Robert Foster

I have finally acquired enough spare parts to start considering building an N+1 from scratch. I have even looked at steel lugged frames just to have one. I have a Shimano rear derailleur and a SRAM rear derailleur that will cover a 10 speed. I have several wheel sets and with different 10 speed cassettes mounted so I want to build a 10 speed. I also like bifters so I want to build one with bifters so I don’t need down tube shifter bosses.


So here is the question. Steel used to have a lot of flex in the bottom bracket area, at least in my old Viscount Aerospace Pro, that was pretty much gone in my last Aluminum frame. Are the newer steel frames stiffer than the old 531- 4110 frames or if I plan on climbing should I look at something else?

Cleave

Hi,

I have to respond, if for nothing else, because I had a Lambert Pro which preceded the Viscount by a year or two. The aerospace tubing was just 4130 steel and it had the aluminum "death" fork. Fortunately, I only weighed about 120 lbs while I had it. I raced on it as a Junior and eventually cracked the head tube along it's length. The crankset and pressed in bottom bracket were also a nightmare.

Regarding steel frames, I am still not that heavy and you can certainly feel a difference between the bottom bracket stiffness of carbon versus steel, but I don't understand why people think that steel bikes are too flexible. For decades, professional racers rode steel frames faster than I'll ever be able to ride a carbon frame.

A good steel frame is a joy to ride and cheap steel bike feel cheap by comparison. In short, if you want a steel bike that rides well it isn't going to be cheap though it will probably be cheaper than a carbon frame. You might want to check out Serotta as they make stock steel frames which a reasonably priced. Most of the other builders only do custom steel frames. I don't know how they ride but I think Specialized makes a steel bike but I don't know if they sell it as a frame.

Hope this helps and glad that you survived your Viscount ownership.

Robert Foster

Yes, I had the dreaded death fork but it never broke on me. But if I stood on it to climb it would hit the derailleur in anything but the middle gears.

It wasn't a lugged frame but for the time it was reasonably light or at least I thought till my neighbor got something even lighter.
I haven’t been on a steel bike in years, except a friends Bianchi, and it does ride different. But like I said I am not interested in Vintage unless the frame will take a 130 hub. I did see that Masi sells a steel frame called the Gran Critium and it is threadless. Just don’t know what they charge yet.

stapfam

Only ever ridden a couple of steel frame extensively and they were offroad.One was a Kona Explosif that I still have and that Kona means that I can confer with the fact that Steel gives a compliant frame. Never needed Suspension on that bike as fast across rough ground and you could see the wheelbase extending as the frame flexed with the bumps. Never gave a problem on the bottom bracket though. However the next one was a custom build in Lightweight steel and that one did cost me a few spokes and rear deraillers when BB flex caused the rear deraiiler to hit the spokes.

However this was really aggressive offroad riding but you take your choice on frame weight and then pay the consequences. Don't know if a "GOOD" steel frame nowadays would have the BB flex problem bit I dare say that you could chance your arm and ask in the "Road Forum". Once you get through the insults for daring to ask such a stupid question about such inferior materials for a modern bike-- You may get a few frames recommended that don't flex and ride well.

chasm54

Depends on the frame and the materials used. My steel expedition tourer is the stiffest bike I own, but it is a heavyweight built for load-carrying. Generally speaking, light+stiff = expensive, but still not especially pricey compared with good carbon frames. And a degree of flex is a good thing, of course - laterally stiff but vertically compliant, as they say.

I'm taking it you want a road bike. I have a Kona steel frame - it's a single speed, as it happens, but I believe it is the same tubing as they use for their geared road bike - which isn't the lightest frame I have ever had, but is plenty stiff enough for me, a 200lb rider. Getting more specific, if you look on e Reynolds and Columbus websites you'll get a lot of technical information about the characteristics of different tubing. Some of the more notable UK frame builders use Reynolds 853 for their top-of-the-range road bikes.

BluesDawg

While I doubt you will find steel frames as stiff in the bottom bracket and had tube as the stiffest new carbon bikes, modern frame design in all frame materials, including steel, has evolved to being much stiffer than the old frames. My Bridgestone RB-1 had more bottom bracket sway than my Salsa Casseroll and way more than my Roubaix, but it handled great and I climbed a lot of mountains on it.

Road Fan

It's really not right to generalize. The feel of different steel frames varies based on tubing wall thickness, tubing diameter, location of butting, and quality of joining. Some will be flexy and lively, and others may be harsh. Modern ones have focused on reducing weight based on larger diameters and thinner walls, though traditional designs are still available. More money gets you more, smoothness plus efficiency plus excellent handling plus load-carrying (within limits). I would not make any generalizations based on any steel frame, especially not an outlier like a Viscount.

As far as modern being available that are stiffer than flexy old ones, such as the early Raleigh International? Yes. Stiffer than the best old ones? Hard to say, need to make a precise comparison rather than generalizations.

Check out the Rivendell Roadeo, the Boxdog Pelican, a Torelli steel frame, and the Velo-Orange Randonneur. See what you think about those.

As far as BB flex, yes, a lot of bikes do that. One of the fastest American riders at Paris-Brest-Paris rides steel, and usually vintage steel. Flex does not necessarily imply slowness, in fact the physics of that claim is hard to understand, and I'm an engineer.

chasm54

This is interesting. Would you mind taking the trouble to expand on it? I was always told that lateral flex dissipated effort that should be going into propelling you forward, whereas vertical flex smoothed out some of the bumps and therefore both reduced fatigue and, potentially, reduced the negative impact on speed of a rough surface. Is this not right?

CrankyFranky

In my younger days when my quads were more massive, I used to tromp on the cranks on my 531 butted Atala, and yes, the bb did flex, and with non-indexed dt shifters, you had to have the front derailer set just right within it's range or it would be scraped by the chain. But I learned to pedal at higher revs and drop a gear or two, and frame flexed less. Also, despite the flex, 100mile + rides were not exhausting, and IMHO frame flex is not indicative of poor design.

A neighbor is trying to get me interested in a Dedaccai Griffe in my size that he has... but I'm hesitant partly because I don't feel the need for another bike, and partly because if/when I do get another bike, it will be steel, and i'll most likely spring for an oversized tubeset such as the EL-OS or such ilk. May be a pipe dream for me with the arthritis becoming more insistent.

Anyway, my three cents: consider modifying your riding style, don't dismiss a frame that flexes, and perhaps seek out a more modern steel frame that would be less flexible in the bb. Unless you're going to limit yourself to shorter rides, too stiff a frame can result in a less happy experience.

Robert Foster

I am beginning to feel better about including steel in my frame search and have discovered that Masi and some others do make some steel frames that will accept a modern 10 speed wheel. But I was also operating on the assumption that steel would be considerably less than it is turning out to be.

Not out of line but in most cases more than I expected. It also seems as if for me finding the frame I want to start with will consume as much time as the build may. I may have to start looking at garage and estate sales and maybe thrift stores. This build may turn into a quest. Right now the material may become secondary.

Road Fan

To say that flex involves energy loss is to say that some of the energy applied by your legs is converted to heat, from an engineering or physics point of view. For this to happen requires that the objects flexing are what engineers call "inelastic." Inelastic materials flex by converting energy to heat, and that energy is truly lost to the mechanical system. Conservation of energy still applies, that lost energy would be converted to heat. But the steel of bicycle frames, and all steels, is highly elastic like a spring. The spring, and the bike frame is springy, bends by storing energy in the shape change of the steel tube (it's small, but it's there), and returns it when the tube springs back. It springs back when the next half pedal stroke occurs. This is all because it IS a steel frame and steel does not significantly convert energy due to flexing into heat - no steel does this. It doesn't lose energy, it stores energy and returns it on a cyclic basis.

I think what people have been seeing is that if you press down hard on the pedal on a flexy bike, less power is transmitted to the chain at the moment you hit it hard. So a less flexy bike will have snappier pedal response. But if it doesn't translate to energy dissipation over time, speed is not reduced over a distance, since speed is a result of the rate of energy transfer, also known as power transfer. At least this is a simple physics interpretation. It's not without problems, however.

Now that I've opened the door, I'm gonna duck and watch what happens.

Robert Foster

My problem with flex was as I described it earlier with the chain rubbing the derailleur during hard sprints and standing on it over short hills. But I have no particular prejudice to any frame material only to how it works in a more modern setting for club rides and centuries. As I research this more I am beginning to feel like I am getting buried by choices.

As an aside I also am beginning to see why bicycle manufacturing moved off shore. Domestic frames are way more expensive than I thought and some of them take forever to ship. Just an observation.

dedhed

https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...STI-s-or-Ergos

Road Fan

I guess that's true. Among the more notable recent small shops, Velo-Orange and Rawlands do not build frames. They design frames then find a fabricator off shore, with prices (for steel) in the $700 to 800 range. Boxdog Cycles has designed the Pelican but has it made by an excellent American builder, Ahren Rogers in Madison, WI, for a price around $1300 if I recall. Similarly Boulder Bicycles, builds the Boulder Randonneur onshore for about $1600 (all my numbers could be out of date).

What's your intended budget, and do you have any specific geometry goals or restrictions? There are a lot of good used frame/fork sets out there.

If your main point with flex is operating integrity (freedom from rubbing, et cetera), do you spin or mash? Also, perhaps a few more millimeters of BB length would provide adequate chainring and crank arm clearance.

Serotta, in the '80s, produced the Colorado line, which had a larger tube diameter at the BB to stiffen it. They turn up on Ebay fairly regularly, for sometimes a lot less than $1000.

There are also genuine construction differences in steel frames, in addition to tubing diameter differences. One principle is to design the BB shell and to miter all the tubes that enter it (especially including the chainstay) so that they are brazed not only to the BB shell but to each other. One example of a frame where this was not done is the Peugeot UO-8, known as a flexible frame. Many frames of days gone by; in my experience the California Masis, Mondonico, classic early '80s Treks, English Woodrup, and Raleigh-Carlton Super Course) were built this way and at least the Masis, Woodrups, and Mondonicos were known quantities in the peletons of the day and hence able to withstand professional strength and loading. My own bikes do not show such behaviors, but that could be just my pedaling or lower strength. BTW, all these frames I've just mentioned have the traditional tube diameters.

chasm54

OK thanks. Speaking as a non-physicist, I'd speculate that the question is how the power transfer operates as the frame springs back? That is, when the stored power in the flexed frame is released, does it propel the bike forward as opposed (for example) to raising the rider upwards? In which case the energy isn't lost, but neither is it usefully employed?

Road Fan

You're exactly right. I mentioned my simplistic view has problems, and that is the main one.

Two things can happen when the BB flexes: the BB axis can rotate so the spindle ends move up and down, or it can move so the BB ends move forward and backward. The former is a result of the vertical force of the pedals, and the latter is the result of the chainring pulling on the chain, at the top of the chainring. That force, when resisted by the inertia of the bike, tends to compress the drive side chainstay. If it also elongates the other chainstay, we have the BB moving side to side as well as rotating. Considering the motion of the BB communicaitng to the downtube, this lateral motion would also rotate the BB up and down.

This is pretty complicated for a thought experiment, it really needs to be addressed using finite element analysis software. I don't have any.

This all assumes the BB shell and spindle are rigid, and that flex is limited to the tubes. Might be a good assumption, but I don't know. How to handle component flex is another of the problems.

Wogster

Bicycle manufacturing moved off shore for three reasons, the first being that in North America (or Europe for that matter), you need to pay an employee about $20/hr in salary and benefits, in China you pay a worker at the same skill level about ¥10/hr at current exchange rates that's about US$1.565 and no benefits. The second reason is that in the United States, you can't have a guy on the shop floor pass gas without needing to fill out 15 forms for 13 different government agencies, and all those regulations and forms end up costing a bundle to deal with, in China nobody cares about the environment or pollution, it's all about getting hard currency. The third reason, Shimano manufactures most of their components in Malaysia or Japan, a short ship ride across the South China Sea and around Vietnam from Malaysia, and Taiwan isn't much further. Japan is about the same distance in the other direction.

I would assume you have a bike already, so set it up for club rides, then add a steel frame bike for the longer stuff, put on a triple crank and a Brooks saddle, maybe add a set of fenders and your all set, heck add a set of racks and your all set for a multi-day ride.

ftwelder

I build bicycle frames from several different types of material. Steel tubes are available in different diameters, wall thickness and alloys that can be anything from extremely compliant to dead-stiff. You can also get the exact fit, geometry and features you desire.

It's a lot easier to buy a ready-made imported frame and perhaps easier to get what you are looking for if you as there are so many choices and they can usually be had for a small fraction of the retail price if you shop carefully. You can buy/sell/trade until you find what you really like. If buying new, you either need to be armed with some experience with that year/model because the person writing the copy or making the sale likely knows nothing about the bike.

Since I make frames I would urge you to shop a bit with your local builders and see what kind of deal you can make. Much of what a builder offers beyond welding/painting is stuff you could figure out on your own. Providing complete geometry and specification cuts a huge amount of time and even having some latitude on headset, BB platform or paint color can make a big price difference. You can also shop for blems. If I have even the slightest dent in a frame tube, I put it aside and build a new replacement frame to fill the order.

alcanoe

BB flex is not material dependent as much as design dependent it would seem to me. You design for stiffness desired by controlling the tube diameter, shape and thickness in that area for the characteristics of the material used. Even different steels have different characteristics which have to be properly accomodated in the design.

When I upgraded my crankset some years back, I noticed a major difference in stiffness to my surprise. Both old and new were aluminum. The old had solid crank arms, the new were hollow, bigger diameter plus a little lighter. The old crankset was a cheaper unit that came with the bike.

Al

Robert Foster

I did read the article on cold setting an older frame but I am not sure that is the route I want to go. I have two Ultegra cranks with Ultegra and Dura Ace Bottom brackets that I want to use for the crank set. Not sure if I will use my Force derailleur or not. I may stick with Shimano.

The Masi Gran Critium frame seems to go for Under $600.00 new but we do have some builders in the San Diego area I may check with. I will expand my search because I am in no hurry at this point. I can make sure I have all of the other parts before I get the frame.

Wogster, thanks for the suggestion but if you notice I live where fenders are needed about 10 or 12 days a year. The only tripple I have is my old MTB/Utility bike and I use a mid cage derailleur and a larger cassette on my road bikes for climbing. I am one of those people that doesn't have a Brooks bottom. If you remember my Viscount story that was the saddle it came with. There are two saddles that work well for me and I more than likely will stick with them. This new build will be more of a century and weekend coffee shop bike. One of the looks I am thinking of is the old classic road machine but with modern shifters and derailleurs. Off to do a local builder search.

Hermes

Frame flex is a somewhat interesting discussion. Somewhat in that it depends who you are and what are your goals and objectives. When I purchased my first track bike, I met with a friend who is a 4 time and current world sprint champion. He said any frame / wheelset performs well at 300 watts in the straight away but standing in the turns at 1500 watts or over 2HP, it is hard to hold a flexible frame in the pole lane.

In a 500 meter time trial, we practice the standing start. From zero speed, we stand and lunge forward pushing down and pulling up as hard as possible. The most important pedal stroke is the first one. Each subsequent pedal stroke is less important - the start is everything.

Sprinters pride themselves on their ability to gap a competitor. They do this with with the first couple of pedal strokes. A sprinter starts his sprint from 200 meters and generally there are 20 pedal strokes to the finish. So the first 2 to 4 pedal strokes represent 10 to 20% of this race.

A flexible frame that gives back the power it absorbs on the rebound is not of interest to trackies and sprinters. Our race can be over if we miss a pedal stroke.

Flexible frames that move laterally are, IMO, not great to ride independent on what power loss or no loss theory one wants to embrace. Vertically, compliant frames with dampening can provide a great ride and I find that an asset.

Wogster

Didn't note you were from So.Cal., okay so skip the fenders, and yeah some people love Brooks, some people hate Brooks, but the concept is still there, you have one bike for club rides, which is probably more performance oriented, so in adding another one, you want something that is more comfort oriented. A bike where you can comfortably laze in the saddle all day, maybe run a compact crank if you don't want a triple, maybe put the bars a little higher. The idea isn't a bike that will do zero to sixty in less then 2 seconds, it's a bike you can get on, when you don't really have anything to do that day, and ride to the next town. I'd still throw a rack on the back.... I would also get a frame that can accommodate fenders and nice wide tires with the fenders installed. One frame to consider would be something like a Surly LHT...

BikeArkansas

I am 220 pounds and I ride pretty hard and do not find flex to be a problem with my steel Gunnar Roadie. This bike is built by Waterford Bikes in Waterford, WI. I had to wait a few weeks for delivery, but it was well worth the wait. I bought all the parts and built it myself, with some help from my brother since he is more mechanical inclined than I am.

My single speed bike is a Jamis Sputnik, which is also steel. The steel is not quite the quality of the Gunnar. I did have some flex from this bike, but I think much of that was from the wheels. The flex is mostly felt while standing during a steep switchback.

Since I started riding these steel bikes, along with a mostly aluminum Specialized S Works E5, I no longer own a plastic bike.

Robert Foster

You know I never thought I would be interested in a bike that would take wider tires than a 25 or at most a 28. People suggested CX bikes and I looked at them in horror looking at their MTB type brakes and semi knobby tires. The only experience I ever had was my Masi Café Solo that came with 28 commuter tires. Not my favorite ride. Now on some of the back roads I find myself on a wider tire doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.

GFish

For a reasonable priced steel frame, check out Soma.
https://www.somafab.com/

I'm new to road cycling, and this steel bike is working well for me.

As for flex, I weigh around 190 and stand on the cranks all the time going up hills and never noticed any flex, the shifting works fine and no rubbing from the chain, the bike feels solid. I know one thing for sure, compared to aluminum, this bike rides smoother with less vibration, a very comfortable ride.

good luck...