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Originally Posted by masi61
(Post 22304965)
Interesting thread. I just started a thread on the Clydesdale/Athena forum dreading winter and (seemingly) inevitable weight gain. I have a plan to try to not go over 200# this winter. But you are asking about taking steps to reduce bike weight. I used to just ride steel bikes and the only weight trimming I would do was by swapping out heavy clincher wheels for lightweight tubular racing wheels. The difference is clearly noticeable.
But being more experienced with bike builds, I now try to reduce the weight from a lot of components: the seatpost, the saddle, pedals and still rims, hubs, spokes, quick release skewers and even my chain. Just going to a superlight carbon seatpost, carbon handlebars, Dura Ace 9000 pedals, lightweight racing clinchers that are either tubeless or with latex tubes have all been very effective and change up the ride quality for me significantly. The only caveat is concerns of increased noise and decreased durability. Some of my lightweight choices have to be fully dialed in to be completely strong and quiet. I would rather have a slightly heavier component that is completely silent as opposed to a creaky one. Riding an unnecessarily creaky bike with less than robust parts does not make a person faster in my opinion. Even though the bike is lighter, the distraction factor nibbles away at your focus making you feel off. I would rather feel calm and grounded to the road. Lately I'm not there. I'm of a similar chain of thought, although, my 'competitive' weight comes in between 200-210, and with my bike budgets, if it comes to a choice between Light or Strong, I'm taking Strong for my money. I agree, that good wheels and tires can really wake up a bike, swapping '90s era 32h Sun M13's for even a mid-grade wheel like a 20/24h Shimano WHR500 can liven up the handling and let the frame's ride quality come through. |
True story: i have no idea what my bike weighs.
Anotehr true story: i really don't care either. |
Originally Posted by seypat
(Post 22304964)
Sarcastic, of course. The person I quoted, however appears to be talking down to the other person because of the weight of a road bike. Yet his MTB is heavier and is probably a blast to ride. So what? Ride what you want to ride.
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Originally Posted by wolfchild
(Post 22304924)
Anything between 24 - 32 pounds for a bike isn't heavy. People who consider that to be heavy are just "OCD weight weenie weaklings."
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Originally Posted by Ironfish653
(Post 22305127)
*cough*moist*cough*
You might want to get that looked at. |
Originally Posted by cubewheels
(Post 22305558)
The high end market is improving.
On the other hand, the weight of low end mass-consumer bikes hasn't changed for the last 40 years and quality has deteriorated. Technological innovation is definitely one-sided. |
Originally Posted by cubewheels
(Post 22305774)
Steel would've been better but adding insult to injury to those who can't afford decent bikes, today's cheap bikes are made mostly of aluminum and just as heavy or worse.
Cheap bikes are heavy. Good bikes are light. A cheap aluminum bike will be lighter than a cheap steel bike, but heavier than a good steel bike, or a good aluminum bike. High quality, lightweight steel tubing is expensive. You can build a good quality aluminum bike that is as light as the expensive steel bike, but costs less. See how that works? |
Originally Posted by RiceAWay
(Post 22301861)
Any bike that weighs no more than 10% of your bodyweight has so little effect on your climbing that unless you're a professional rider that is riding at 40+ kph (25 mph English) it makes no difference at all. I'm 77 and 6'4" and can't tell the difference on hard, long climbs between a 16 lb bike and a 22 lb bike.
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Originally Posted by Ironfish653
(Post 22305945)
You can build a good quality aluminum bike that is as light as the expensive steel bike, but costs less. See how that works?
Originally Posted by cubewheels
(Post 22305956)
That steel bike is going to be stronger and better quality though.
Aluminum bikes are so common now, that it's easy to forget what a real game-changer the early KLEIN and Cannondales were. They figured out the big-diameter / thin-wall tubes and TIG / heat-treat process to get bikes that were as light as the high-dollar Italian stuff, but at prices more in line with TREK and Specialized. There's cheap steel, expensive steel, and middle-of-the-road steel. There's cheap aluminum, high-end aluminum, and middle-of-the-road aluminum. The kinds of high-grade thin-wall steel tubes to make a very light bike are going to be very expensive. Aluminum is roughly 2/3 the weight of steel, strength for strength, so a less-expensive thicker-wall aluminum tube will be the same weight. Or, you can go like KLEIN/Cannondale and make big-diameter, super thin tubes, that are even lighter than the steel tubeset. That's why you pretty much only find steel bikes at the bottom of the bike market, and in the boutique / specialist builders. For cost and weight, AL pretty much has the middle 2/3 of the market to itself. |
Originally Posted by cubewheels
(Post 22305956)
That steel bike is going to be stronger and better quality though.
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Originally Posted by PeteHski
(Post 22305988)
I weigh 75 kg and my bike weighs 8.5 kg, so that's 11.3% of my bodyweight. So by your totally arbitrary 10% figure, I can justify a lighter bike right? A 7.5 kg bike would put me right on the money, which is actually quite reasonable.
Now there's an interesting poll topic... |
I commute, the bike is always heavy, but I seem to stay quite lite and fit so I guess the bike weight doesn't matter for me.
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Originally Posted by spelger
(Post 22305213)
True story: i have no idea what my bike weighs.
Anotehr true story: i really don't care either. |
Originally Posted by spelger
(Post 22305213)
True story: i have no idea what my bike weighs.
Anotehr true story: i really don't care either. |
If you are really concerned about weight, give yourself an enema before you head out, if you are able to head out after that.
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since taking up road cycling earlier this year, I lightened myself by 15 lbs, i lightened my bike by 4 lbs, and my gear (helmet shoes clothes etc) by maybe 4 lbs. 23 lbs represents around 10% of the total load, but combined with getting a bit stronger and better gearing it feels more like 33% easier to ride up a hill. and 50% more fun.
so while I agree that only a pro could “feel” a pound or two here or there, it all adds up and compounds with other factors. |
Originally Posted by cubewheels
(Post 22306622)
The bottom end models I'm finding locally are also aluminum, including $120 adult size MTBs.
The only exceptions in the bottom end (using cheap Hi-Ten Steel frames) are fatbikes, cruiser styled bikes, and ladies bikes. They're all heavy. Weighing around around 30 lbs, except the fatbike which can weigh over 40 lbs You're arguing from the specific to the general: " There are cheap, heavy aluminum bikes; therefore, all aluminum bikes are cheap and heavy" See if this makes sense: Cheap bikes are heavy. Cheap aluminum bikes are heavy, but not as heavy as cheap steel Better bikes are typically lighter than cheap bikes. Very light aluminum bikes are (more) expensive, but not as expensive as very light steel bikes. Bottom-end bikes will still be bottom-end. Just because Cannondale got the light-weight-big-tube design figured out 40 years ago, doesn't mean that tech is going to trickle down to a $200 bike in the Philippines |
Originally Posted by mschwett
(Post 22306626)
since taking up road cycling earlier this year, I lightened myself by 15 lbs, i lightened my bike by 4 lbs, and my gear (helmet shoes clothes etc) by maybe 4 lbs. 23 lbs represents around 10% of the total load, but combined with getting a bit stronger and better gearing it feels more like 33% easier to ride up a hill. and 50% more fun.
so while I agree that only a pro could “feel” a pound or two here or there, it all adds up and compounds with other factors. |
My intent of providing my bike weights was to show that a low-mid-grade bike (My '75 Fuji S-10S) weighed only 4-5 pounds heavier than a high-end bike of the day - a (Schwinn Paramount on tubulars!
Forward ten years - and the triple-butted CrMo '86 Miyata 710 was still ~23.5 pounds. Still relatively light for it's day. CF and AL were not popular yet. Yes, by then some bikes were getting down to under 20 pounds, but not many... and certainly not popular with casual riders. OK, now I'll address that 10% bike-to-rider-weight malarkey. Back in '76 when I started getting serious about cycling, my bike was the '75 Fuji at 26.5 pounds. I weighed 135. 10%? There were NO 13.5 pound road bikes back then. The Fuji was closer to 20% of my body weight. More than 20% if one considers as-ridden weight including water bottle, spare tube, toolkit and pump/inflater. Even if you were to use the tubular-equipped Paramount and add the extras, you'd still be getting close to 20%. In the intervening 45 years, I've packed on over 70 pounds - an additional 50% of my initial weight - actually at one point I was 219 but I'm down to ~203. If I were to really consider weight weenie-ism, I'd lose a greater percentage of weight off myself than I could ever take off the bike (or get a 'more modern' 10-pound lighter bike... |
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