[Closed] Best road bike material?

There isn't really a 'best' more a most appropriate I'd say. What are you looking for from the bike?

Yep,

No such thing as an absolute best, bike fitting, design, material, etc. the important question is what do you want, then you can start talking about what is best for your purpose.

steel is definitely the best material -the skinny tubes are more 'aero' than the fat tubes needed on ally and carbon frames.

fat ally and carbon frames simply give manufacturers more space for their logos.

I've ridden steel, carbon and Ti. Other than cost, there is no advantage to steel.

Anything but plastic should be fine

Iron

Ride them all and its hard not to like plastic. Don't think you would find Ti better. I'd have a holiday instead.

Someone's tried bamboo I believe, and wood's been used many eons ago.

Personally I love my plastic bike. Really stiff but much more comfortable than ally - takes a lot of the road buzz out

The best road bike material is the one that the bike you like the most is made from.

Spruce
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My personal favourite are carbon fibre frames. I raced a lot on steel frames and compared to carbon they were flexy and heavy. Aluminium was ok, but carbon is my choice.

Wigginsium
or
Pendletonium

I believe titanium is really for a gent of a certain age.

Cheese.

Having owned both Ti and carbon now, I would say that the advantages of Ti are longevity, ease of ownership and possibly aesthetics. In every other respect carbon can be better for less. As comfy as you like, as stiff as you like and lighter than anything else. Got to be careful with it though.

any particular type of cheese CFH??? 😀

For performance, I'd guess carbon... But I've not had the chance to ride a cf bike 🙁

My experience is with steel - and the different steel bikes I've ridden have been very different. So design and fit probably more influential than material?

i havent ridden carbon or ti,
ridden a few alu and quite a few steel.
and my opinion is this:
older steel frames had a better ride than an equivalent modern steel frame.
i cant decide if this is due to the more modern unicrown/straight blade forks, or if its the frame itself being stiffer due to cen testing.

Sportive - titanium
Race - aluminium (you'll crash it)
Both - carbon

Geometry is more important that material. After that if stiffness matters (race), the fatter the tubes the better.

I have a lovely titanium road bike. Ride is wonderful, weight is not bad. But I would not want to race it for fear of crashing (it's a work of art)! It's not that rigid, either. But I always wanted a Ti bike, and haven't regretted it. But it isn't the "definitive" road bike, by any means. And I'm planning a carbon road bike for more raceier duties.

@

djaustin

Chances are if you crashed your Ti bike it would fare better than a plastic jobbie.

They all have their merits. Ti is nice and comfy Carbon is stupidly stiff and light. As the years tick on by Steel is the real deal. 8)

Ti is nice and comfy Carbon is stupidly stiff and light

Bit of a generalization there, my carbon road bike is comfier than the Ti frame it replaced.

From recent experience a mix of humility and sociability would work well

A suit is a waste of time unless it fits you well, no matter what material it's made from.

Wool - steel?
Polyester - carbon?
Silk - ti?

Ti is nice and comfy Carbon is stupidly stiff and light

Bit of a generalization there, my carbon road bike is comfier than the Ti frame it replaced.

I'd agree (funny that 😉 ), but I didn't expect that to be the case. The carbon frame is supposed to be an out and out racer (Tarmac SL4), while the Ti bike was billed specifically as a Sportive.

I've got all three. Geometry is at least as significant than the material it's made of.

Geometry is at least as significant than the material it's made of

Fair point, as above one man's velvet couch is another man's back breaker. I also have crabon, titanium, steel, and aluminium. Ill say it again for the benefit of those in the cheap seats, steel.

Yep as above. My Steel road bike is always my choice
The ti one just collects dust now

I much prefer my aluminium road bike to my steel bike in just about every respect (efficiency, stability, speed, acceleration, even comfort) - they have virtually identical geometry.

That's me, though, and everyone's different. Preferring aluminium may make me uncool but it doesn't make me wrong.

There's no single "best" material. And for any given geometry the material is, to a large degree, no more than a means of achieving the tube shapes that are required in order to get the stiffness in the right place whilst balancing the undesirable factors of cost and weight. (As a large bloke, one of the issues with steel is that to get a frame with tube profiles large enough to make it stiff 'enough' would be both heavy *and* expensive.)

The answer to the question depends wholly on what you find are the good and bad characteristics of each of your current bikes, and what characteristics you want of your new one, plus other factors like how big you are and what you intend to use it for.

I was wondering if it is worth going Ti and the best way to do this?

q1- depends on what you expect to gain from it
q2 - decice what you want to gain and match the frame to your needs, having a budget of up to £2.5k helps

Not intending to be blunt, just that there's so much variation in all this. The close-to-most-enjoyable as well as possibly the most disappointing road bikes I've owned were both Ti. The nicest ones at both ends of the price range (the keepers) were / are steel, but I don't count grams on my bikes.

Listen to your selfs, please.