IME this depends a lot on what you ride, how you ride it and who with. Light bikes obviously feel faster to accelerate and take less effort to move around or climb hills with but there can be compromises in stiffness and sure-footedness. The lightest bikes I’ve owned were quick for XC thrashing but were not the most fun on technical terrain. Trails and the prevailing riding style have evolved in my local patch in recent years and that has been mirrored by less focus on bike weight and more on gnarrability.

The manufacturer of the Pinion sleds claim that this isn’t a problem so…

Question then: are these bikes fun?

All to do with where the weight is on the bike. Low down in the middle like the pinion has less effect than at the rear hub (Rohloff) or having heavy wheels etc.

@Stevet1

All to do with where the weight is on the bike. Low down in the middle like the pinion has less effect than at the rear hub (Rohloff) or having heavy wheels etc.

Good point. Rohloff maybe not the best pick for mountainbikes…?

Pinion: yes. Maybe even more fun / better ride due to VERY low weight rear wheel? Overall bike weight high so….?

Neat, new design:
https://www.deviatecycles.com/
“The Guide”
Can’t find the total bike weight.
But possible that this bike will win races – athough it might be not the lowest weight Enduro bike?
But fantastic suspension…?

As a compromise has anyone put a wider rim on the front with a narrower rim on the back? Or upgraded to i wider rim just on the front to improve grip?

At the moment my OCD says don’t do it.

Easton Heists will pretty much tick all your boxes, 50g heavier at 1750g for 27mm internal but do everything else.

And cotic did a report on widths a while back, they said iirc 40f 35r was optimal so yes, a difference front to back.

Ultimately the bike has to be fit for purpose, not very good if the frame or a wheel cracks after a few rides. So the answer is “as light as it needs to be but no lighter”.

Road not MTB: my mate obsessed about bike weight, had a lot (and I mean a lot) of disposable income, so would buy the lightest bike he could. Unfortunately he wasn’t exactly svelte, probably in the 90-100kg range, and he’d crack the frames.

The other night when riding home I caught up with a rider just as we were going through the village, from there it’s 2Km uphill at about 8% gradient. I was on a Croix de Fer, he was on a carbon road bike. I matched him until about 50 metres from the top of the first long ramp when the elastic snapped, 500 metres later he’d put over 100 metres into me. He was probably 10-15kg lighter than me as well 😳

The other night when riding home I caught up with a rider just as we were going through the village, from there it’s 2Km uphill at about 8% gradient. I was on a Croix de Fer, he was on a carbon road bike. I matched him until about 50 metres from the top of the first long ramp when the elastic snapped, 500 metres later he’d put over 100 metres into me. He was probably 10-15kg lighter than me as well

In reality, he saw you on your heavy cross bike, had a bit of a play letting you stick on his wheel and then when the time was right, he opened the briefcase of hurt and dropped you like a stone.

Quite possibly 😀 though it was dark and I was mostly just behind him. It was a good workout though (trying) to keep up.

I was on a Croix de Fer, he was on a carbon road bike

He was probably 10-15kg lighter than me as well

And which of those two* aspects do you think had more effect ?

*assuming of course you were both equally powerful, he might just have been stronger or fitter than you anyway.

He might have been a lot younger as well!

It will have been a mixture, most likely in the proportion of body and bike weight differences. I’m pretty certain I could have held him (at that pace) if I’d been on my carbon road bike as I’ve been up that road much quicker on that.

Often it’s being pushed that gets you the quickest times – a couple of years ago I went for a ride with two pretty quick riders. After an hour of me blowing out of every orifice whilst they chatted we got to the climb out of the Dale. In trying to match them my Strava PB on that segment went from 9m20secs to 6m34secs! I’ve not been within 30 seconds since then.

I don’t know if I agree with heavier wheels roll longer… the heavier rim will have more angular momentum and inertia so will slow down more quickly, no?

I currently have i23s with schwalbe super gravity things on and they defo do not roll faster than when they had exo maxxis highrollers on.

Best place to save weight therefore is in your wheels and especially rims and tyres, with tyres usually being the heavier of the two components (unless you’re already running lightweight tyres).