After a bit of advice on behalf of a friend re his road bike. He would like to lose a bit a of weight from his Specialized tarmac elite. I know very little about road bikes so im after suggestions really. He was a bit disappointed that he built hybrid out of bits bought from ebay and such like that ended up over a pound lighter than the road bike, although i suspect that most of the advantage is gained from the 1 x 10 gearing and cut down straight handle bars.

My initial though was the wheels as a reduction in rotational mass can be big benefit, but i’ve no idea on what is good or not.

Wheels first , then stuff like seatpost , saddle and h/bars.
All you’ve got left is the groupset probably the most expensive place to save weight.

strip it, weigh it, evaluate.

could be the frame – carbon and not exactly high end.

rims and tyres will effect the ride most. other places the scales.

whats he disappointed with, the ride or the weight on the scales?

Make a spreadsheet! and start weighing parts.

new tyres may provide a cheap* quick-hit? – my road bike came with 350gram wire-bead jobbies.

(*£80 for a pair of ‘something nice’ from your LBS, which is a bargain really for new tyres AND a 200g weight saving)

after that, it’ll get expensive very quickly.

if it were me, i’d spend the money on some nice riding clothes, and replace bike bits as they wear out.

my road bike weighs more than my MTB.

doesnt affect me really …. mostly what i do on it is cruise at constant pace for hours not alot of accelerations

where as my MTB is more pace changing.

IME specialized forks are fair heavy

The wheels are probably cheapy and the cassette ill bet is a heavy steel unit.

The most cost effective is to strip in and weigh it then google.

Unfortunately it is often the frame and forks that will give you the biggest savings. Light wheels can be had for £300 (1500g a pair). Light tyres like 23mm GP4000s. Casette if low end is an easy win. Tubes can also be an easy win.

Somewhere like carboncycles.cc for lighter post, stem and bars.

It might also be worth mentioning that the heaviest thing on the bike will be him and unless he is a racing whippet there could be a few kilo to shave off. No one likes to hear that but 500g off your bike is insignificant is you are dragging 90kg of you up the hill.

wheels, tyres, inner tubes, bar, stem, seatpost, saddle would be a good place to start.

Tyres and inner tubes would be the most cost effective potential weight savings area.

Tell him to make a list of what he has just now, what it weighs, and what he can afford to replace it with.

And as others have said the cheapest way to lose weight is off the rider if he’s carrying a few extra kilos. Costs nothing to lose weight.

I would guess the bike is quite old? TBH even fairly cheap new road bikes these days are pretty light. Think Evans do a trade-in for old clunkers at the moment, and their own brand (Pinnacle) seem pretty good. Might be more cost effective than buying new parts and trying to lighten the old one. Failing that then yes, tyres and less pies.

Losing weight on a road bike is, once you start, a never ending quest. I almost started the same project a while ago. However, after many weeks of research (groupsets, wheels, seatposts and everything else). I priced up and saw that I could buy a new bike which for a little bit more that weighed far less than I could ever achieve with me weight reduction project.

Set a budget, see what you can do with it and then see what deals are about on last year bikes etc.

I’d lose almost a kg with better wheels compared to the standard ones on my Giant.

400g for the wheels, 300g race tyres, 70g ultegra cassette instead of tiagra, some lighter tubes…..

Not a bad way to spend £500….. But it’s more than I paid for the complete bike!

And talking of bar/stem/post, I have a decent specced road bike and i could save 300g off bar/stem/post but would cost around £600!

I wouldnt bother, most of the weight is in the frame and forks, if he wants a light bike buy a light bike.
Mind at 8.5 kg its not that heavy and gets good reviews as is.

Saving weight on bikes gets expensive very quickly. You’ll be lucky to be spending £1 for every gram lost.

As above tyres and inner tubes can be a good place to start. ProRace3 tyres can be found for about £20 each these days and are a decent weight.

Lighter wheels are always nice if the standard ones are heavy, but again, expensive.

Lots of unexpected weight in the saddle on my road bike, 300g, so £100 spent on an SLR or something similar would save about £150 grams.

Bars, stem and seat post, smaller savings to be made and probably a lot more cash.

Groupsets – crankset is probably the biggest one, a higher end one could save a few hundred grams, but again, you probably need to spend £200+ to get that sort of saving.

Good luck.

I wouldnt bother, most of the weight is in the frame and forks, if he wants a light bike buy a light bike.
Mind at 8.5 kg its not that heavy and gets good reviews as is.

Not true, even a basic carbon frame/forks would only be around 1.2kg frame + 600g forks is hardly most of the weight. Wheels/tyres/cassette is def the place to start as has already been posted. Knowing the MY or full spec of the bike would help with other recommendations.
As to whether it’s worth it, probably not but if you’ve got money to spend…

Hmmm, not convinced the weight loss (on the bike) will be worth it…

More here:
http://kapowcycling.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/aiming-to-lose-5-10-of-my-bodyweight.html

1.8 kg frame and forks is a kilo heavier than mine, my bike comes in at 7.2 kg
So I have 6.4 kg in bits.
I’ve cycled with someone who has the same frame built into a bike that weighs 4.8 kg
He has 4 kg in bits and you cant get much lighter than that.

Work out the percentages and you can get a 62% saving in the frame and only 40% in bits.

I did consider lightening my bike but comparing pedals is where I stopped, £250 for the pedals [140g] mine [300g] were about £50.

To mirror whats been said above I recently lost a kilo from the bike by spending £400 on wheels, tyres and a seatpost.

At the same time I lost ~8kg from the rider by spending less money on chips.

Make a spreadsheet! and start weighing parts.

+1

The frame might have the biggest weight to lose, but on a £/gram basis they almost always come out as a bad place to start. to get better he’d either end up with an aluminium frame (as good carbon costs too much for the weigh saving) or chinese imports.

Wheels are always a good place to spend money (unless you ride into potholse or crash regulalry). Novatech hubs, DT revolution spokes and Stans alpha rims would weigh <1300g and cost about £250, tubeless weighs slightly more than ultremo’s and conti supersonics but both circa 230-260g each end. For a bit more money/bit less useability, planet-x/chinese carbon ~25mm tub rims weigh almost nothing (well, 300g for a rim), but are carbon (poorer wet braking) and tubs.

After that I changed my chainset to a 2nd hand FSA carbon one, the groupset to 2nd hand DA, £110 and £180 respectively, and the groupset especialy shed a lot of weight compared to the tigra/105.

Planet-X brakes were a nice upgrade, significanlty cheeper and lighter than DA, power is OK rather than outstanding.

Finishing kit shed some weight, but I went for stuff I liked rather than light. Ended up being light-ish, but could have gone lighter.

It makes the bike feel completely different, but not actualy that much faster. It probably is faster, but that’s probably the tyres and rims construction/profile rather than weight.

Where can you get a novatech, alpha,revelolution wheelset for £250 ??

Where can you get a novatech, alpha,revelolution wheelset for £250 ??

Ebay for hubs ~£70, rims from crc etc ~£140, spokes £40? Build them yourself. Or get a shop to do it for say, £50?

Superstar have 1510 g road wheelsets @ £164.99.

The scales and spreadsheet are a fun way of whiling away an evening or two,honest. Also useful if you don’t have any larger scales to weigh the whole bike.
My order of preference for weight saved vs feel would be
Tyres/tubes
Wheels
Cassette
QRs
Stem: I like the alloy Ritchey C260 Wcs for weight and stiffness.
seat post
Pedals
Bars