supplied with thinner walls and hence the finished frame will have lighter weight.

High-strength modern steel for bikes include Columbus Nivacrom, Reynolds 753/853/953 (this last is just about the strongest of all), TruTemper OX-Plat (another of the top materials), and too many others to list. These are (based on metallurgical test results) something like 40% stronger (plus or minus, we're just using rough numbers) than the older group of steels. Columbus Foco is made of this Nivacrom. It should be thinner and lighter than an older SL-based frame, which can still make an awesome bike, by the same proportion as the strengths. You can Google Columbus Foco and read what Columbus has to say about it - you should be able to find maybe 5 catalog pages in English.

Compared to an old English 3-speed from the '70's or before, these are all light, bicycles that may feel fragile. But first they were designed to take racing stresses applied by the strongest riders in the world, and what you can buy today may or may not be racing only. And many of us steel bike freaks have been riding full-racing steel bikes on the streets for decades. They're a little stronger than eggshells.
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Old 05-20-19, 06:03 PM
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Thanks for the reply’s guys I think I might have to keep looking I’m not much of a racer and don’t really want to have to worry about pot holes and curbs.
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Old 05-23-19, 03:29 PM
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I have a 19 year old bike that is Foco tubing for the main tubes, Thron for downtube and bracket.
Holding up just fine.
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Old 12-12-19, 11:35 AM
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Jonnyd613 did you buy it? Sorry about the zombie thread, I was looking up foco tubing on Google and it popped up first!
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Old 12-12-19, 11:47 AM
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No I ended up buying a mid 70s motobecane grand jubilee still light but plenty rigid the "Nervex style" lugged Reynolds 531 steel is sweet. The concern that I had with the Foco tube was the bike I looked at had a small dent on the top tube that the owner said happened while dismounting the bike and his cleat tapped the tube. Whether or not that’s how it happened I’m a little rough with my bikes and put them on a rack on the back of my car and it wasn’t going to work for me.
That being said it was sooooo light and very cool just not for my urban/country rough ridding roads. Hope this helps!
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