Koyote

Source?

Regardless, it’s pretty clear that Chro-Moly has not been “phased out.” I can walk into my LBS and verify that.

Leinster

It hasn’t been “phased out,” but the OP is correct to at the very least say it’s been “phased back”. In the early-mid 90s, if I walked into a random bike shop, almost every bike would have been built of some form of steel alloy. What bikes of other materials that were available, would have been in display cases, or the shop window with a crazy price tag on them, and with no more guarantee of them being the future of cycling than Softride frames or spinaci bars or spinergy wheels.

CroMo is now the distant 3rd in the material of choice, and probably not far ahead of Ti in the higher end market.

Koyote

Except the OP didn’t say that. (See thread title.)

Leinster

If there was no such thing as hyperbole, then there would be no such thing as BF.

Miele Man

And that's not mention finding someone capable of doing it without overheating or melting the frame.

Cheers

Ironfish653

Exactly: OCLV Treks were Formula-1 level stuff, and how exotic those big-tube Kleins and Cannondales looked, and how a 21lb rigid MTB like the P-21 or MB-0 was so light, it was ‘race use only’

HTupolev

What are you basing this off of? While replacing a dropout on a tig-welded steel frameset isn't an entirely trivial process, paying a steel framebuilder to perform the service is generally astronomically cheaper than replacing the frameset outright, at least if the frame didn't come from Walmart or something. Typical market rate seems to be <$100. For instance, here's the R&E frame repair service listing (and R&E specializes in TIG-welded steel framesets).

frogman

Yes, getting ready

elcruxio

The mythical bicycle tourists. I've yet to meet him/her but I'll give them my regards when I meet them.

Availability. Also weight is relative as you well know. Steel is three times heavier but also three times stronger than aluminum which in turn means you can make a steel frame three times thinner than the aluminum frame. But it really comes down to design choices and factors. I chose steel because it's reliable and I've had good experiences with steel frames. I've had bad experiences with aluminum frames so I try to avoid it as a frame material for bikes that get ridden in challenging conditions.

Ehh. Aluminum repairs may well be temporary but steel repairs can be permanent depending on the damage and how the repair was done and by whom.

Not ignorance, the market. Steel touring bikes are available. Aluminum ones are not. Simple as that. Occam's razor and all that

I really don't understand where you get that notion of the mythical bicycle tourist. I've never met a single bicycle tourists who fits that description. People in europe tend to tour on whatever bikes they get their hands on and enthusiasts tourists may buy a specific touring/trekking bike. If it's an anglosphere touring bike it'll usually be steel and if it's a continental europe trekking bike it'll usually be an aluminum hybrid with a low end suspension fork.

I kinda get the feeling you're projecting a bit here. The part about them "not being real bicycle tourists" is your words, not mine.
Go take a tour along the large river routes in Europe and you'll see what I mean. Lots of folks riding smallish distances from town to town and staying in B&B's for the night. I know I didn't write those people weren't actual bike tourists because I checked. It's its own type of touring which is very common in Europe. It's not better nor worse. It is what it is. But the bikes used for that aren't world crossing calibre most times because of the low end suspension forks, typically straight bars (though the butterfly bar is common. Not a fan of that but it works), no option for front bags etc etc.

If you collide head on then sure that'll damage any bike. But if you kinda slip along it in a bit of a grindy fashion, steel is going to come on top. That kinda goes for skidding along pavement as well.

I've damaged an aluminum frame by having too little tire clearance and riding in the mud.

Creaky bottom brackets are exceedingly rare. Most times the creak originates from somewhere else entirerely (pedal threads, headset, fork, seat tube, wheel dropout interface etc). With aluminum bikes I usually always get a creak from the seat tube. Another common one is dropouts especially with a new bike. My favorite though was trying to combine a steel rear rack with an aluminum frame bike. In the end had to take the rack off because it just would not work well with the flexing of the rear triangle. That's also one thing I dislike aluminum frames for. They tend to either be exceedingly stiff (usually a good thing) or noodly flexy. I've had both and while I prefer the stiff ones the cost is also usually right up there with steel frames.

I suppose that if you get to use the mythical bicycle tourist approach I'll use the "mountain biker" who always buys a full suspension bike to replace the beginner hardtail. So now that all the properly ridden mountain bikes are full suspension they don't experience enought stress to actually break. Idiotic I know, but I just had to give you an example of how it looks when you write about the "bicycle tourist" and romantic ideas of village smithies.

Now this is interesting because of multitude of reasons. Firstly one of my bikes does have a steel handlebar and I do like it a lot. Makes me wonder if I should start finding more steel handlebars.

But typically the bars / stems I use are cheap and heavy and made of thick tubes so they're not that big of a worry for me. Also bars/stems get replaced way more often than the frame so that's also one reason why I don't worry about them. They also get inspected more often than the frame since I swap bar tape at least once a year. And typically I'll swap a bar every five or so years especially in mountain bikes. Partly because of service life but also partly because I like trying out new things. Not in frames though, frames are expensive.

Cranks are made of pretty thick stuff. Some aren't even hollow. A slab of aluminum doesn't really worry me that much.

For pedals the ones I've used for touring have had significant portions of steel parts I think... But pedals get broken often enough that fatigue life never gets to be an issue. But the axles in my pedals tend to be steel and that's the weight bearing part.

Steel hubs is an interesting idea actually. I've been doing some preliminary drawings of an aluminum hub shell with replaceable steel parts for the most wear prone points such as spoke flanges. Also it'd be neat feature to have a pressfit cavities for either cartridge bearings OR ball bearing races. User's choice. That'd be a pretty cool touring hub. But anyways hub failures do happen even if they are infrequent. That can be mitigated by using a well designed but with enough material and enough spokes with responsible spoke tensions.

For rims the part that is most prone to suffer fatigue damage is at the spoke drillings and that has sometimes been mitigated by using steel eyelets. Nowadays for examble DT Swiss is moving away from eyelets and towards using nipple washers to increase the spoke stress surface area.
That's also one thing I've been musing about. Would it be possible to build an aluminum and steel hybrid rim where the spoke bed is reinforced with a steel strip and would that be way too heavy to be viable. If it were viable, it could potentially significantly increase spoke tension tolerances = more durable wheels.

But in the end with aluminum it comes down to material thickness. The more you have to mitigate stress the more durable said part is going to be. But the end result is also always more stiffness which in some places is desirable (rims, cranks, handlebars, stems, hubs etc.) but in some places not necessarily as much (fork blades). More material also means more weight which is why I dislike the idea of ultralight aluminum parts. If I want something to be light I'll buy carbon fiber. But I haven't really gotten to a point where I'd want any of my bikes to be lighter even though none of them are light.

And to close, all of the parts you mentioned are easy and quick to replace. The frame on the other hand is a bit of a faff if it breaks. Doesn't take just one special tool, it takes all the special tools. And no one one tour carries all of those.

rydabent

IMO steel is real and 100% better than the high priced plastic bikes bike stores are selling today. At the Air and Space Museum there are steel bikes make by the Wright brothers that are 120 years old. I bet that in 120 years any of the plastic bike built today if still around, will be so fragile that a good thump would cause them to shatter.

TobFromme

In 120 years, I won't care if my bike is around. LOL

Seriously, though, I have no dog in this fight. Folks should ride what they like, whether steel, Ti, carbon, or anything else.

Toadmeister

Time will tell in 120 years. The Wright Bros bikes you mentioned are also impeccably cared for and not ridden outside any longer.

Plastic is not an accurate description of a Carbon Fiber frame. I'd expect the resin matrix used to bind the Carbon Fibers will likely be degraded by UV exposure over the decades.

cyccommute 

You mean mythical like this guy

Any welder who hangs a shingle is likely able to weld steel or aluminum, usually with the same welder. To his credit, he does say

Or maybe this mythical person

At least this person acknowledges that it doesn’t really matter

Or what about this guy

He seems to have missed the bit about a broken frame being compromised and needing to be replaced.


​​​​​​​
Chicken meet egg. Egg meet chicken. Steel bikes are available because people are afraid of the (supposed) delicate nature of aluminum so they don’t buy aluminum touring bikes. No demand means that aluminum touring bikes don’t get made.

As for strength, yes, steel is three times stronger than aluminum. It’s also 3 times heavier. However, aluminum frames don’t use 3 times as much material to make up for that strength difference. Manufacturers use larger tube diameters which allows the frames to be made with less material overall and still be as strong.

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.


Not in my experience. See above if you need details. A field repaired frame...under the spreading limbs of a chestnut tree at the village smithy’s...is only a temporary measure and the frame is likely a dead frame no matter what the material.
​​​​​​​
​​​​​​​
Again, egg meet chicken. Chicken meet egg. People don’t want aluminum touring bikes because they are afraid of the material...i.e. ignorant of what the material is, how it performs, how it can be repaired, etc. If there are no aluminum touring bikes, people can’t buy them and the myths of steel and aluminum continue to be spread.

​​​​​​​
See above for an explanation of where the myths come from.

​​​​​​
No. The part about “not being real bicycle tourists” comes from you. You said

Sure sounds like someone saying that they aren’t “real” bicycle tourist. A Koga Worldtraveller would seem to fit your aluminum “trekking bike” category. And, yes, people take tours on bikes with suspension. They even do rides like you describe with support. But not everyone does that kind of touring and lots of people have done what you (and I, to be fair) would consider “real” touring on aluminum bikes.

​​​​​​​
I’ve got loads of scars on my legs and arms from “slipping along in a bit of a grind fashion” on both pavement and rocks. I crash with regularity and have never damaged a frame because I fell over to the side. It highly unlikely you could break a frame that way in any case, since the impact is oblique and thus of lower energy. I’ve also seen a lot of scraped up bikes from fall over crashes and none of them were damaged to the point of disposal.

​​​​​​​
User error. And I doubt the damage was enough to make the frame unusable.


​​​​​​​
All of the things you list can occur on steel bikes and are mechanical issues that should be addressed. They aren’t inherent to the frame material.

​​​​​​​
The number of hardtails in use is about equal to the number of full suspension bikes. Neither class experiences large numbers of frame failures, even when put though far more strenuous conditions than touring bikes are.

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

Cranks do break. A broken crank is likely to cause more injury than a broken frame does.

I have no idea what you do to pedals but I seldom break pedals. I have broken them and, like a crank, the likelihood of injury is very high. The broken part, by the way, has been the steel spindle.

Neither of these ideas is very viable. Hub flange failures are rare. Rim failures are fairly rare as well. But the big problem would be mating the two metals. Steel and aluminum can’t be welded together and any physical attachment would have to be robust...which means more weight.

There’s more to it than just metal thickness. Bicycle manufacturers have done a lot of engineering to take advantage of aluminum since the early days. Little engineering is being done on steel because demand is actually quite low. The steel touring bikes of today are essentially the same as they were 40 years ago. Aluminum bikes aren’t. Applying the lessons learned in mountain bike design, we could have strong, light touring bikes but people are stuck in the mid80s mindset that aluminum is just too risky...as you have amply demonstrated.

Frame failure of any kind of material is rare. Yes, it happens but it doesn’t happen nearly as much as people think. I have more miles on aluminum than I do on steel. I’m not afraid that any of my aluminum frames of any kind will fail. If they do fail, they won’t do it catastrophically. If they do fail in the field, I’m sure that I can find someone to repair it to get me to the next town or the end of the tour. If I had steel, that’s all I’d expect as well.

vintage1987

HI,
My rides include Columbus SLX triple butted1987 Ciocc designer84 micro/cf complete dura ace group. its perfect and for sale, a 2009 Trek Alum super light FX7150 hybrid, a Schwinn impossible to find, 2008 carbon Peloton Pro road bike, ultegra group, a Panosonic DX2000 steel road bike all Shimano 600, and a 2014 Colnogo CX1 carbon, ultegra group road bike. That being said, and in light of the frame thread here, the best frame construction for me is the carbon fiber pair. Each of their geometries are unique, but the ride is smooth and whatever power i still have, goes right to the rear wheel.
For what its worth, rolls eyes.

OLDYELLR

It has not been phased out for high end steel road bikes. But aluminum welding technology got so good and adaptable to automation, that the mass market switched to that, especially for MTBs. And then there's carbon fibre, much lighter, but fragile, so the frame may get fatally damaged about as fast as it goes out of fashion.

ParamountScapin 

Nothing rides as good as lugged steel. Your butt will tell you after a 100mi day. Followed by tig'd steel. It is not used as much in these days of bling & marketing crap as folks need the latest BS that they can pay more for rather than the classiest & best.

Cycle Tourist

I've ridden nearly every touring bike of any material in every configuration, (I'm still recovering from a transcontinental jaunt on a recumbent), and have yet to find a best material. My current favorite is a reworked Klein Performance. A close second is a redesigned Nishiki Olympic 12. Totally different bikes but both very competent at fully loaded long distance touring. Put fifty pounds of gear on a bike and you'd be hard pressed to tell what it's made of. Since I need a tall frame, triple butted tubing is unacceptable because of the flexibility but straight gauge cromo works as does super stiff oversized aluminum. With fat tires and lots of gear "ride quality" becomes a meaningless expression. Carbon can be made with whatever ride qualities you prefer but the expense seems unnecessary when so many other possibilities exist. I think the Nishiki cost about $250 with all the upgrades and has just finished a transcontinental tour. Another tourist asked if it was titanium and when told it was '79 Japanese steel, scoffed and stated he tried a steel bike once and got off immediately because it was so heavy.🤭. He was a credit card tourist so maybe he had a point but for me the point was irrelevant. Stripped to the basics I think a full water bottle would easily make up the difference. Just ride, baby!

jray0523

In engineering terms, it's about fitness for use. I would not use it for a race ready road frame simply due to weight. I have ridden aluminum for years. The weight is better than steel but the frame will be stiff relative to anything else. That's fine for racing. For a 100 mile or longer ride, weight comes into play but isn't the deciding factor. Frames that are laid up use (epoxy) resins that are baked. Over time those frames dark harden and contribute to other issues but the ride can be as, or even more vertically compliant than steel. Titanium gives a great ride, great weight, great maintenance and can, like steel, be reworked. Carbon can be repaired, but at a cost and can hide damage until there is a catastrophic failure. Double butted or triple butted CroMoly tubing (where the body of a tube is thinned) is a way to improve vertical compliance (how it absorbs shock headed to the rider) and reduce weight relatively. This summer (amidst all the parts shortages) I decided to do a build with a pull (unused part from a new bike) of a double butted CroMoly frame. Every decision was made with a loaded mixed surface tour in mind and adjustments for how I wanted to ride. I had to find a fork from a different manufacturer that had relatively the same geometry as the fork that the manufacturer would have used if they had it available. It is the same fork used on a well known TREK frame with an composite steer tube on carbon legs and I knew it would be well fit for use. I knew from experience that I would improve vertical compliance this way. I shorted my crank arms to 165 because I was also using a 27.5" wheel with 2.5 inch tires on a bike with the capacity of 29+" and a 3" tire. and this would drop the bottom bracket. I wanted to avoid crank strike. I chose Magura hydraulic disc brakes and since I have just done a test ride in the rain I can tell you it's true that they still stop the bike effectively with little finger pressure. I also went with a 1X Eagle GX SRAM group set. I love it. There are times where I wish I had a tooth or two in between but I have found that I can actually compensate with how I utilize my feet through the stroke. I have a set of bags (including a custom frame bag) all from one manufacturer and have been building up the weight while stretching the distance while I learn how to ride a loaded bike. So, back to the original question: In this application (loaded touring) butted CroMoly is a material of choice. The more I load the bike, the more comfortable the ride becomes. I have been on washboard, ruts, tarmac, crushed gravel, wet and dry surfaces, very poor and rutty roads and steep rough downhills. I made a lot of good design choices around this frame and geometry and this is the most comfortable bike I've ridden on the rough (without full suspension) and equally comfortable on more traditional surfaces. I gave the option to take off my semi smooth tires and run tubeless at 2.5" to 3" and lower pressures which would give me even more compliance. The only other material that I would choose for this application (fully loaded multi surface) would be Titanium and that choice would drive me out of the market price wise or make it impossible to have the quality components that I chose. The next time I build up a real road or gravel/cx bike it will be on a cheap import no name carbon frame, or titanium. I would not ride steel or aluminum for that application. The ride is a far more complex decision than the material you are riding and steel is still very much in use and totally appropriate.... just the opinions of a retiree who has ridden over 40,000 miles in the last 40 years. Good riding!

WinterCommuter

Other materials (titanium, aluminum, and carbon fiber) became more popular. Why? Good question.

livedarklions

Seriously, have you ever tried to hang a refrigerator magnet from an aluminum or carbon fiber frame?
Steel is better.

Ironfish653

Cost and weight.

Once TIG replaced brazing as the primary construction method for bike frames, it didn’t take much for aluminum to supplant CrMo in the mid-range, and eventually most of the bike market. Mid-grade aluminum frames could be made for the same cost as mid-grade steel, but at a lighter weight. Most of the time, most bike buyers would pick a lighter bike, at the same price point.

That’s why, until you hit a certain price point; call it ‘Enthusiast’ as opposed to ‘Consumer’ the vast majority of mass produced bikes will be aluminum.

63rickert

Touring bikes are still made from steel because steel is tough. Stuff happens on tour. Steel gets nicked notched dented pinched scraped gouged and mostly it doesn’t care.

Aluminum rims break and they break all the time. Americans mostly tour on underweight rims. If you never broke a rim on tour, good for you. The good basic touring rims at the moment are made by Ryde (often sold as Weinmann in US) and weigh 700 grams and up. Hardcore world tourists do still use steel rims for the reliability and because they can get them in faraway places. Many posts on these forums by those using steel rims.

In what universe are steel dropouts readily replaceable? In the world of not so long ago. Say sixty years ago. Any better bike shop could do the job and any shop could refer to the mechanic in town that did. Dropout replacement was considered a normal repair. Sadly this is no longer true.

Things break. People break things. Steel survives pretty well. If you tend to break things you know who you are. Lots and lots of people fit in the category. Those people will continue to ride steel.

Then there is the ride. Most here have never even been on good steel. How many have been on a Reynolds Super Resilient fork blade? A Kaisei Toei Special? A Reynolds Diadrant? The vocabulary and possibility of steel is very large. Still mostly unexplored. Other materials are used because fashion and marketing and only afterwards do reasons emerge. Engineering and science are always driven by exterior factors.

Leinster

Isn't there a scale/progress chart there?

Kids bike/$99 Big Box bike - cheap steel
Higher end Big Box Bike/low end bike shop bike - Aluminium, some CrMo
Mid-range mass-produced enthusiast bike - Aluminium with carbon fork, some carbon frame options, brand name CrMo (eg Reynolds 520) available from some manufacturers
High end bike, suitable for competition - Almost all carbon, some Ti, high grade CrMo or other proprietary steel alloy (True Temper, Columbus, Reynolds 6xx/7xx), some Al frames with high spec groups (eg, CAAD10 or Spesh Allez with Di2)
Custom one-off manufacturing - Mostly steel, a lot of Ti, virtually nil in Al or CF.

Stan Heinricher

This is an old-fashioned website that has archaic rules.

mstateglfr 

I only own steel frames and even i find this reasoning to be absurd. You are out on a limb here.
A bike lasting 120 years has nothing to do with the discussion. Also, those bikes aren't ridden, to be clear.

Seriously- why is that a factor in what material you choose for a bike frame? Nobody has walked into a shop and asked to buy whatever bike will last longer than a century because its of no consequence to anyone(but you).