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Why We Should STOP Our Obsession With Bike Weight

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Why We Should STOP Our Obsession With Bike Weight

Old 06-28-21, 07:09 PM
  #51  
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Originally Posted by AlmostTrick
Heavy bikes give you a better workout.
Not.
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Old 06-28-21, 07:27 PM
  #52  
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My bike is already below the UCI minimum so I have to add weight to be legal
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Old 06-28-21, 07:43 PM
  #53  
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Originally Posted by livedarklions
It wouldn't be for me, it's just not a big enough difference in exertion to exhaust me much faster. I'm just going to take a little longer to cover the same distance with the heavier bike. Since I'm not racing, I really don't care about that.

And yes, this is actually something I've done. A lot. Ask me about my 90 mile ride on a Walmart Huffy beach cruiser.
I rode from Louisville to Lexington on one, about 100 miles, 2hr drive on the expressway.
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Old 06-28-21, 07:50 PM
  #54  
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Originally Posted by Troul
heavy bicycles lessens the ability to escape a vicious dog.
most dogs can run at 30-45 mph anyway. A heavy bike might knock it out faster
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Old 06-28-21, 07:56 PM
  #55  
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Originally Posted by Troul
heavy bicycles lessens the ability to escape a vicious dog.
carry a frame pump and don’t worry about dogs anymore. Best if you have a silca with a campy head and sharpened legs on the head.
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Old 06-28-21, 08:01 PM
  #56  
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Originally Posted by Eric F
If not weight, what else should we obsess with on our bike?
Valve stem caps and reflectors, of course.
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Old 06-28-21, 08:09 PM
  #57  
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Weghts not a big factor for me, I want light and durable, but durable will win over lightness in places durable is more paramont... like a sealed BB. A bike is only going to get so light, but for some; a lighter wallet is faster.Most bike stuff isn't even realistically heavy. And a 20-23lb bike isn't heavy, UCI be damned. My High Sierra is heavy. Though I do like trying to lighten up heavy bikes, a bike under 25lbs is good enough.

Now if I can win the lottery on the other hand... carbon wheels, fork, stem, post does sound good for the Katai. Do they make carbon vbrake calipers, or are cantis lighter?
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Old 06-28-21, 09:17 PM
  #58  
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Originally Posted by Jax Rhapsody
I rode from Louisville to Lexington on one, about 100 miles, 2hr drive on the expressway.
I'm not surprised.
​​It's actually comfortable. I hadn't yet ridden a century when I did that, but mostly I felt I had maxed out the practical distance on the bike because it was just not suitable mechanically. For one thing, it kept randomly dropping the chain, and fixing a roadside flat is not a lot of fun.

Within a month or so, I started riding centuries on a comfort bike. Kind of the same experience, but with gears and quick release.

I definitely do not recommend Worcester as a bicycling town. I find it ironic that bicycling on a road named after Major Taylor is so unpleasant. Someone should do something about that.
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Old 06-28-21, 09:25 PM
  #59  
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Originally Posted by Eric F
If not weight, what else should we obsess with on our bike?

Exotic material bidons.
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Old 06-28-21, 09:47 PM
  #60  
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Originally Posted by Eric F
If not weight, what else should we obsess with on our bike?
Shimano’s flawed derailleur design.

John
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Old 06-29-21, 10:38 AM
  #61  
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All my vintage steel roadies are constantly fat shaming me. I mean, I'm only 155 lb. But that doesn't stop them. They're like, "you can't even fit into the shorts you wore in college. Go on, suck it in, buddy. We own you."
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Old 06-29-21, 10:40 AM
  #62  
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Originally Posted by 70sSanO
Shimano’s flawed derailleur design.

John
What's flawed about it?
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Old 06-29-21, 10:53 AM
  #63  
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Originally Posted by prj71
What's flawed about it?
Yes.
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Old 06-29-21, 12:28 PM
  #64  
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Originally Posted by livedarklions
I'm not surprised.
​​It's actually comfortable. I hadn't yet ridden a century when I did that, but mostly I felt I had maxed out the practical distance on the bike because it was just not suitable mechanically. For one thing, it kept randomly dropping the chain, and fixing a roadside flat is not a lot of fun.

Within a month or so, I started riding centuries on a comfort bike. Kind of the same experience, but with gears and quick release.

I definitely do not recommend Worcester as a bicycling town. I find it ironic that bicycling on a road named after Major Taylor is so unpleasant. Someone should do something about that.
I actually didn't have mechanical problems with the cranbrook. Though there was hills I had to walk up. It was my first and last century. It took about 14 hours, I think. I was going to see some friends of mine, it was interesting. There was a storm that kept poping up, I had to stop and charge my phone, at one point it cartwheeled out of my pocket and knocked the reciever out of commision. I took US 60, that went through Middletown, Lyndon, Simpsonville, Shelbyville, Frankfort, Versaille... finally to Lexington. I had no issues with cagers either. Oh and by the time I got in to Frankfort I think; I realized I forgot my lock, of all things.

Now a few days after I got back, that lil piece that holds the sproket broke when I went to stop, and I ran in to the backyard retaining wall at my at time girlfriends house. Days after that, I let a guy use my phone- which needed headphones to talk... because of the stunt it pulled. They called him back and the reciever was magically fixed. He said it was the luck of the jew. I wish he would pass through here again, so I can get him to bless my bank account.
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Old 06-29-21, 12:50 PM
  #65  
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Originally Posted by Jax Rhapsody
I actually didn't have mechanical problems with the cranbrook. Though there was hills I had to walk up. It was my first and last century. It took about 14 hours, I think. I was going to see some friends of mine, it was interesting. There was a storm that kept poping up, I had to stop and charge my phone, at one point it cartwheeled out of my pocket and knocked the reciever out of commision. I took US 60, that went through Middletown, Lyndon, Simpsonville, Shelbyville, Frankfort, Versaille... finally to Lexington. I had no issues with cagers either. Oh and by the time I got in to Frankfort I think; I realized I forgot my lock, of all things.

Now a few days after I got back, that lil piece that holds the sproket broke when I went to stop, and I ran in to the backyard retaining wall at my at time girlfriends house. Days after that, I let a guy use my phone- which needed headphones to talk... because of the stunt it pulled. They called him back and the reciever was magically fixed. He said it was the luck of the jew. I wish he would pass through here again, so I can get him to bless my bank account.
My people can will phones back to life? Who knew?

I'm going to have to open a kiosk at the mall!
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Old 06-29-21, 01:10 PM
  #66  
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Originally Posted by Eric F
If not weight, what else should we obsess with on our bike?
Aerodynamics, which require more sophisticated instrumentation to measure.
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Old 06-29-21, 01:12 PM
  #67  
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Originally Posted by Eric F
Yes! As short as possible to save...oh, damn...
Time. Think how much time you waste screwing in a screw that's even 5mm too long! Now multiply that by all the screws on your bike!
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Old 06-29-21, 01:16 PM
  #68  
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Originally Posted by genejockey
Time. Think how much time you waste screwing in a screw that's even 5mm too long! Now multiply that by all the screws on your bike!
screw that! Why is hardware gotta be so hard to deal with at times. I foresee another thread about hardware in the future.
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Old 06-29-21, 01:24 PM
  #69  
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Originally Posted by genejockey
Time. Think how much time you waste screwing in a screw that's even 5mm too long! Now multiply that by all the screws on your bike!

Don't even get me started on oversized baby bolts.
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Old 06-29-21, 01:27 PM
  #70  
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Originally Posted by livedarklions
Don't even get me started on oversized baby bolts.
Baby bolts? Are they used to install rubber baby buggy bumpers?
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Old 06-29-21, 01:28 PM
  #71  
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I had some bottle cage screws that were so long I was afraid they'd bottom out on the other side of the downtube.
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Old 06-29-21, 01:58 PM
  #72  
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While I’m not overly obsessed about bike weight, I do a lot of climbing and every kg costs approx 1 min per 1000m of typical alpine climbing. On a big ride I might do up to 4000 m of climbing, so that’s a 4 min loss. That’s not an issue if I’m riding alone, but if I’m in a group it could mean the difference between hanging on or getting dropped. Now if you compare a sub 7 kg bike against a 10 kg bike, then it starts to make a real difference on sustained climbs, especially if you are riding in a group.

To put it in context I can lose about 5-6 kg in weight if I really focus on my diet for several months and that’s when I make the biggest gains on hilly rides. My current bike weighs 8.8 kg with pedals, so I could potentially drop another 2 kg, which would give me less than half of the gain from losing weight. So a lightweight bike is more the icing on the cake and really only significant when doing a lot of climbing.
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Old 06-29-21, 02:56 PM
  #73  
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If you have two bikes with the same components at a similar price, why should weight then not also be a factor to consider next? Maybe fit comes before still, but at some point it is a valid factor even if the total weight difference is just 1%, to use the example from the video. Especially for people who climb a lot.
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Old 06-29-21, 03:09 PM
  #74  
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Originally Posted by PeteHski
While I’m not overly obsessed about bike weight, I do a lot of climbing and every kg costs approx 1 min per 1000m of typical alpine climbing. On a big ride I might do up to 4000 m of climbing, so that’s a 4 min loss. That’s not an issue if I’m riding alone, but if I’m in a group it could mean the difference between hanging on or getting dropped. Now if you compare a sub 7 kg bike against a 10 kg bike, then it starts to make a real difference on sustained climbs, especially if you are riding in a group.

To put it in context I can lose about 5-6 kg in weight if I really focus on my diet for several months and that’s when I make the biggest gains on hilly rides. My current bike weighs 8.8 kg with pedals, so I could potentially drop another 2 kg, which would give me less than half of the gain from losing weight. So a lightweight bike is more the icing on the cake and really only significant when doing a lot of climbing.
Just get an ebike. If you're going to spend money to improve your speed up hills, what does it matter how you spend it?
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Old 06-29-21, 03:31 PM
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Originally Posted by 79pmooney
There is a photo from Saturday's huge Tour de France crash that could be used to illustrate the OP's point. In it you can see perhaps a dozen broken frames; many at top and down tubes. So, what, an easy $60 grand of ruined bikes? By contrast, there is the famous footage from "Water Carriers and Kings" (title from memory and wrong, but close) of a rider bending his 1970 steel fork straight enough to ride and finish by hand after a multi-rider crash. Most of the rest had already mounted their bikes and gone.
You know they can just press a little button on their radio and be off and riding on an identical spare bike in a matter of seconds, right? Pro bike racing seems like one of the few situations where shaving grams at the expense of durability makes sense. They don't need bikes that survive crashing. They have a whole car full of spare bikes, parts and mechanics that follow them around.
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