5lb does make a difference.

If you enjoy the trails on a hardtail maybe FS is ‘too much’ for you.

I rode my FS bike about 5 times this year but my hardtails went out twice a week. My FS bike weighs less than the hardtails too…

My hardtail is always quicker uphill as its lighter, but then i love the control and comfort of a full sus on rough stuff. So i wouldn’t mind 5lbs for a nice full sus bike. MTFU option

A grey beard. I suppose it depends on what kind of full sus as well. I tried a Scott Spark other day. Felt like a hardtail but with a nice bouncy edge.

The dweebs on here will try and tell you that 5lbs is a small fraction of the total weight so will make little difference when winching up a steady fire-road climb, which is true.

However on singletrack, where the bike is being accelerated up, down, forwards, backwards and side to side many times a minute or even second by you, your brakes or your tyres, 5lbs makes a massive difference.

But of course there are FS and FS. Lighter FS usually have steeper angles which makes for a better pedalling position and a load of other handling factors. It depends on the trails too and the style of corners etc. My Orange 5 (28lbs) is much much faster around Swinley singletrack than my Kona Heihei (21lbs), because the geometry works much better for those trails.

On the other hand, my Patriot was 31lbs new and pretty slow. I made the tyres tubeless which saved maybe 0.5lbs and it’s now much faster and more lively, because the rolling resistance is now significantly lower.

When I bought my first FS I tested one of the first FSR 120s and a Fisher Cake. The FSR was maybe 2lbs heavier, but felt an utter dog on the climbs, whereas the Cake climbed like a spanked goat. They had very different angles.

Psychologically, it does make a difference. Speed will vary little though.

Regards
Dweeb.

FS always feels slower, you’re not being banged about like on a HT, but it could be draggy tyres, or lower pressure, or that you’re just used to the HT. Don’t sweat about it, who wants two bikes that feel the same anyway?

Too much sag/etc on the rear? 5lb is sod all. I bet its the rear shock sagging/sapping forward motion or grippier tyres etc.

Let’s not forget nige’s fs is a 29er and he is 11 feet tall. Drag co efficiences must come in to the equation ?

Do folk really ride like this? Sounds very tiring.

its loads, i am in the molgrips camp.

bike weight is more signficant than rider/kit weight; its “unsprung weight” with the riders arms and legs as the springs. Picture a flowing rolling bit of singletrack with the bike being pumped “into” the track and the sprung mass, the rider’s torso, following a straight line.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsprung_mass

Picture a fat middle aged man plonked in the saddle trundling along nice and slowly… 😉

Al – it makes a HUGE difference to me.. but we are just different riders it seems 🙂

from owning 2 very similar hardtails (except one is 26lb and one 31lb) and three similar DH bikes (@ 37lb, 41lb & 46lb) alongside each other and often riding more than one bike in the same day I can assure you 5lb does make a pretty huge difference in handling, stability and manouverablility. wheel weight makes big difference to acceleration and climbing but also a huge difference for stability over rough ground and in the air.
I’ve had DH bikes ranging from 37lb to 52lb and hadrtails from 22lb to 35lb over the years and although a lighter bike will usually climb smooth climbs or accelerate out a gate faster weight isn’t always a bad thing but it obviously depends where the weight is too.

racy frame angles are generally found on light builds/ cruisier angles on more robust builds- and I think that’s why a lot of people expect light weight to equal a faster bike, when in fact it’s that the design males it a more efficient pedalling machine.

Think you’re wrong! Take 2 identical 4X hardtails. use the exact same same light weight (4.5lb) Alu frame, build one with XO/Reba/ProII/717 and light dependable finishing kit the other with old Saint/Argyle/721 and average DH worthy kit and you’d have one 25lb bike and one 30lb one. both as efficient pedalling as each other but with the same rider on board the light one would make up a bike length out a start gate, change direction faster and be more manouverable. take them both on a proper DH track and although less manouverable the heavier one will be easier to control.

Alright most of us don’t 🙂

What happened on that thread in the end Al?

I could lose 5lb off every bike I own fairly easily but I wouldn’t want to ride it afterwards, durability is as important to me as weight on a bike build.