Just weighed my Top Fuel, 26lb. Spec is Alu frame, reba SLs, SLX brakes, shifters, mechs, XT chainset and BB, Bontrager X lite carbon bars and ACC seatpost. Wheels are Hope Pro 2’s, 32 DB spokes and DT 4.2 rims, Discs are cheap Shimano ones, and Mud X tyres. saddle is a SLR (135g model). Cables are whatever came as stock.

Just after some ideas of where to loose a little weight, keeping in mind that most changes will be on a when it wears out or brakes basis.

Diet more and exercise?

WCA, thanks for the response but not the question i asked. I am fairly light, 6′ 70kg, and i suppose could do with riding a bit more.

Chop your feet off and fit some cleats direct to the stumps.

lighter brakes and wheels. if your going to wait until it brakes though, then your best off asking at the time

Ashima rotors, superstar components titanium QR’s for two low cost upgrades

Have a poo. A big one.

Mag pedals?

continental mtb supersonic tubes? 100g each instead of 200g for the cheaper ones. Ive ran them for a while now and no punctures yet.

no cheap ways of saving weight there. maybe stans rims.

As cynic-al says, it’s all pretty decent mid-range kit, there’s nothing there that stands out as being massively weighty. It’s going to get expensive to upgrade that.

Change the forks for SIDs will be the biggest weight change, the rest of it is going to be a case of a few grams here, a few there.

have you got lockons? Get some foam or ESI silicon grips.

get a hardtail frame

Kev

If you are using lockon grips then change to good foams (Bontrager Xlite are very good), you’ll save about 100g for about £9.00, a KCNC scandium seat post could be had for about £90 which will save approx another 80g or so.

Wheels will be the most noticeable difference, but not cheap, that said your current set up weighs about 1650g which is not weight weenie XC race light but is a good light weight for regular riding.

Mud Xs are a pretty light mud tyre, so I’d keep them for this time of year, lightweight tubes are good I used 90g – 100g tubes for a few years they are about £9 each, I now use tubeless as it’s far superior.

no cheap ways of saving weight there. maybe stans rims

that was my gut feeling, and that i would be looking at 10grams here and there. Just wondering if there were any decent savings to be made.

get a hardtail frame

Had a hard tail and my back no longer likes hardtails.

hair cut, ride naked, lightweight tubes, change down to 24″ wheels, ride barefoot and gaffa tape your feet to the pedals, get rid of your grips and just gaffa your hands to the bars, ride without a helmet and remember the rule you can take from our 17 year old drunken youth… eating is cheating!

HTH 😉

Cassette – go XT with a 32 rather than 34, or XTR/KCNC if you’ve more cash.

New wheels, Roval/Hope-Stans

Go tubeless.

Formula R1 brakes.

Ti all bolts.

Oh, and weigh everything (and compare) before spending any money.

You could buy my 9.9 if you want? That’s a whisker under 21lbs. Very little effort, and 5lbs saved. 🙂

mrmo – Member

Just weighed my Top Fuel … 26lb … Spec is … (very good list of bits) … where to loose a little weight … ?

…

26lb?

that’s lighter than my road bike!

really, please, for the sake of your mental and financial well being, don’t lose any sleep over it.

losing a pound will cost you about £500 – and you can have a lot more fun with £500.

Go 1×9/10?

Go 1×9/10?

no, simple as. I want to have another crack at Cristalp next summer, i do not want to be crying half way up a mountain.

Tubeless.. Does it actually save much weight? compare weight of innertube to sealant?

Cassette is XT, wouldn’t want to risk anything cheaper (ie more steel) on the hub.

The wheels are getting on so maybe look at rebuilding/replacing the rims/wheels with some Stan Alpines??? in the spring.
Grips are Bonty lock ons but i have a set of foam grips to fit at some point.

SID fork, lots of weight in theory but expensive. i guess there are alternatives but all expensive.

Tubeless.. Does it actually save much weight? compare weight of innertube to sealant?

Its roughly the same weight as using light weight tubes, but without the punctures and you also have the option to run silly low pressures which you could never do with lightweight tubes.

if lightweight is your main goal you might as well sell it and build a new bike. there’s not one single part on there that couldn’t be replaced with something a bit lighter.

no, simple as. I want to have another crack at Cristalp next summer, i do not want to be crying half way up a mountain.

You need stronger legs then! But thats gonna add weight… 😉

I would suggest only taking it out in the dry to avoid any excess weight.

Unless you are wanting to suspend it from a hook that is only rated for anything under 26lbs 😉

GW’s right, a nice 2010 Top Fuel 9.9 would be perfect! Mail in profile 🙂

Wheels are the obvious place. ZTR hubs on Alpines with Revs would prob save you about a pound for a few hundred, go tubeless at the same time. As Kingtut said it doesn’t save weight over silly inner tubes, but it has a number of other advantages tubes don’t!

a TF9.9 might be nice, what size is it? but i haven’t got that much money.

Save the money and train harder and spend the money on some sports psycology/motivational exercises- and thats from someone who is 17 stone and some and still rides a hard tail. A few grams is only a psycological boost, its your performance that will count when you are already on a bike thats that light and fully suspended. You know thats the way to go……

Joking aside – train on a heavier bike before then ride the lighter one for the event.

Joking aside – train on a heavier bike before then ride the lighter one for the event.

That is the heavier bike, the only other functioning bike is a road bike.

Tie a brick to it 😉

i am sure the cotswolds finest winter dust will suffice.

Go minimalist, if all you do is ride off road and you only weigh 70kg fit a surly singlespeed cog on the front, ditch your front mech, cables and shifters, fit an 11-34 cassette on the rear.

This saves weight and money as the surly will outlast everything else and you can fit it on backwards when it gets worn.

If you know someone with a lathe get them to turn the teeth off your outer ring to save spending £30 on a bash ring.

This will knock nearly 1kg off the bike for an outley of £30 for the surley ring plus you can also use a short cage mech when that needs replacing cos youve less chain to accomodate which also now weighs less!

The other advantage is that you will get a lot fitter as you have effectively ditched the bottom two wimp gears and will have to work more on steep climbs.

Remember a 27 speed bike only has 13 usable gears as the rest overlap.

Mrmo it’s an 18.5″.

Suggsey I’m not sure of your point, I’m not sure sports psychology would make a bigger difference than shaving some weight off the bike! Training and losing weight off you is different, but he’s not that heavy.

Is that bar the 265g one. There are plenty of biggish risers at 170g these days, and with light grips that a quarter pound right there. Pretty unlikely your bars are going to wear out though.

“SLX brakes”
Around 430(+)g each (160mm rotor), I think post mount
‘standard’ (2011) Magura Martas are around 325(ish)g I think
Even Elixir R’s (£160 pair on merlin) are 367g each

“SLX shifters, mechs”
About 1g (per pair) between XT and SLX shifters, but almost 30 between SLX and XT shadow rear mechs. (XTR will be lighter of course, quite how much I don’t know)

Not much in the way of weight but just a couple of things that sprung to mind

” I want to have another crack at Cristalp next summer”
Thats ages away, you can always put the gears back on beforehand?

The feeling of needing to shed weight of an already light bike is in itself an indication that performance wise mrmo does not think he is at his peak of performance!
As for the sports psycology side of it, I used to use various techniques including visualisation as well as MTFU and training as hard as my body would take-and this was many years ago before it was widely touted as sports psycology.
As someone else has said put some big tyres on a heavier bike and beast yourself (obviously with a suitable regime for the task in hand).
We can all blame our equipment for a bad performance.
Put any top cyclist in their specific discipline on a heavier bike and see if they still win against Joe Average on a super lightweight machine.

This will knock nearly 1kg off the bike for an outley of £30 for the surley ring plus you can also use a short cage mech when that needs replacing cos youve less chain to accomodate which also now weighs less!

Huh? You save the weight of an inner ring, the teeth on your big ring, front mech, cable and LH shifter, but add a heavy middle ring, and a chain guide and save 1kg?! You may save a couple of hundred grams at most, likely less, and the OPs already said that 1×9’s not an option.

Edit: suggsey I don’t really get that though, you’re saying that weight saving won’t make a difference so spend money on sports psychology, and yet you’re 17 stone? Surely losing 5 stone would make a bigger difference than any sports psychology stuff, which is basically just another thing to throw money at.

18.5 is too small, mine is the 19.5, danger is past.

Is that bar the 265g one. There are plenty of biggish risers at 170g these days, and with light grips that a quarter pound right there. Pretty unlikely your bars are going to wear out though.

It is flat.

“SLX brakes”
Around 430(+)g each (160mm rotor), I think post mount

I thought they looked quite chunky.

So wheels and brakes sounds like a good plan.

What are the ashima rotors like?

The feeling of needing to shed weight of an already light bike is in itself an indication that performance wise mrmo does not think he is at his peak of performance!

There is no think, i know i am not as fit as i was a year ago, circumstances. It is a case of finding every motivational thing, a mix of training rewards etc.

Start going out with the roadies to get a kicking.

Do some XC races to get a proper kicking etc.