scottproonly":knaa19j4 said:
I just wondered how people shake the bug,especially retrobikers.
Anybody have any thoughts on this?
Kes
When lightweight bits fail and dump you on your arse. Even more likely when they weren't actually very good, or very well made, 20 years ago, and have had 20 years of abuse........
These days its a waste of time. You can build a perfectly functional road bike to the UCI limit for £1500. Or with shopping round, lighter for the same money, or same weight for less. Guy on weightweenies did a UCI illegal road bike for 1000 dollars IIRC.
My Race MTB is a around 20 lbs, and there are no concessions to performance or comfort, 2x drivetrain with a full size cassette, proper 100mm forks (some people take bits out to make them lighter, usually stops them working at the same time!) comfy saddle for 4-5 hour events, not a 75 minute XCO event, proper sized tyres (2,25 at the moment).
Only thing that has a weight limit that has any sort of an impact is the wheels. And thats 85 kilos. Everything else is either unlimited, or 120 kilos.
So why would you want to spend rapidly increasing money on rapidly diminishing returns on weight when from a physics perspective, the biggest place to save weight/improve performance is usually the fat lump on the saddle.
FWIW not very many road pros use bikes at the UCI limit, and on the MTB side most of the pros bikes could probably lose half a kilo or more (according to other weight weenies forum members, not me), but they'd have to spend the value of the bike again, and it'd quite likely only last one or two races........
