I am currently using one a 1960s Rudge Pathfinder as my road bike. It weighs in (on the cheap Chinese hand scales that we use for airline bags) at 13.5kg. A modern £300 steel bike (Carrera Zelos) weighs in at 11.7 kg and a £1000 Boardman at "about" 8.8 kg. I'm not quite sure how much difference that 4.7kg makes but I suspect its enough to make the Rudge look a bargain. I had somehow expected 45 years of progress, CAD and carbon fibre to result in featherweight cycles. Silly me.
What does your classic road bike weigh? How does it compare to modern bikes?
- Thread starter porteous
- Start date
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goody
Veteran
- Location
- Carshalton
How much did your Rudge cost when it was new?
biggs682
Itching to get back on my bike's
- Location
- Northamptonshire
My Pollard tips the scales at around the 11.5 kg mark
Cycleops
Legendary Member
- Location
- Accra, Ghana
Yes, it does seem amazing that there hasn't been much progress on weight in the last fifty years, not only that but components are still more or less the same as they were then. it seems there there has only been a "tinkering" with them, as in the Di12. I would have expected more, perhaps some sort CV tranmission as in cars. But I guess we are a conservative lot.
The 1957 Raleigh catalogue gives the same bike in Raleigh form (Lenton Sports), at £20 17s. Or with a dynohub £23 13s 4d, which was probably 2-3 weeks wages for the average working chap. A contemporary ad from the late 50s gives the price of the 1957 Pathfinder (Model 128) as £20. 6, 8d without the dynohub (Or easy payments with £1 deposit). These bikes came with a full lighting set, saddlebag and pump.
There is a full article on these bikes, with British prices, on the late great Sheldon Brown's site here: http://sheldonbrown.com/retroraleighs/lenton-kohler.html
Davidc
Guru
- Location
- Somerset UK
My 1966 model Holdsworth Cyclone cost £41 for the 10 speed version.
I think (but accept corrections!) that's about £700 today. (Took ages to save for it from my Saturday job at Sainsburys).
Stripped down and set up with lightweight wheels and tubs for TT use was a fraction over 11kg or 25lb 0oz.
Set up for school or later uni use it was nearer 40kg, with normal wheels and tyres, pump, guards, rack, panniers and dynamo lighting. Even more for touring holidays with saddle bag and front rack and panniers!
It's a good thing I never found the person who stole it, I'd have got a life sentence.
I think (but accept corrections!) that's about £700 today. (Took ages to save for it from my Saturday job at Sainsburys).
Stripped down and set up with lightweight wheels and tubs for TT use was a fraction over 11kg or 25lb 0oz.
Set up for school or later uni use it was nearer 40kg, with normal wheels and tyres, pump, guards, rack, panniers and dynamo lighting. Even more for touring holidays with saddle bag and front rack and panniers!
It's a good thing I never found the person who stole it, I'd have got a life sentence.
Your last sentence rang a bell. That's what got me back cycling, after 42 years the bike I had stolen from me in Cambridge came back to haunt me, so I spent two years or so sourcing the bits and recreating "my" bike. The itch no longer needs scratching but I'd like five minutes alone with the low life that stole the original. I reckon the cost of my old pathfinder was about £400 - £500 at todays prices. The rebuild cost about £150. got most of the bits from Fleabay and found a 1957 frame not 5 miles away.
I have been looking at some 1950s catalogues as this thread has developed and nowhere does anyone quote a weight for a bike. Perhaps it really wasn't / isn't that important at all compered with getting the right fit and the right components and keeping fit to ride?
But I agree about the "fashion accessory" aspect mentioned by sidevalve.
But I agree about the "fashion accessory" aspect mentioned by sidevalve.
Davidc
Guru
- Location
- Somerset UK
One big difference was that most of us had one bike. We changed the fittings for the job in hand. The one bike would do what's now known as Audax, touring, TT, utility and commuting, and anything else. There were even people at school who took the gears off and put a fixed wheel on for track.
There was no place for fashion accessories, took too long to get on and off!
There was no place for fashion accessories, took too long to get on and off!
- Location
- the post-brexit wasteland
i think my 1951 claud butler olympic sprint is the lightest of my bikes; fixed will always be lighter than gears on the same frame…
Quite right but, in a flash of the blindingly obvious I realised, this morning, that frame weight is partly dependant on frame size! Anyway, by this time reason has rather gone out of the window and I ended up weighing my '48 Rudge Clubman and my straight 4 speed SA '57 Rudge Pathfinder. 28lb (12.7kg) and 29lb ( 13.1kg), both with pump and empty saddlebag.
So. Modern frames are generally a little lighter, depending on how much you pay. Pretty much the same as in the 40s, 50,s and 60s. Sidevalve's old Dawes is lighter than a mid range Raleigh built Carlton/Rudge/Raleigh (Although the top end products for all three were probably comparable with Dawes, Claude Butler, and hand builds were the bees knees which few of us could afford then and even fewer now.). I am personally comfortable with what might still be called "Clubman" standard, i.e. good quality simple touring bikes that performed well and most working folk could afford. It worked then and it works now, with a small weight penalty but the advantage that most of us can fettle them , if, like me, you still rather prefer the older type of bike. (I wish my old style body still functioned as well as my old style bikes!)
Modern lightweight frames suddenly don't seem quite the advance you pay for). The biggest weight/design change over the last 60 years seems to have been the general move from steel to aluminium alloy for the bits and pieces ( I except carbon fibre, which I think is probably magic, but still leaves me uncomfortable with the idea of a bicycle that is basically knitting and glue).
Davidc's comment above also seems an important part of the debate to me. My children all ride bikes but seem incapable of any maintenance beyond pumping up the tyres and whining when bits drop off or seize up.
One further remark. In the 50s and 60's I don't recall many manufacturers offering "BSOs", which were over heavy, unreliable and simply bad value. Old fashioned engineering quality from British industry being overtaken by cheap but not necessarily good, far east made products and slick marketing convincing us we needed different bikes for different things, at least in part of the bike market. (See Davidc's posts again).
Personally I feel myself tempted to buy an Ordinary and rise above this sort of thing..
Tony Smith
Active Member
- Location
- Rural Staffordshire
When I started cycling in the early 60's we knew nothing about stand over height, or anything else for that matter. If we could ride it we rode it, even if we had to slide the cheeks of our backside well to one side when stopped at road junctions. It was one bike for everything., yes we wanted Campag bits (we NEVER called them 'Campy') but most of us struggled by with wobbly cotter pins, chainsets that always seemed to have that bloody gooses head forged into them somehow and Unica seats that cut us in half.
We'd never heard of Shimano or cleats it was rattrap and simplex nylon (unless you could run to Campag) and if anyone had turned up for a Sunday run with a Campag headset he wouldn't have gotten away without it being covered in fingerprints.
We'd never heard of Shimano or cleats it was rattrap and simplex nylon (unless you could run to Campag) and if anyone had turned up for a Sunday run with a Campag headset he wouldn't have gotten away without it being covered in fingerprints.
Steel track bikes with sprints and tubs (of course, no gears, no brakes, plastic saddles, all components in alloy) raced at Welwyn track in about 1960 tried to get below 20lbs (9.07kg). They came close but didn't often achieve it. You tested a bike's weight then by lifting it at the crossbar with your little finger, not difficult if you got the centre of gravity right.
