Cotterless cranks
Cartridge bearings
LED lights
Indexed gears
Clipless pedals
Working brakes (dual pivot calipers, better compounds, alloy rims)
What does your classic road bike weigh? How does it compare to modern bikes?
- Thread starter porteous
- Start date
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Cartridge bearings
LED lights
Indexed gears
Clipless pedals
Working brakes (dual pivot calipers, better compounds, alloy rims)
We were already using cotterless alloy chainsets and alloy rims in the 1960s
Not convinced that cartridge bearings are an advance.
You may have been. From reading other posters upthread it doesn't look like your experience was universal.
Davidc
Guru
- Location
- Somerset UK
By the end of the 60s cotter pins were very much on their way out on performance bikes. Square taper straight replacements were available. My first alloy rims were 1973, after an incident in the rain involving a policeman, after which my Weinmann centre pull caliper brakes worked very well. Like raindog I don't view cartridge bearings as any better than traditional bearings when in use. Easier when servicing the bike though.
Indexed gears add weight. LED lights save a little, but of course have massively better performance than anything which went before them.
I'm not sure that clipless pedals save any weight over clips and straps. They're certainly popular, but performance improving? That's not what this thread's about. I'd have to weigh them but don't intend to!
The OP and thread are about weights of bikes, and I don't really see anything much that's reduced that apart from the use of carbon fibre. Perhaps if UCI would like to take their minimum limit away we'd see some real progress in this area. If competition such as tours are to give cycling the maximum benefit the governing body should be encouraging innovation, not stifling it.
I don't care how much steel frames weigh, they are just more loveable than carbon, and more comfortable. However, I have to admit that if you throw the latest carbon frame up in the air, it is so light that it simply drifts away on the wind, like a feather. On the other hand, I expect it will turn into a pile of dust less than ten years after it was made, unlike our everlasting Reynolds 531.
I must've been about 14 when I got my first lightweight racing bike, so that would've been around 1963. It came with alloy rims and 'wired-on' tyres - they're called clinchers these days. After a few months of saving I bought my first pair of sprints and tubs and joined a club. I don't remember ever seeing any club-mates riding with steel rims. Same with cottered cranks - maybe there were a few old-school riders who had them on fixed-wheel bikes, but almost everyone in the club would have been on cotterless chainsets. We rode on the 'wired-on' wheels for winter training and commuting, and used the sprints for TTing and summer club runs.
Them were the days......
thegravestoneman
three wheels on my wagon
- Location
- Castleford, Yorkshire
Up until recently my Saracen race bike was still in its original 80s spec, it is now set up as a fixed wheel with and comes in at 9.2 kilo with its nasty heavy internet rear wheel on, and and would have come in at about ten kilo with its bestist 80s gears and tubs on I won't find out until next year when it gets put back as such. I used to run a fifties Hobbs of Dagenham lugless as my fixed wheel with the Chater Lea steel drum sticks on and they weighed in less then my Ofmega alloy crankset and the entire bike weighed in very lightly, no scales or need to measure back then. both bikes are (or were as the Hobbs has probably been scrapped) 25" frames.
Attachments
Chater Lea stuff was the dog's b llocks. My dad used to swear by their pedals.
HullFC1865
New Member
Hi everyone, new to the forum.
It's interesting the relatively small differential between modern & old bikes, I have a late 50s Carlton Super Python (well I've been told it prob is) with some nice 27" wheels, Suntour shifters & non aero Red S levers, and toe clips and straps she's about 10.6kg, and for a 23" frame is a fair weight.
Then I've my Gitane Vitus GTI which has a Time Composite Carbon fork, comes in at about 9.7 with not particularly lightweight wheels.
Bit more modern still & the Raleigh titanium (62cm c-t) plus Dura Ace 9 speed triple/Mavic SSC's is approx 7.8kg and finally my lightest bike is a Principia Rex Ellipse with full carbon wheels/bars/post but not light pedals is a shade over 7kg.
You get to a stage were there are diminishing returns and it starts to get very very expensive to reduce the weight further..far easier to shed body weight...and cheaper..
It's interesting the relatively small differential between modern & old bikes, I have a late 50s Carlton Super Python (well I've been told it prob is) with some nice 27" wheels, Suntour shifters & non aero Red S levers, and toe clips and straps she's about 10.6kg, and for a 23" frame is a fair weight.
Then I've my Gitane Vitus GTI which has a Time Composite Carbon fork, comes in at about 9.7 with not particularly lightweight wheels.
Bit more modern still & the Raleigh titanium (62cm c-t) plus Dura Ace 9 speed triple/Mavic SSC's is approx 7.8kg and finally my lightest bike is a Principia Rex Ellipse with full carbon wheels/bars/post but not light pedals is a shade over 7kg.
You get to a stage were there are diminishing returns and it starts to get very very expensive to reduce the weight further..far easier to shed body weight...and cheaper..
Cycleops
Legendary Member
- Location
- Accra, Ghana
I agree we haven't come very far in terms of weight.
You can always leave the change out of your pockets.
You can always leave the change out of your pockets.
Bahamontes, the Eagle of Toledo looked like a stick insect, he knew a few things about weight, and not just the weight of the bike either. They used to say that Anquetil couldn't care less about the machinery (although somebody looking after him obviously did) and that he could have won the TDF on a grocer's delivery bike. Maybe we are focussing on the wrong thing here.
On the other hand, Alf Engers, the fastest time trialist of the 60's, drilled out every last bit of weight that could be let go on the bike. He even sawed off the bottom of the brake calipers below the brake blocks. His freewheels only had the cogs he was going to use in the race. He was much faster than anyone else over 25 miles for many years. Interestingly, the latest aero bikes have front brakes behind the forks to minimise drag. Alf Engers did that in 1968. And his eggshell crouching profile at speed looked remarkably like Wiggo's. Perhaps we should be concentrating on reduced wind resistance as equally important as bike weight.
HullFC1865
New Member
For the most part wind resistance is king in terms of effort reduced/increased, even the amount of drag from say a set of pannier bags over a 50 mile ride could impact more than 10kg additional weight in the bags (unless your ride is solely uphill)
It makes me smile to think of the lengths riders of yore would go to to make their bikes lighter when in some cases (drilling holes hither & thither) could actually create more drag (& thus increase power required) than the actual gain in losing a few grams of mass
Tony Smith
Active Member
- Location
- Rural Staffordshire
Yep., mass also has a lot to do with it and also, riding top bars can get you a mouth full of midges !!!
Not long after the first space satellite, Sputnik (1957), there was an interesting development in bicycle aerodynamics. A cyclist was enclosed in a plexiglass bubble shaped like an egg around his body, on a track bike. Riding alone, he could hold off indefinitely a pursuit team trying to catch him round the track. The authorities promptly banned the device, because it gave the rider an unfair advantage. Mr Dunlop, seventy years before, demonstrated the same advantage for his pneumatic tyres, when a solo track rider equipped with them could also hold at bay a pursuit team not so equipped. His device revolutionised cycling.
