My bike is 160mm front, 150mm rear and weighs 26lbs. Spec is a carbon Stumpjumper Evo frame, Pike RCT3 Dual Positions, Easton Havens with XT brakes and a Zee drivetrain- it cost £2600 with a second hand frame and new everything else. It didn’t make sense for me to buy a complete bike for the same cost as they seem to have much higher weights and I suspect this is due to higher spec drivetrains being used with cheaper wheels and heavy bars/stem/tyres.

You can’t really compare a second hand carbon framed bike against a new alloy one. Your bike new would be £4,500 so you’d expect it to be a tad lighter and marginally quicker. But 3 lb is not a lot in the overall scheme of things is it? You might get home a minute quicker on a long ride I suppose.

It does seem strange to me that you can buy a DH bike that is about 33lbs (like the Mondraker Summum which is 15kg) with 8″ travel, 203mm rotors, full chain guides and so on but you struggle to find a bike with 3″ less travel, less tough bits and narrower wheels and single ply tyres lighter than that for less than £3000.

1) yes you can, there aren’t many (any at all?) £3k enduro bikes, with 26″ wheels, weighing over 30lb? There’re plenty of 29″ enduro bikes costing less than that weighing less than that!

2) That’s a £5.8k bike, of course it’s going to be light. Cheap/light/strong pick 2, that’s both heavier and 2.3k more than a Codine, I’d expect it to be tougher, and it is, it’s a DH bike!

Just give one to a STW rider, their magic scales will lose another 2-3lb off the weight for bragging rights.

What is it with knocking peoples scales? I’ve weighed my bike on the bathroom scales, and stripped it and weighed each part on the kitchen scales, guess what, the same weight. Even cheap fishing scales are going to be accurate, especialy as most fishermen would rather they over read!

mt – absolutely agree, we all ride what we like best. Only point I was trying to make is that 29 lbs is NOT heavy for a 5″ travel trail bike. Obviously it is heavy if you don’t want to ride that type of bike and I can fully understand people who prefer lighter XC bikes.

What is it with knocking peoples scales? I’ve weighed my bike on the bathroom scales, and stripped it and weighed each part on the kitchen scales, guess what, the same weight. Even cheap fishing scales are going to be accurate, especialy as most fishermen would rather they over read!

I’m not knocking the scales, the optimism is amusing though at times 🙂

moshimonster- everything on my bike was new apart from the frame. For a decent alloy frame of 1lb more than the carbon one let’s say it costs an extra around 200 to 400 quid. That’s still £3000 and 27lbs with pedals. Which is a lot better than the weights of the bikes I list below.

TINAS-

1) I had a quick look on Bikeradar for their reviews of bikes below £3.5k with 140-170mm travel from 2014. The first ten are in the links below and only two (the YT Capra and Norco Sight) are below 30lbs.

http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/gear/category/bikes/mountain-bikes/full-suspension/product/review-saracen-ariel-152-14-48760/

http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/gear/category/bikes/mountain-bikes/full-suspension/product/review-bmc-trailfox-tf03-14-48674/

http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/gear/category/bikes/mountain-bikes/full-suspension/product/review-diamondback-bikes-mission-enduro-14-48660/

http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/gear/category/bikes/mountain-bikes/full-suspension/product/review-merida-one-forty-1-b-14-48484/

http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/gear/category/bikes/mountain-bikes/full-suspension/product/review-gt-force-x-expert-14-48457/

http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/gear/category/bikes/mountain-bikes/full-suspension/product/review-mondraker-dune-r-14-48369/

http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/gear/category/bikes/mountain-bikes/full-suspension/product/review-scott-genius-lt-720-14-48370/

http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/gear/category/bikes/mountain-bikes/full-suspension/product/review-commencal-meta-am2-14-48368/

http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/gear/category/bikes/mountain-bikes/full-suspension/product/review-yt-industries-capra-comp-1-14-48371/

http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/gear/category/bikes/mountain-bikes/full-suspension/product/review-norco-sight-carbon-7-1-5-14-48273/

2) It’s a 5.3k bike, but it’s a DH bike. It has lots more travel than all the above bikes, dual crown forks tougher wheels, coil shock, bigger rotors, wider bars, a full chain guide. If you can’t make an aluminium medium travel bike for £3k that isn’t substantially lighter than that then someone is missing a trick.

My bike is 160mm front, 150mm rear and weighs 26lbs. Spec is a carbon Stumpjumper Evo frame, Pike RCT3 Dual Positions, Easton Havens with XT brakes and a Zee drivetrain

Can you do a full spec list – I’d like to know where your bike is 3.4lbs lighter than mine, when the spec on mine is mostly comparable, if not lighter.

I’m fairly sure a Nomad C frame, even with a CCDBA isn’t 3+ lbs heavier than a Stumpjumper Evo Carbon frame.

moshimonster- everything on my bike was new apart from the frame. For a decent alloy frame of 1lb more than the carbon one let’s say it costs an extra around 200 to 400 quid. That’s still £3000 and 27lbs with pedals. Which is a lot better than the weights of the bikes I list below.

That might make sense within your budget (providing you are happy to run a used carbon frame sans warranty), but in no way does that make a NEW £3K alloy bike heavy at 29 lbs. That’s just what they weigh at that price point when new. If you’re going to compare new v used then it’s a totally different ball game. A used £3K bike is going to be more like £1.5K or less and then you can make a more meaningful direct comparison as to the trade off between weight and cost. You are also trading off new v used in your comparison.

I’ve actually weighed it at 25.5lb and added a bit for pedals and error.

I assume this is yours?

Your frame weighs 6.2lbs. Mine is 5.5lbs.
Your shock is 0.7lbs heavier than mine.
I run carbon cranks, let’s say they’re 100g lighter.
I have light tyres (Schwalbes at 700g a tyre). Let’s say that’s 200g lighter for both.
You have a full chain guide which weighs 195g. I have an e13 xcx which weights 56g.
You have massive flat pedals, let’s say they’re about 550g. I run XTR race SPDs (310g).

I can’t tell what wheels you’ve got exactly, definitely DT 240’s and I guess the rims are Stan’s Flows given the removed decals. Based on weightweenies lists I get them at 1800g with spokes, plus I presume a rimstrip to tubeless them of inner tubes. Being generous let’s say 100g for a pair of Stan’s strips. Havens are 1650g and don’t need tape.

Difference is exactly 3.4lbs based on that.

That might make sense within your budget (providing you are happy to run a used carbon frame sans warranty), but in no way does that make a NEW £3K alloy bike heavy at 29 lbs. That’s just what they weigh at that price point when new. If you’re going to compare new v used then it’s a totally different ball game. A used £3K bike is going to be more like £1.5K or less and then you can make a more meaningful direct comparison as to the trade off between weight and cost. You are also trading off new v used in your comparison.

All the bits were new. I posted two brand new alloy frames up there which will weigh 1lb or 2lb more and cost £200-400 more and will weigh 27-28lbs built up, which is noticeably lighter than all those bikes on bikeradar. That’s not a new for old comparison. That’s a new for new comparison.

Your frame weighs 6.2lbs. Mine is 5.5lbs.
Your shock is 0.7lbs heavier than mine.
I run carbon cranks, let’s say they’re 100g lighter.
I have light tyres (Schwalbes at 700g a tyre). Let’s say that’s 200g lighter for both.
You have a full chain guide which weighs 195g. I have an e13 xcx which weights 56g.
You have massive flat pedals, let’s say they’re about 550g. I run XTR race SPDs (310g).

I can’t tell what wheels you’ve got exactly, definitely DT 240’s and I guess the rims are Stan’s Flows given the removed decals. Based on weightweenies lists I get them at 1800g with spokes, plus I presume a rimstrip to tubeless them of inner tubes. Being generous let’s say 100g for a pair of Stan’s strips. Havens are 1650g and don’t need tape.

Difference is exactly 3.4lbs based on that.

Blimey – old picture! That went a couple of years ago 🙂

New Nomad now, and judging by the spec you’ve put up, I can’t see where the weight difference is. The only thing I’m heavier on is tyres with the new bike (Specialized Butcher/Purg Grid) which aren’t much heavier than yours.

Maybe my scales are out, but other than one or 2 ‘rogue’ bikes, all the Nomads kicking around seem to be 28-29lbs, which lends me to think its in the right ballpark.

All the bits were new. I posted two brand new alloy frames up there which will weigh 1lb or 2lb more and cost £200-400 more and will weigh 27-28lbs built up, which is noticeably lighter than all those bikes on bikeradar. That’s not a new for old comparison. That’s a new for new comparison.

So for a bitsa using all new parts and frame, you’ve actually saved 1-2 lb over an off the peg bike? And that’s only an estimate. Nice one.

Moshimonster- going on the bikes in the bikeradar post with the exception of 2 bikes you’re saving around 3-4lbs. Which is, to my mind, a decent amount.

Hob Nob- for reference my scales weighed my Orange Five at 33lbs, my steel Kona hardtail with Rockshox SIDs at 27.5lb, my Evil Sovereign at 31lbs and my Giant Anthem at 24lbs. I trust them and if my Five actually weighed more than that I’d have had a hernia.

munrobiker – I thought we were discussing 29 lb trail bikes?

I had an 06 S-Works Enduro, it was a large and with pedals weighed 30lbs on Park scales

That was with a DHX shock and talas 36’s, Hope wheels running 5.1’s and NN 2.4’s tubeless plus a triple (all XTR through).

Has surprised me too that the current crop of (equivilent) bikes do weigh more – my mate’s Kona 134 is 32lbs for one.

br – a Kona 134 is hardly state-of-the-art light though is it. Again not really fair to compare against an S-Works Enduro at more than twice the new cost, even an older one. How much does a 2014 S-Works Enduro weigh in at? I bet it’s sub-30 lbs and certainly stiffness/weight ratio will be very competitive.

My previous 140mm trail/everyday bike was 35lbs.
My current equivalent is 160mm and 29lbs.

I can’t believe how light it is!

My previous 140mm trail/everyday bike was 35lbs.
My current equivalent is 160mm and 29lbs.

I think that’s more realistic as to how the market has moved in the last decade. As I said earlier my 2004 top end alloy 5.5″ trail bike was 34 lbs and the equivalent priced bikes I’m looking at now are more like 26-27 lbs and probably stiffer frames too. I still think 29 lbs is reasonable for a £3K trail bike that can handle the odd DH track.

If money is no object an S-Works Stumpy or Camber is as light as a short travel XC race bike from only a few years ago. Just costs £7K to get there without compromise.

Maybe a better answer to the original question is that the nu-skool bikes are considerably stiffer and stronger than their older equivalents. A lot of the early “lightweight” trail bikes were made out of chocolate e.g Whyte 46.

another vote for the:

’29lbs is pretty good actually’ side of the argument.

if bikes are getting a bit heavier, maybe a dose of common sense has been fed back to the designers.

yes, you could probably make a 5″ travel bike that weighed less than 25lbs, and all for less than £2k – but it would be flexy as hell, and more than a few of them would come back broken.

28mm stanchions anyone? – just think how much weight you’d save!

I’d say 29lbs wasn’t unacceptable, but the reality of it seems to be that these bikes are actually heavier than that.

I’ve actually weighed it at 25.5lb and added a bit for pedals and error

Colour me impressed.

That’s lighter than my carbon 5010, with it’s lighter frame, forks (revs), brakes (xtr), wheels (proII/enve), drivetrain (xx1), similar weight tyres (hr11/ardent) and carbon/ti finishing kit. (26lbs on the nose)

It’s a lot lighter than my similarly specced Newmad too (a hair under 29lbs)

It must be those lead lined grips I insist on having.

I reckon a lot of it is that the frames and forks have got so much better that the bikes can cope with terrain that would have needed a DH bike a few years ago and once you get into terrain of that sort you can’t avoid needing stronger, heavier wheels and tyres, which is where the weight is. You could put lighter ones on most of these bikes and take an easy 3lbs off them but then you’d be limited by the strength and grip of the lighter wheels and tyres.

It must be those lead lined grips I insist on having.

Must be.

My 8 year old 150/160mm fs bike is 37-38lb. It doesn’t pedal that well up hills at the moment, but that’s mostly because the bottom gear is too high (I still ride up what I can)

I reckon accounting for inflation it would be a bit cheaper (and the build isn’t exactly weight conscious) than the 29lb enduro bikes, but it’s horses for courses – I don’t mind pedalling a bit harder up hill in order to remove worries about durability when I’m riding down hill. You may differ, and I certainly have lighter bikes for other duties (I wouldn’t enter an XC or CX race even ironically on a 37lb bike), but I’d be disappointed if I bought a £3k enduro bike and it couldn’t take a beating.

Cos they have realised that 29lbs is acceptable to most people, so they make them as ‘fun’ as possible for that weight.

Wow, that’s a lot of debate. I found a raw nerve amongst a few of you 🙂

The original post wasn’t about 140 or 160mm enduro/all mountain bikes. It was approx. 100-110mm trail bikes with 120-130mm forks. 30lbs-ish for a 160mm bike would be more than acceptable. 29lbs for a short-travel trail bike seems a bit lumpy.

Yes, I am old school.

Currently riding a Yeti Big Top 29r that weights under 25lbs. I’ve had an alu 140mm-travel Ellsworth that weighed 26.7lbs a few years ago. My 120mm 2011 Trek Fuel EX weighed 27.2lbs (3×10 XT, with tubes on OE wheels). All weighed with Feedback Sports scales.

Losing weight off my even-more lumpy carcass is an option – I have lost 50lbs in the last 18 months or so. More to come off, too. And yes, there’s not much difference between 27 and 29lbs. But I still think 7lbs+ is a lot for a 110mm travel frame.

It’s a 5.3k bike, but it’s a DH bike. It has lots more travel than all the above bikes, dual crown forks tougher wheels, coil shock, bigger rotors, wider bars, a full chain guide. If you can’t make an aluminium medium travel bike for £3k that isn’t substantially lighter than that then someone is missing a trick.

Not really, the budgets £2.3k (which is a lot of money!) more, to spend on carbon and titanium trinkets to make it light. If you bought an enduro bike for that money I’d expect it to be lighter again. And with DH bikes specing the lightest parts they can get away with I’d be supprised if top end DH bikes weren’t being built with the same parts as enduro bikes.

But for a few examples:
Those enduro bikes often have reverbs, that’s over a lb more weight than a I-beam post and I-fly saddle on the sumnum.
Ti coil spings aren’t much heavier than a CCDBair.
The only aditionaly heavier part is the dual crown fork and the frame, and these days the forks are getting pretty light, and the difference between a DH and an enduro frame probably isn’t that much.

Think of it the other way arround, 30-32lb is the maximum weight most people will accept for a bike, manufacturers have realised that rather than making the same bikes lighter and lighter like they did through the 90’s with XC bikes and 2000’s with trail bikes, that actualy buyers want more bike for the same weight, so now we’re seeing hugely capable 150mm+ travel bikes for £3k, not crippled 5″ travel bikes with XC bits for the same price.

so now we’re seeing hugely capable 150mm+ travel bikes for £3k, not crippled 5″ travel bikes with XC bits for the same price.

This ^
Lowest possible weight is no longer the ultimate target for all round trail bikes. Personally, I like the direction trail bikes have gone in recent years.

fwiw my mates summumm weighed a lot more than 33lbs and the linkages bolts constantly undid themselves

im also very sceptical about even a carbon enduro bike weighing 26lbs!

yeti big top, ellsworth, trek fuel dont really compare to a process 111,

theyve been ridden at UKGEs by a few riders I know of and thats on downhill courses at places liek Ae and Innerleithen that would see the first 3 bikes you mention in pieces!
checkout tom mitchell on his 111 at the start of the season

https://www.rootsandrain.com/rider41074/thomas-mitchell/photos/

In that case chambers, I probably don’t need a bike as gnar as the 111…

I’ve got a sub 25lb fs yet still get passed by girls on 47.6 tonne BSOs on the slightest incline 🙂

Bike weight does matter but only if your at your own personal peak of fitness imo.

About to go for a ride with my 26″ fs and back to back on a mates 29″ Kona Taro that is heavier and ‘only’ a hardtail.

Wonder which one will be the nicest.

It’s all marketing BS and always has been. You just take whatever is slightly different about your bike, bang on endlessly about the advantages that come from that difference and ignore the fact that a) the difference is so small that most riders probably wouldn’t notice if you didn’t tell them and b) every advantage brings with it a disadvantage.

But it works. You can get people to spend hundreds of pounds to reduce the weight of their bike by less than the weight of a good poo, you can get them to spend thousands to change their bike for one with wheels that are 3% bigger and you can sell them a slightly different geometry that makes some bits of the ride more fun and some bits less fun. Viewed from outside the bubble it must look quite funny.

+1

It’s way cheaper to drop a few kgs off yourself or get some skill but always easier to buy into the spend culture , we all love shiney and they know it 🙂

It costs a lot of money to make an mtb component lightweight, and means sometimes using expensive materials carefully.

The manufacturers are just ripping off these gullible downhillers.

I’ve seen ex What Mountain Bike magazine trick rider regular Jez Avery ride off the roof of his truck on a lightweight GT Zaskar Rigid MTB about 20 years ago

The legendary Hans Ray reportedly got a job trick riding for Cannondale by calling in at their head office and persuaded the big wigs to come outside to show them his skills. He some how managed to bounce his bike onto the roof of their building and finished by riding off. All done on an ancient hardtail.

No quality bikes weighed more than 25lb in those days

Wonder how much Danny McAskill’s bikes weigh?

If it was in their interest to do so (and it isn’t because weight isn’t really a big issue riding downhill) I am absolutely certain that the big manufacturers could produce a World Cup downhill bike that weighed less than 30lb.

So the Pro’s ride 37lb bikes and the wanna be’s see this as high end and get sucked in and pay ££££ for cheap lumps of lead with decent shocks.

No quality bikes weighed more than 25lb in those days

Those would be the days before decent suspension (and often no suspension)?

And a pro landing some big jumps/drops tells you nothing about the strength of a frame – generally two things break frames: fatigue and crashes (including casing/hucking to flat). Get a new frame as often as a pro does and the former is irrelevant and the latter is expected and irrelevant.

We weren’t talking about downhill bikes, this was about bikes you pedal up but still can descend fast. Not XC bikes, not DH bikes. Maybe enduro…

horses for courses.

Yeah coz the red bull rampage could easily be won on a 1990s gt zaskar ……

It costs a lot of money to make an mtb component lightweight, and means sometimes using expensive materials carefully.

The manufacturers are just ripping off these gullible downhillers.

I’ve seen ex What Mountain Bike magazine trick rider regular Jez Avery ride off the roof of his truck on a lightweight GT Zaskar Rigid MTB about 20 years ago

The legendary Hans Ray reportedly got a job trick riding for Cannondale by calling in at their head office and persuaded the big wigs to come outside to show them his skills. He some how managed to bounce his bike onto the roof of their building and finished by riding off. All done on an ancient hardtail.

No quality bikes weighed more than 25lb in those days

Wonder how much Danny McAskill’s bikes weigh?

If it was in their interest to do so (and it isn’t because weight isn’t really a big issue riding downhill) I am absolutely certain that the big manufacturers could produce a World Cup downhill bike that weighed less than 30lb.

So the Pro’s ride 37lb bikes and the wanna be’s see this as high end and get sucked in and pay ££££ for cheap lumps of lead with decent shocks.

Jeeze mate, are you an ex-downhiller? Lightweight race frames usually only last one season, downhillers want 37lb bikes because they last for more than one season.

37lb bikes also hold their lines far better than 30lb bikes at 40mph through a rock garden, bikes become to light. And people have built 29lb Trek Sessions, but pro’s will never race a bike that light.

Let’s take a 1500 quid Nukeproof Pulse frame, 500 quid of that bike is in the shock. 1000 for that frame isn’t too bad at all. Weight is fairly unimportant, what matters is the geometry, the linkage design and the degree of flex the frame has. To little flex and the bike is sketchy in flat fast corners, to much and it doesn’t hold a line well.

Exactly! So, All Mountain and Enduro could be even lighter, Where is the titanium or any other exotic materials except for carbon on modern bikes?

Modern road bikes are down to less than 8lb now, because thats what sells.

The UCI (cycling governing body) have a minimum weight limit of 6.8kg or 14.9lb and it is out of date as many retail bikes are much lighter than this despite having 22 electrically controlled gears.

Don’t think that road bikes are weak either, they are tremendously stiff and are capable of hitting pots holes and cattle grids and such at speeds of 40 and 50mph.

Yes, I’m an older guy and yes I have recently started to ride on the road, but I’ve been mountain biking since the 80’s so I remember when those funny looking antiques from them days were high-end capable machines that could be and were ridden anywhere.

In fact those were the days when kids still actually rode bikes instead of x-boxing and all had proper bmx skills. They took the bmx skills and progressed to mountain bike, unlike the modern mtb er whose skillset doesn’t include wheelies, bunny hops and instead just plow through everything with 140mm of travel.

Rose tinted specs? Maybe, but its an alternative opinion and I”m entitled to it 😆

Exactly! So, All Mountain and Enduro could be even lighter, Where is the titanium or any other exotic materials except for carbon on modern bikes?

Titanium is a shite material for downhill bikes, it’s flexy and heavier than aluminium.

Potholes aren’t the same as hitting large drop offs at speed regularly, or ploughing through rocks gardens with a fork that is so long that it exerts massive amounts of force through the headtube. Just because somethings lighter doesn’t mean to say it’s better, in motogp I believe the two stroke 500’s were lighter than the four stroke 990s – the four strokes still ruled the season that they raced against each other.

All good downhillers can manual, wheelie and jump btw. Downhillers these days are also pushing the envelope far beyond what people did in the early 1990’s, they are fitter, stronger, faster and more talented.

Most youngsters still grow up first learning to ride BMX bikes.

prolly a lot of it is down to personal preference. I guess at alot of these enduro bikes benefit from clever geometry , shocks and design, rather than just the plain old weight factor – esp when climbing is concerned. Your prolly tired when you climb and just want something that tracks well and is solid and then also holds it’s line on the downs. Although again difference riders may have different preferences and i guess there’s nothing stopping people lightning bikes, should they wish too. Although i have no experience, just thoughts.