ClydeClydeson

My touring bike with pedals and racks and bottle cages weighs a hair under 2 stone.

70sSanO

You sir, are the absolute winner!

John

icemilkcoffee 

You can save a bunch of weight using modern carbon fiber parts and hollow cranks, etc. But the challenge is trying to save weight while keeping the 'classic look'.

For me, some low hanging fruits are:
1. tires- Conti 5000 or 4000
2. pedals: I use SPD pedals, and my lightest pedals are the Wellgo MG8 magnesium and the Ritchey Road Logic SPD pedals. These are both 240g or less. They are at least 80g lighter than the typical Shimano single sided SPD pedals. I had one bike with toe clips, and for that bike I have $20 Wellgo track pedals which are cheap and only 235g. use aluminum toe clips.
3. stems: welded CrMo quill stems - not as pretty as the 'forged' aluminum Nitto stems, but it's ~100g lighter. My 100mm HL stem is only 215g. Titanium quill stems are even better but they are a bit rich for my blood.
4. saddle- the lightest one I have is a cheapo chinese Romin copy with carbon rails. $22 and 160g. The next lightest one I have is a Specialized Toupe with metal rails. It's thinly padded but it's under 200g IIRC.
5. Handlebars : I have carbon fiber Easton and Kestrel 26mm clamp drop bars. They are both around 185g. But I do not recommend 26mm carbon bars because they tend to slip too much. The lightest aluminum 26mm drop bars I've seen are the 3TTT Prima199 (199g), Cinelli Solida (200g), Ritchey WCS (215g). There is also a 3TTT Prima 220 which is heavier than the Prima199 but it is a shiny greyish color instead of black so it's a little more 'classic' looking.
6. cheapo Chinese Titanium skewers- these are 50g for the pair- you save 80-100g over the typical internal cam Shimano skewers. But they only work for 130mm rear dropouts. They do not work for 126mm.
7. cheapo chinese titanium bottom bracket. Well- it's $38 so not exactly cheapo, but it's 150g- probably half the weight of a typical Shimano UN55.
8. headset- swap out steel headset for Aluminum. this one is a no brainer.

sincos

Well, there's this. But 1. It's got a carbon fork. 2. It's not C/V. 3. I don't think I'd trust ANY bike that weighs < 10 lbs, no matter what it's made from. But you could beef it up, add a couple kg, and still have an ultralight steel bike.For an existing bike, maybe the parts list is helpful, but again, not C/V.

Me, I like the idea of a lighter motor.

non-fixie 

One of my Covid projects last year was to see if I could build a 10kg light touring bike with what my parts bin could cough up. I spent many an afternoon weighing parts on the kitchen scales.

This is the result. Exactly 10.00 kg as pictured:



I ditched the horrible plastic saddle soon afterwards, and I am no fan of the flexy Modolo shift levers, but other than that it turned out to be a nice bike. The CLB brakes and levers were a particularly nice surprise. They feel great and their stopping power - with the original pads - is pretty awesome.

jamesdak 

There's been a time or two I've tried to get one fairly light just for the heck of it.

My current lightest steel framed is the Giordana XL a mid 90's frame built up with modern Campagnolo SR/Record parts. Still it's got it's steel fork, alloy cockpit, etc. The real weight concession are the carbon tubular wheels.


17 lbs, 15 ozs as in this picture. That Excell Podium tubing was light stuff.

Running 5 other steel bikes under 19 lbs fully built up and with pedals/saddles/ bottle cages/ etc. Usually the biggest loss I see comes from swapping in good modern wheels.

Road Fan

You can get a lot of reasonably accurate data from the Weight Weenies website, which has been maintaining a database of parts and weights for at least 10 years.

I can't say what is the lightest vintage wheelset. First, what's vintage, how old and what are the constraints, for example the CR timeline is 1983 or earlier and no indexing allowed? Second, what is the design?

I can tell you about my wheelset, built for my 1984-ish Mondonico, setup "Retro-Roadie" for Campagnolo 2x10. At the time I weighed about 185 and now about 15 years later I weigh just a bit over 200 near-nekkid, so borderline Clydesdale. I still ride the same wheels. There has been one broken spoke in about 5000 miles.

What's in the wheels, with "best as I remember" component weights:

> Mavic GP-4 tubular rims, anodized aluminum with ferrules, 430 grams each
> Gommitalia Espresso 21.5 mm tubular tires hand-made with latex, 7 to 9 atm pressure range, 250 grams each
> 2006 Campagnolo Record 10-speed hubset with the original QRs, don't know the weight.
> Campagnolo 10 speed 11/26 (?) cassette, certainly NOT Super Record, guessing about 500 grams
> 32 holes each wheel, Sapim C-Xray spokes with steel nipples.

The builder (Steve Sauter, Ann Arbor, MI "Sauterbilt Wheels") told me they are 1500 grams /pair without tires and cassette. I weighed the wheels on the kitchen gram scale, 2490 grams/pair as listed. Subtracting the tires, we should have 1990 grams. Subtracting the estimated 500 grams for the freewheel, we should have 1490 grams, which is very close to the builder's claim.

So a good set of tubular wheels with excellent vintage mechanical parts can plausibly weigh about 1500 grams, without tires and cassette.

How could it be better? I think my cassette is mostly steel, if not all steel. I would guess Campy's lightest (only Campy cassettes fit on Campy freehubs) cassette saves about 100 grams.

Lighter rims? The GP4 was designed as a training rim, for a season or so of long road rides over local and race-like terrain. If it weighs a little extra, that just builds up the champ's legs a little more! Mavic (GEL280), Fiamme, Martano, Nisi, Wolber/Super Champion and Ambrosio made super-light track rims I think a little less than 300 grams each, and road race rims (Mavic GL330, about 350 grams). So I could save another 2*(430-350) = 2*80 grams = 160 grams potentially or plausibly saved. So my wheels if rebuilt with vintage/retro full-race gear could plausibly lose 260 grams, to weigh in at about 1490 - 260 = 1230 grams. There were of course other rim-makers back in the day, in France, UK, Germany, Argentina, and Japan, but I don't know much about them. Ukai and Araya are relevant brands, rattling around in my head.

FYI, these tubular rims were all really close to the same width and height, and many of them were dark-anodized. I have several pairs of Mavics in service and I've had no cracking or other signs of weakness related to stress at spoke holes. The difference in weight and hence strength was mostly based on thicker walls, when extruded.

So without carbon fiber and with conventional even vintage components, you can get down to between 1230 and 1500 grams per wheelset, complete except for glued on tires and a 10-speed cassette.

Durability will depend on design, condition of the parts, quality of build process, road, terrain conditions, weight-bearing, and rider choices. You can break anything, or you can make them last.

Chombi1 

My steel C&V bikes, built using mostly lightweight components and tubular wheelsets with 32 spokes, max. (But no Ti axled BB, hubs or pedals), average around 19 +/- pounds....... I think, anything lighter could start to negatively affect the bike's reliabilty.

icemilkcoffee 

A better resource for C&V bikes is Damon Rinard's list:
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/rinard/weights.htm

N2deep

A carbon fork is oftn a great way to save weight. My Straggler fork is 2.5 lbs, and Enve carbon fork replacement is 450 grams, about a pound and a half in savings

Schlafen

I remember reading a post on re@dit a couple years ago about a lugged Peugeot allegedly at 4.5kg, lots of drillium.
Tried to find that bike again countless times to no avail. If anyone remembers by any chance and can point me in that direction, it would be greatly appreciated.
As far as weight weenie'ism goes most times people do it as an exercise in itself, as these bikes don't really get ridden a lot.
My take for a ultralight vintage frame would be carbon everything and SRAM Red mechanical.
If it 'must' have a silver vintage look, Zipp makes silver components.

steelbikeguy

method #1: start with a track bike.

back in 1975, Bicycling magazine reviewed a handful of track bikes, and one of these was the Panasonic Ultralight.
It was astounding for the time... it weighed 10 1/2 pounds and cost $4000.
No exotic materials... just remove a lot of material from just about any component. Not sure how much you'd want to really want to sprint on this bike, but might be just the thing for that hour record.





Steve in Peoria

Nuovo Record

My Columbus SL bike weighs 8.0 kilos.

Titanium axles in bottom bracket, pedals and hubs
28 spoke wheels with Mavic Monthlery Legere rims
Regina Superleggera chain
Campagnolo lightweight freewheel
Titanium and aluminium nuts, screws and bolts everywhere

As low-hanging fruit I see the rims, the tyres, the freewheel and the chain. Replacing parts that move (e. g., the rims) helps more that replacing parts that don´t. Drillium doesn´t do so much (10 holes in the chainring equal 1 gram).

Road Fan

I think you can benefit from using both lists, in general.

Dfrost 

One of the most proven, reliable ways to end up with a lightweight steel bike is to be short, or at least have short legs!

Lots of weight is gained as frame size grows.

Road Fan

+1 on the saddles. A Brooks or a Selle Anatomica will weigh about 520 grams, where a Specialized Toupe weighs between 150 and 200 grams. The right Specialized can be as comfortable as an S-A. Personally, I like the feel of a lighter saddle. In aluminum seatposts you have the classic Campy two-bolt around 300, the American Classic somewhat less, and the Thomson Elite around 200. Together with the saddle change there's nearly ½ pound (>400 grams) to be saved. I'm not familiar with current C technology, but a few years ago it seemed difficult to get below 200 grams.

ThermionicScott 

Love this stuff! Exposing the bearings goes a little too far for me, but I dig how they reworked the stem. I've shortened the quill portion of a stem, and have no doubt that shortening the expander bolt to match was responsible for most of the weight savings.

miamijim

Bottom of the barrel cheapo Dia Compe calipers are very light. Generic Flite knockoff saddles are crazy light. Folding tires. Lightweight inner tubes. Lots of ways. But the easiest way is to start with a Tange Prestige frame. Set reference points, for example, a light front wheel is <1000g all in with tire tube skewer.

noglider 

I built up a lightweight bike for myself once. I started with a Cannondale Caad7 frame, a carbon fork, Ultegra 3x9 drivetrain, and some rather lightweight Rolf Sestriere wheels. It was about 19 or 20 pounds, and it was very fast, but it got stolen on the first day I rode it.

shuru421

From what I noticed, wheelset + groupset can lighten up a bicycle, IF the frame is something you wont budge on..
If not, starting with a lighter frame can be a great start.

hose

I bought a set of Alto Velo A26 wheels and im going to put them on a 94 miyata. It seems stupid

Wileyone 

I've spent a lot of time and $$ trying to make my steel bikes as light as possible.

But in the real world of pothole's and rut's, a heavier and stronger wheelset isn't a bad thing.

And at my age they're are no races in my near future.

I would prefer to lose some of my extra covid weight.

Chombi1 

It might have been a Peugeot PSV, which had the very light Supervitus 980 tubset.The bike with stock components is not ultra light at maybe 23 pounds in 56cm size, complete with pedals, but if it is modded up with premium, weight weenie components, I think it can built up to possibly a sub-18 pound bike.