capnjonny 

I have been working on a number of vintage race and sport touring bikes lately. The good ones all have frame weight of about 4.5 lbs and all up road weight about 24 lbs using clincher rims and street tires ,varying slightly with frame size.

I am wondering , what would I need to do to get the riding weight down to 20 lbs. or less?

What would be the low hanging fruit? Then what else ? trade offs between performance and durability?

I am not wedded to drop bars. Actually I would much prefer upright. It will be a city bike

MiloFrance

The title had me worried for a second there! Thought you might be going drillum on the frame... Wheels are the quickest way to drop weight imho, and street tyres don't sound very svelte either. Saddles too. Brooks B17 vs something modern can be a big difference but it depends on what you have already.

Chombi1 

SS, Tubs and all plastic saddle....

Dfrost 

randyjawa 

Just borrow a scale from one of the more imaginative forum members. Seems that some people get scales that show their bikes weighing less than my scale does:-(

In all my years of collecting, I have never had a steel frame bike come in under the twenty pound mark. Not one, although I have seen many forum members claim to have such bikes. The only bikes I have owned, that did come in under twenty pounds, sported aluminium frame/fork sets.

Little reductions in weight do add up but not a heck of a lot, unless you are into serious competition. The best weight reducing bang for the buck is, as another forum member mentioned, a decent wheel set and I do mean decent. Nothing impacts ride quality as much as decent wheels. Here is something for you to try...

Take a wheel, any wheel, and grip it by the axle. Now, tip the wheel from side to side. Big deal, right? Now, still holding the wheel as described, give it a good spin and then try tipping it from side to side. Do you feel that anti-tip resistance? Of course you do. Now...

The heavier the extremities of the wheel are, the more sluggish you bike will feel. Wheel diameter impacts this also. The bike will accelerate more slowly and brake more slowly and negatively impact the maneuverability of the machine, offering a sluggish feel. That is my opinion, of course.

So, you want the lightest vintage steel bicycle you can find. Me too but I know that the only real advantage, for me anyway, is to be able to tell others how light my bike is. This Cyclops, as pictured, came in at 20 pounds six ounces, the lightest steel bike I have ever owned...

SteelThisBike

I just looked into this with one of my bikes, and concluded there's no point in doing too much on a steel bike, especially a vintage beauty. Wheels, yes, and you can lose a bit. Light wheels with tubulars, vintage and lighter. But the money involved in shedding weight...I just don't think it's worth it, and a bunch of carbon would just look wrong. I can get my carbon bike down to 18 or less without too much crazy spending, but to get my steel bikes under 20 would cost a fortune. Besides, then you lose the awesome vintage equipment. I think the cheaper and better thing to do is ride the hell out of them and shed five pounds off of me. Or maybe 7.

Kovkov

gearbasher

The most important things to lighten are all the rotating parts. As far as lightening anything else, we all can stand to lose 5 pounds off our bodies, It's cheaper and healthier.

abellanti

I've had one vintage steel bike under 20lbs, a trek 170 built with reynolds 753 tubing coupled the some of the lightest components of the time. It cost a fortune to assemble. So I'd say just buy some light wheels, saddle...or be prepared to spend alot of money. FYI, I can't tell any difference between the 19lb Trek and my 21 lbs bikes.

Shrevvy 

Salamandrine 

A typical top end racing frame weighed around 4.5 lbs without a fork. Add another ~1.5 lbs for the fork. The difference then is about 2 lbs vs a weight weenie carbon frame.

Modern cassette hubs are lighter than vintage hubs plus a freewheel. Vintage tubular rims and tires were lighter than modern clinchers. So that's more or less a wash. Also, there's no such thing as a vintage wheel. Nobody bought wheelsets. Wheels were comprised of hubs and rims, with spokes holding them together. Rims were changed fairly frequently if you did racer type miles.

Typical 531 or SL race bike with campy gruppo was about 21 lbs. Could easily be 20 even with race wheels and maybe a couple period weight weenie parts instead of the usual SR/NR.

If you're getting 24lb builds with top shelf vintage race frames, it's quite probably because you are building them up with cheaper parts than they originally had. Because it's possible to buy these old race frames cheaply now, it's easy to forget that they were incredibly expensive once. That's why they didn't get thrown in the trash like the 5 gazillion Huffy's and Murrays.

wrk101

Tires, tubes, wheels, saddle, pedals. I've also gone with modern external bearing BB and cranksets. Really light vintage tubular wheel sets are out there, few want them so you can pick them up at a reasonable/low price.



+10 Accurate scale, if you don't currently own one, as many reported weights around here are on the light size.

Johno59

Fixed wheel and one front brake will shave five pounds off any bike. Plastic wheels , bars and seat post will get you a pound or so.

Salamandrine 

Back OT, yeah, tires, wheels, pedals, saddle. For the rest, same as always: count the grams and see where you can lose weight. Find and replace the heavy stuff with lighter stuff. Seatpost? Stem? BB? Cassette?

20grit

So, you can save some weight with pedals. The difference between some old 105 pedals and a set of crank brothers candy 3 pedals is around 100 grams. You can go lighter by using egg beaters.

Tubular rims can lead to some weight savings. Reduced spoke count will be a minor savings.

You might shave off half a pound with the above.

Saddles weigh a lot. That would be the obvious place to look for savings. But, as others have said, they aren't a rotational mass.

sdn40

Bragging rights are fun I guess
But look at it this way - what's the difference between 204 Lbs and 202 Lbs ? Not much. Because at the end of the day - depending on the rider - those are the weights you're really dealing with
Short of competitive riding, that's how I would look at it anyway

big chainring 

Take the pedals off and weigh it. Most bike weights listed for carbon wonder bikes are sans pedals. Pedals are now part of your shoes?...I dont know.

A guy I knew who was into time trials built up a light bike. His bike used Weinmann 500 brakes, Huret Jubilee rear derailleur(5 speed total). TA single ring crank. Weyless hubs, Fiamme yellow 280 gr rims. He routed the brake cables out the bottom of the brake levers for improved aerodynamics and shorter cables. Unica plastic saddle. It was somewhere in the 20 pound range.

mitchmellow62

For the truly anal I suggest weight weenies: https://weightweenies.starbike.com/listings.php .

It would be mildly interesting to see what combination of parts would produce the lightest steel bike, although it would be largely academic for me (I know where I could personally reduce bike/rider weight by 20 lb.). Of course, carbon would probably have to be in the equation for the very lightest(fork, seatpost, handlebars, crank).

easyupbug 

Those two pounds with me in the saddle are 207 and 209 lbs, surprisingly that 0.01% difference is also undetectable to me and my computer does not seem to think I am any faster with the lighter bike a 58cm 753R custom than I am with the other C&Vs.

Shrevvy 

due ruote 

HarborBandS

I just built up a 23" (~58cm) steel frame (1987 Schwinn Super Sport) that came in at 20.3 lbs without top-end components on it. This is the weight without pedals and water bottle cages, which is how manufacturers state their weights. It has Shimano 105 5800 for the drivetrain and brakes, and an alloy wheelset that is about 1700 grams (not the lightest with 32mm depth). The seatpost, handlebars, and stem are 7075 series aluminum instead of 6061. The tires are Michelin Pro 4 Endurance V2 with butyl tubes.

I did get a pretty large weight savings switching to a threadless carbon fork. I probably took 1.5 pounds off the original quill stem/headset/chromoly fork setup. Not everyone is willing to go this route.

I have no doubt that I could upgrade some drivetrain elements and lighten this up to under 20 lbs without a lot of effort, but it's not a priority. And there are steel frames considerably lighter than the one I started out with. So I would say that it's definitely possible to get a steel frame down below 20 lbs, if you go with a carbon threadless fork. A carbon wheelset would also drop hundreds of grams.

revcp 

Carbon wheels run tubeless. That's about the only way to lighten a steel frame apart from putting on a lighter saddle. I suppose you could also go with a carbon seatpost and carbon bars, but the biggest weight savings, and the surest way to boost speed, would be carbon wheels tubeless.

Fahrenheit531 

You win the thread, Randy.

I got my 86 Peloton, when it was set up as single-speed with clinchers, down to 21lbs even. Anything lighter probably would have involved CF and substantial expense.

The Golden Boy