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Hard to take any of his advice serious, when he starts by saying that weight isn't that important for a bike. Riding old heavy bikes vs. new lightweight bikes i
by bjarneh 5y ago
Hard to take any of his advice serious, when he starts by saying that weight isn't that important for a bike. Riding old heavy bikes vs. new lightweight bikes is a world of difference. The stuff said about safety:
> if a car crumples too much when it’s in a collision, that’s an unsafe car and you don’t want it on the streets. I feel the same about bikes.
also sounds a bit strange. Certainly carbon fiber can crack instead of bend, but you typically notice that. And aluminum is probably not as "bendy" as steel, but I've never heard about anyone getting into problems due to riding around unknowingly on a cracked aluminum frame.
- sealaska 5y agoI think the problem with heavy bikes isn't only the weight itself. It's the fact that heavy bikes typically have much cheaper components / manufacturing overall. Consider that adding 5 pounds to stationary components, like the frame, is adding < 5% to the amount of work being done by the rider, depending on the rider's weight. I took his comments on bike weight as him saying that it isn't really worth worrying about an extra pound or two.
- locallost 5y agoI ride a 25-30 pound old bike and an 80 pound cargo bike and I don't think weight is that important for city riding. So it depends what you want to do with it.
- systemBuilder 5y agoYou can definitely notice 2 lbs + butted tubing upgrade while riding a bike. It's essentially why Raleigh offered 3 grades of steel bikes in the 70s : 28 lbs : carbon steel (2 models) 25 lbs : 531 butted main tubes, forks (2 models) 23 lbs : 531 throughout (2 models) The super course was a bit of an aberration (27 lbs; 531 plain gauge steel main tubes only; only a 1 lbs upgrade from carbon steel; the 531 did not improve the bike but the sticker on the seat tube conferred bragging rights!)