thehammerdog

like my cheapo hi tensil steel single speed State bike.
wondering if higher end steel has a better ride feel. i know lighter stiffer but is ride quality also better.​​ it does ride well.

randallr

I don't know if this helps answer the question: I have owned and put tens of thousands of miles on 1) Raleigh Grand Sports and 2) Gunnar Cross Hairs. The Gunnar uses modern high-strength air-hardening steel, the Raleigh was 531 double butted main tubes and straight gauge stays. The Gunnar has a little larger diameter down tube, and probably mainly because of that it is totally perfect in frame stiffness. Feels great when I get out of the saddle and hammer, and quite comfy. The Raleigh was comfortable, but lacked adequate lateral stiffness. This one felt when sprinting, and when carrying any load. It also failed after 17 years via fatigue crack originating in the down tube - head tube joint. That might have been 1973-quality workmanship; I think the lug at the crack origin had a bit of a gap on solder.

Andrew R Stewart 

Since the flexibility of most all steels is the same it is the tube diameters and wall thicknesses that control/dictate the frame's compliancy. For the same wall/diameter tube spec a frame made from HITen tubing (remember the 1020 stuff Raleighs used) and 753 will have the same feel". Now of course that HiTem frame will very likely not share the more sporting geometry or components or rider fit as the 753 one has. So these types of questions are most always never really understood or answerable.

Don't confuse the qualities of strength with those of stiffness. They are quite different and stiffness that counts more only till the frame is stiff enough to keep the parts away from each other and the wheels in roughly the same tracking planes. After that it is strength that allows less material/weight.

Back in the day we sold the alloy steel high end bikes with the "promise" of being more resilient then the low cost mild steel bikes were. We understood an important quality was not getting beat up while we rode our miles. Andy

ridelikeaturtle

As has been said, I dunno if this'll answer your question either, BUT... my 1997 Colnago Competition, with Columbus "Crystal" tubing, is like butter. It rides as smooth as my '96 Bianchi Ti Megatube, which is slightly lighter. It's not as stiff as my Planet-X EC-130E carbon bike.

Interestingly (to me), it is slightly lighter (about 300g) than my girlfriend's "extra small"-sized carbon 2021 LIV Langma Advanced 3 Disc (a €2500 bike), even though it's a 57cm frame.

To wrap up my long answer: Yeah, higher-end steel does IMO have a better ride feel, on a par with titanium and carbon. Pair it with the right components, wheels & tyres, and you'll be very happy.

Russ Roth

Just yup, more care and attention is typically put into optimizing tube characteristics on the nicer tubesets that make up the nicer bikes, the results are obvious. Lighter and stiffer but still compliant. I've got a HiTen steel raleigh track bike, I can get it moving quick but it is still a dog and obviously slow.

thook

i can offer an experiential comparison i discovered years ago when i first got an '82 trek 614. it was made with reynold's 531 double butted main frame with ishiwata mangy stays and fork blades. the ishiwata is a very similar manganese molybdenum as the reynolds, but perhaps not as costly....which may be why trek used it for the stays and fork. cost savings. anyway....to the story

i ran into a friend who was riding around on his bianchi with a columbus frame and fork (chromium molybdenum, i think?). he was curious about my trek, so i let him ride it. we both remarked on how different the rides compared. his bianchi was lighter and stiffer feeling. snappy, but it was also more harsh over the rough sections of pavement. otoh, my trek felt a smidge heavier, but was really able to soak up all the rough surfaces. in fact, you could even see the fork flexing over the bumps. the trek didn't respond quite as lively feeling under spirited pedaling force as the bianchi, but it's a sport touring bike. it's supposed to be more comfortable under you for longer riding. the trek's geometry made up for any of the difference in snappiness, though. it still handled/steered quickly with it's steep head tube angle and relatively low trail

Rolla

When people talk about the sublime ride quality of steel, they aren't talking about hi-ten, not that it doesn't have its rightful place in the bicycle world.

Every frame I've ever owned that was made out of high-quality, butted chromoly steel has felt considerably livelier and smoother than those made of any other material. But crediting a bike's entire ride characteristic to any one individual variable is usually inaccurate.

Mackers

There is no Colnago Competition. Yours is a Colnago Crystal, with Brain tubing. Top and down tube have been custom shaped.
Weight will be 1900-1950 grams, fork another 675. Any weight advantage over your girlfriend's bike will likely be in the components.

ridelikeaturtle

Even though the Columbus sticker says, "CRYSTAL"?

Koyote

I think Andrew builds frames, and so I expected him to have an informed response -- and this affirms my experience. For example, I have two frames made of nice modern steel - heat-treated and air-hardening. The older LeMond has thinner-diameter tubes and rides as smoothly as anything I've tried, and is a touch flexy; the Gunnar uses wider-diameter tubes (head tube, top tube, down tube) and is very stiff.

I suspect butting plays a role in ride quality, too...And any frame made of Hi-Ten steel likely uses all straight-gauge tubes -- no butting. Basically plumbing pipes.

Iride01 

I'd suspect that minor differences in geometry play a bigger part in how a bike feels than does what steel alloy or any other material it's made of do.

Crankycrank

Not really answering your question about better steels but if you're looking for a new bike the best thing is to test ride it rather than focus on the materials. Construction and geometry account for much of the feel and you may not like one over another based on contruction rather than type of steel used. Also most builders mix types and brands of steel tubing in a frame for a preferred effect so they must think there are differences.

KerryIrons

Assuming we aren't talking about water-pipe steel frames as the comparison point, tube diameter, tube wall thickness, tube shape, and frame geometry will have much more impact than the grade of steel.

icemilkcoffee 

I’ve had Tange Prestige, Tange 1 and Tange 2 bikes and I can say for a fact that the Tange 2 bike is more comfy than the Tange 1 and the Tange 1 more than the Prestige. By the way the Tange 2 bike looks like this:


Despite the crazy geometry and the 24” front wheel it’s still more comfortable than my Tange 1 Ironman.
I also had a Lemond Tourmalet with True Temper double butted tubing (ie. bottom of the line in the TT portfolio) and it was supremely comfortable.
I think the humble ‘double butted CrMo’ is actually the most comfortable and the surface hardening done to the higher grades of steel (tempering, air hardening , etc) make them less comfortable.

Andrew R Stewart 

Yet the first line of the OP's opening post states hi ten steel. My goal is to separate the hype of marketing drivel from the reality of metallurgy. So many people talk from a biased understanding of steel and how it relates to bike and make statements that don't hold true.

The primary reason to use high strength steels is to reduce the need for added wall thickness for enough strength of the final construct and thus weigh less. If these high strength steel tubes are not also of increased diameters the frame will be more flexible, then the same walled and diametered hi ten frame. Once you allow different diameters any comparison discussion has to have all sorts of qualifiers to remain true. The way the OP asked his question suggests to me that he lacked a complete understanding of this stuff. Others too from their replies

I have little problems with the personal opinions that most here have stated, based on the bikes they have ridden. What I do take some issue with is applying the anecdotes to a more broad understanding of how steel works and how that effects the ride feel. Since all the bikes mentioned have different set ups and geometries any comparisons have to include all the rest of the package that the bike is made of. Andy

mpetry912 

this topic has been done to death with tests of 2 or more identically painted bikes, with different tubing under the paint and a/b testing with riders.

Columbus vs reynolds, thin wall vs thick wall etc. Bottom line is it's very difficult for riders to subjectively evaluate a bike's ride characteristics.

terms like "stiff" and "comfortable" mean different things to each person.

Cars have 0-60 times and G force on turns. Aircraft have roll rate and rate of climb, stick breakout forces etc.

which is why this question is difficult or maybe impossible to answer with precision

/markp

ClydeClydeson

If the tubes have the same geometry and wall thicknesses, and the geometry of the frame are the same, there would be no difference in ride quality between two bikes made from different alloys.
The difference would be if the design was optimized for the stronger steel and you put an excessive load or crashed the bike - a crash that folds the cheaper/weaker alloy frame in half might not cause any damage to the more expensive/stronger alloy frame.

If you went the other way, found the tubing geometry and wall thickness of a 'gas pipe' cheap frame and built the same thing out of Reynolds 853 tubes with the same dimensions, the bikes would still ride the same but the 853 frame would be massively overbuilt - way stronger than it needed to be for any bicycling situation.

Germany_chris

I might have a dead ass but I've owned high end steel road and touring bikes and now ride 3 Surly's and have never noticed a difference in ride between any of them other than the obvious differences in geo. IMO tires, saddle, and bar tape make all the difference in ride quality.

WizardOfBoz

Koyote, I agreed with you up to this last sentence. Agree that stuff called Hi-Ten is almost certainly straight gauge. But the plumbing pipes analogy fails. Perhaps better to equate the old Schwinn Varsity tubes (made of strip steel that's been rolled into a tube and welded) with plumbing pipes. Hi-Ten is low carbon steel to which some alloying elements have been added to improve tensile and yield strength and ductility. Continuing up the food chain you get to chrome-moly and chrome-manganese (Reynolds 531 is the latter). At least for bikes, Hi-ten has much thinner walls than pipe. But also thicker walls than straight Chrome-moly or Chrome-manganese need to be.

Because the steel itself is not quite as strong a Hi-Ten bike designed to have similar longevity to better bikes needs to have thicker walls than better steels. Because all steel has similar flexibility, the Hi-Ten bike will be stiffer.

Alternately a Hi-Ten bike with tube walls as thick as better tubes will be just as flexy and comfortable, but may bend or break much earlier.

Frankly, a well made bike of butted chrome-moly is probably going to ride really well.

mpetry912 

I agree tires, inflation pressures, saddle and bar tape - the critical interfaces - have a huge effect on ride experience

but I try to stay away from sweeping generalizations, especially about subjective perceptions that are hard to quantify.

my Dinucci has something special in terms of it's lively yet composed ride. it brings a smile every time I ride it.

Owners of Confente bikes - or Martin guitars, for that matter - say the same thing. there's something special that is just about impossible to put into words.

/markp

70sSanO

On identical material specifications, geometries, and sizes, do lugs impact stiffness?

I have no frame building background, but it would seem that the "unsupported" portion of a tube is greater with a butted joint.

Just wondering.

John

Andrew R Stewart 

Not sure exactly what you are getting at but I'll say that only three tubes are supported at one end only. The steerer and the blades. Every other tube is joined at both ends.

Note how thick a steerer is at the bottom and how the single butt (the usual design) makes the top end have a thinner wall. Also note that the blades have the front axle linking their un joined ends together.

IIRC I have read decades ago that the tube's stiffness is the least at the thinnest wall portion. So a tube with longer butts than another of the same diameter and wall thicknesses will have the same stiffness. The butt lengths are not about stiffness but to address the strength loss after the heat of brazing/welding has been done. In theory the more time that heat is being applied to the joint the further up the tube's length the HAZ zone travels. A tube intended for TiG can have shorter butts as the welding takes less time than brazing does.

Lugs add no extra stiffness due to what I mentioned above. They do take more time to braze up so the HAZ travels further but if done with silver the tubes might not get to a critical, temp where nasty changes in the structure of the alloy happens.

Bicycling mag had a nice article, many years ago, where they had test joints made up and tested strength (referenced by the tube's hardness). Tig, fillet brassed and lugged w/ silver were the joining methods. They found all three could fail w/ bending forces but where, WRT the joint, the resulting bend was focused. TiG would bend right up close to the weld bead. The fillet bent inches away from the joint. The silver lugged bent at the lug edge/tip. Andy

70sSanO

Thanks Andy.

It was basically a span question, as in length between the lugs or weld influencing the flex.

John

squirtdad

Probably already noted, but tires and tubes and rims combos make a huge difference in ride

Case in point

I have a 84 team miyata that a neighbor gave me

my first ride I took it out with the tires and tubes that is had (this is on MA40 rims, double butted spoke) which were 25mm bontrager tires and some super thick thorn proof tubes, the ride was horrible, harsh, no joy

I put a set tubular on it Mavic gel 330 with challenge elite 25mm pumped to 130, the changes was miraculous, smooth ride, the bike just wanted to fly, seemed to jump at the pedal and zoom turns.

I rode this bike in last years Cino, but decided the gell330 were too light of rims, so I went back to the MA40 with Gravel King 28mm and conti race light tubes. the ride was still super, not as good as the tubie wheelset, but very close

ClydeClydeson

I disagree with the statement that butts don't impact stiffness - you said thinner tube walls make the tube less stiff, so thicker tube walls near the ends of the tube means the end of the tube are stiffer, and you can't disconnect the centre of the span from the ends - they all work together. Essentially the thinner and flexier portion of the tube will be shorter, which increases its stiffness - like how when you cut a spring, it increases the spring's stiffness.
From a geometric point of view I agree butts, lugs, gussetts probably don't make much difference in overall frame stiffness, but they do make some non-zero amount of difference.