I rode my bmx as a kid everywhere for years, even did my paper round on it

I can’t wheelie for shit

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

what are you smoking?

The lightest production road bike is 10.25lb (trek emonda), any lighter than that are silly weight weenie spaff fests with alloy cassettes, carbon chainrings, less than 11 gears, saddles you cant sit on without getting piles and a rider weight limit of 50kg, reduced to 45 if it rains.

And thats not what sells, stuff like the venge, foil, etc are proof that even roadies have better things to worry about than weight.

and as I have no experience i am not even sure enduro’s are considered heavy.Maybe they are light for their purpose – esp compared to maybe the average full on DH bikes

I guess with XC type bikes if they are actually considered heavy then maybe it’s the additional material in larger wheels, forks that then have a larger gyroscopic effect to contend with, thus more strengthening or maybe at certain price points more material and maybe larger dimensioned , more highly strengthened frames, which again might add a bit of weight. However the overall result may actually possibly be a faster, more sure footed and enjoyable bike..with capacity to lighten if required.

anyway who cares = just go and ride’em 🙂

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

Thats incorrect, It’s only flexy when built up with slim tubes, as is steel and this is seen as a good thing to those who buy these frames.
Aluminium alloy is weaker than titanium (titanium has a better strength to weight ratio then Aluminium), and has to built with rigid larger diameter tubes otherwise it would bend and stay bent. Then the tubing gets so thin that the slightest knock leaves a dent. Steel and titanium can flex and return to their original shape unlike aluminium. Then because it can be built with thicker but smaller diameter tubing it can take a whack without denting.

Aluminium also oxidises in air which is where fatigue you mention comes into it. Titanium does not corrode or oxidise which is why most ti frames are “naked” and do not suffer from fatigue.

The only advantage aluminium has over titanium is cost.

To the other guy with the flippant comment about the red bull rampage. Of course the Zaskar or any other rigid frame for that matter would be totally unsuitable for downhill, I was just making a point that a frame does not have to have excess material to be strong. Its about carefull butting’ shaping and welding and using the correct alloy.

Where are ti frames or scandium alloy? Nowhere

Going back to comparing road bike frames, 750 gram frames and 400 gram forks can hit pot holes at 40mph plus with no suspension using 23mm tyres inflated to 120psi.

Modern full suss bikes might ride smoothly, but they are built from sh**e materials with so little technology (shocks aside) that tiny little companies with no R&D can compete. And mentioning shocks, they have no quality at all, stanchions made from cheese that wear through in 5 minutes causing leaks galore. They really should be made from cromoly like cars and motorbikes. The manufactures are laughing all the way to the bank 😉

Aluminium also oxidises in air which is where fatigue you mention comes into it. Titanium does not corrode or oxidise which is why most ti frames are “naked” and do not suffer from fatigue.

What on earth are you talking about?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_limit

Considering how steel and aluminium frames vastly outnumber titanium ones there are an awful lot of threads on here about broken Ti frames. Pare any MTB frame down to the lightest structure possible for ideal riding and it’ll break when crashed and hit with non-ideal loads. MTBs get crashed a lot so lightest does not equal best unless you like buying new frames every time you have an off…

Modern road bikes are down to less than 8lb now, because thats what sells.
what are you smoking?
The lightest production road bike is 10.25lb (trek emonda), any lighter than that are silly weight weenie spaff fests with alloy cassettes, carbon chainrings, less than 11 gears, saddles you cant sit on without getting piles and a rider weight limit of 50kg, reduced to 45 if it rains.

And thats not what sells, stuff like the venge, foil, etc are proof that even roadies have better things to worry about than weight.

I agree with all that, and didn’t mean to indicate that 8lb bikes were practical, I did mean that good road bikes can be less than 16lb though.

Hand on heart, I really believe that in this day and age, there is no reason for any mtb to weigh more than 30lb no matter its intended application. The old adage – light, strong, cheap, pick any two applies and I think the manufacturers have played a blinder here by making the public believe that a decent bike has to weigh circa 37lb’s meaning they can make lardy bikes and charge a fortune for them.

Anyway I was just giving an opinion to answer the opening posters question. You don’t have to agree, but anyone who has had 90+ pounds strapped to a Saris Bones gets a bit nervous unnecessarily imho

Thats me done on this matter 😆

Modern full suss bikes might ride smoothly, but they are built from sh**e materials with so little technology (shocks aside) that tiny little companies with no R&D can compete. And mentioning shocks, they have no quality at all, stanchions made from cheese that wear through in 5 minutes causing leaks galore. They really should be made from cromoly like cars and motorbikes. The manufactures are laughing all the way to the bank

Chromoly stanchions weigh a tonne. See domains. Also, it doesn’t take a huge R8D budget to make a good chassis. See the motorbike world for further info.

Aluminium alloy is weaker than titanium (titanium has a better strength to weight ratio then Aluminium),

Strength doesnt equate to stiffness. To get stiff strong and light titanium tubing, you’d have even thinner side walls than alu as the material is heavier but stronger. If an aluminium frame was made using tubing that was as thick and the same diameter as this imaginary titanium frame, then it would be a lot less stiff but also a lot lighter.

http://sheldonbrown.com/frame-materials.html

I’m pretty sure that there’s a logical reason as to why Ducati no longer use steel trellis frames and race cars no longer use steel/titanium space-frames.

I was done but somebody posted up

What on earth are you talking about?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_limit

So I clicked on the link here and actually read the first paragraph below which reinforces what I said about aluminium 😆

Fatigue limit, endurance limit, and fatigue strength are all expressions used to describe a property of materials: the amplitude (or range) of cyclic stress that can be applied to the material without causing fatigue failure.[1] Ferrous alloys and titanium alloys[2] have a distinct limit, an amplitude below which there appears to be no number of cycles that will cause failure. *******Other structural metals such as aluminium and copper, do not have a distinct limit and will eventually fail even from small stress amplitudes.******** In these cases, a number of cycles (usually 107) is chosen to represent the fatigue life of the material.

Steel vs Aluminum
The situation with aluminum is even more pronounced. The “identical” aluminum frame would be 1/3 as stiff as steel, roughly half as strong, and 1/3 the weight. Such a frame would be quite unsatisfactory. That’s why aluminum frames generally have noticeably larger tubing diameters and thicker-walled tubing. This generally results with frames of quite adequate stiffness, still lighter than comparable steel ones.

Large diameter thin-wall tubing.
The advantages of larger tubing diameter can, theoretically, be applied to steel construction, but there’s a practical limit. You could build a steel frame with 2-inch diameter tubing, and it would be stiffer than anything available–indeed, stiffer than anybody needs. By making the walls of the tubes thin enough, you could make it very, very light as well.
Why don’t manufacturers do this? Two reasons.

The thinner the walls of the tubing, the harder it is to make a good joint. This is one reason for butted tubing, where the walls get thicker near the ends, where the tubes come together with other tubes.
In addition, if the walls get too thin, the tubes become too easy to dent, and connection points for bottle cages, cable stops, shifter bosses and the like have inadequate support.

http://sheldonbrown.com/frame-materials.html

I’ve yet to see any steel frames approach the weight of good alu frames and I’m sure as hell not spending 1000 on a titanium hardtail that I might wrap around a tree or snap the head tube off dirt jumping. Neither have I ever seen/read about/or ridden a titanium full suspension frame that wasn’t a flexy pile of crap.

Frames are the largest object that make up a bike, hence they are the most susceptible to crash damage. As long as the weight is decent and the bike is stiff enough I’d rather manufacturers build bikes out of the cheapest available material – I’ll save weight by using exotic materials for the components and centralise the bikes mass.

Chromoly stanchions weigh a tonne. See domains. Also, it doesn’t take a huge R8D budget to make a good chassis. See the motorbike world for further info.

True, but at least it would last 10 years without a service. when was the last time you had your shocks on your car serviced?

you mentioned motorbikes but they weigh 200-300kg the cost of using expensive materials would be prohibitive.

Considering what you get for 7 grand is so much more for a motorbike than for a 7 grand mountain bike just re- enforces the point I was making

you mentioned motorbikes but they weigh 200-300kg the cost of using expensive materials would be prohibitive.

Not for WSB bikes, they still never bothered with titanium trellis frames although people unsuccessfully experimented with them. In the end alu frames still won.

There’s not that much more to a trellis frame than a downhill bike. Titanium ones weigh about 5kg.

Considering what you get for 7 grand is so much more for a motorbike than for a 7 grand mountain bike just re- enforces the point I was making

7 grand motorbikes don’t have Ohlins derived shocks and high/low speed damping on the front – or even rebound for that matter. They certainly won’t have air-springs, titanium nitride coatings, blow off valves, or mid stack shims. They won’t have carbon frames, they won’t have carbon components and the brakes won’t very adjustable. All these things together, come on motorbikes that 18 to 22 thousand pounds. Eg Ducati 1199’s.

It’s ok guys, I don’t need to have the last word 😆 I’m off to bed, I’ve enjoyed the debate and good biking to you all. 🙂

treborrobert2 – Member

True, but at least it would last 10 years without a service. when was the last time you had your shocks on your car serviced?

Mine are a) probably almost as heavy as my bike and b) shagged but still doing the job. Most production cars are really unfussy about suspension, they know the shocks are expected to last the life of the car and only get replaced if they fail dramatically, they were decent performers when new but to replace them 10 years on costs as much as the car cost. So that’s the performance target- even high quality street parts are like that. The everyday mtb performance target is way higher, you could totally build a huge hour-life, zero service damper but it’d be massive, heavy and low performance and no bugger’d buy it. It’s like the everyday mountainbike has to be specced with what for cars or motorbikes would be race spec. We get the bikes we deserve

It’s a bit like the difference between real Ohlins and street Ohlins, I like my hrcl but I don’t kid myself it’s a performance part- it’s a durable road part with middling performance and decent adjustability. Oh and gold ano and a yellow spring, which is important. But it’s about 30000 miles old and still functional with just one regas. Tools for jobs.

Street Ohlins stuff eg the FGRT’s are easily as good as top quality mountain bike forks in terms of damping Northwind. The real race stuff is in a completely different league….

Yeah, but again size/weight, you could build a pushbike shock with that sort of longevity and performance and the entire bike press and bike buying public will shit the bed because it’s 100g heavier and probably more expensive than the competition without any immediate benefits.

And since most folks never service mountain bike suspension til it breaks, long service life is a hard sell- people already think they have long service life, when what they mostly have is deteriorating parts. The hour lifespan of a bike with its first owner is also probably comparatively short so effectively first owner is paying the price for something future owner is likely to benefit from.

I think the other thing is it’s hard to really compare street and mtb performance, the actual damping job’s got to be pretty different in terms of cycles and forces and reactions.

Don’t get me wrong- I think there’s a really good argument for improving longevity of suspension parts on pushbikes, even if that comes with a weight, performance or cost penalty. I just think you’d find it very hard to sell it.

I have an XL Process 111 – I swapped over a few bits when I got it as I prefer Shimano to Sram and wanted wider bars and a different saddle. Some of these bits are probably a bit lighter than the OE bits, but not much. It weights just over 31lbs which is the same as my Honzo hardtail (which I realise has a big lump of a frame!).

The wheels are fairly heavy and I’m sure there are much lighter frames, but it’s really stiff and has huge bearings.

The main thing for me is the way it rides. If it was lighter it may make it feel quicker still, but it does ride like a heavy bike and it’s really not the bike that’s limiting factor in our relationship! For me it’s the confidence the bike gives me, how fun it is to ride and how well it fits me. Apart from some of the carbon “superbikes” don’t most trail bikes really weigh about 30ibs anyway?

OP – My advise would be if you fancy this type of bike, then test ride a few – don’t let the should put you off. You can always make them lighter if you want.

Hicksy! Thanks for the insight fella… Planning to demo all on that list and a few more before I lay down my cash…

My ‘Enduro’ bike has 26″ wheels and weighs 34lbs…still it has a CCDB, Reverb and Fox 36 forks…I love it!!!

rhayter –

Sorry, I’ve just realised a lot of my above post doesn’t make any sense. Glad to hear you are going to test ride a few.

It was supposed to say – “it DOESN’T ride like a heavy bike” and “don’t let the weight put you off”.

I wish I could claim it was because I’ve been on the booze, but I can’t!

Don’t get me wrong- I think there’s a really good argument for improving longevity of suspension parts on pushbikes, even if that comes with a weight, performance or cost penalty. I just think you’d find it very hard to sell it.

+1

The avalanche dampers have nice long service intervals, it’s just a shame no one really builds forks like the old 888’s these days.

I don’t know whether I’d be happy with a steel stanchioned fork though, unless the worlds economy had collapsed and the bike was meant to last 20 years. Maybe they could build stanchions out of aluminium and wrap them in steel and then coat them, if steel is that much better in terms of stanchion wear.

The nice thing about dual crowns is that you can have stanchions replaced or recoated easily and at a lower cost than a CSU. You also get a considerably stiffer fork. All forks should IMO be dual crowns, single crowns are ridiculous – I don’t do bar spins.

My ‘ enduro/am/only bike’ bike weighs 32lb ,has 26 inch wheels , copious amounts of carbon fibre including the frame.

I guess I could get it down to 25-26lb ,but then it would be rubbish.

Its not the base material that provides the wear resistance its the coating, steel is generaly chrome plated whereas aluminium is anodised. Both are pretty tough. I suspect the reason we dont see so many trashed chromed stanchions is more to do with them being used purely on cheep bikes that dont see anywhere near the mileage or conditions ‘serious’ riders on expensive forks do.

LOCO has a photo of some trashed ohlins forks off a motorbike which usualy gets wheeled out for this debate.

I had a set of gold nitrided GSXR forks, the coating all dropped off, luckily it turned out it didn’t do anything anyway, apart from make them look more gold.

thisisnotaspoon – Member

I suspect the reason we dont see so many trashed chromed stanchions is more to do with them being used purely on cheep bikes that dont see anywhere near the mileage or conditions ‘serious’ riders on expensive forks do.

i can confirm that RS steel stanchions are more or less bullet proof, not light though…

Modern full suss bikes might ride smoothly, but they are built from sh**e materials with so little technology (shocks aside) that tiny little companies with no R&D can compete. And mentioning shocks, they have no quality at all, stanchions made from cheese that wear through in 5 minutes causing leaks galore. They really should be made from cromoly like cars and motorbikes. The manufactures are laughing all the way to the bank

Modern bikes are engineered very well at all price points that would interest an enthusiast and certainly much better than they were 20 years ago across the board. Manufacturers laughing all the way to the bank? I very much doubt it, I reckon it’s a tough industry to make ANY money out of. Lots of competition and a pretty small audience above the £1K price point. How many people do you reckon are queuing up to by a £7K mtb v a £7K motorbike?

As for materials, there is nothing inherently wrong with using aluminium alloy (you see quite a lot of it in aeroplanes) and carbon is always king for stiffness to weight ratio, but costs a whole lot more. In most engineering applications titanium is used as an expensive alternative to steel rather than aluminium or carbon.

Anyway I’ll be buying a carbon framed trail bike shortly, which should weigh well under 30 lbs as it happens, but it doesn’t mean that all heavier bikes are crap. To me it seems like the industry is far more tuned towards making excellent riding bikes rather than super lightweight bikes, but at the highest price points they are as light as they realistically can be for their purpose.

Also, if you neglect a steel fork, it’ll get damaged. I look after my suspension so it lasts for years. If your suspension is wearing fast, either that specific fork has a problem, or you’re a dobber, and either of those things will kill a steel fork almost as fast

I love some of the weights being thrown about here, surely they must be small frames?

I’ve had a pretty light 150 2013 FS, whilst it was a great bike i broke it. Many times. Snapped chainstay and seat stay. So now i’ve built a 2014 alpine, with all hard as nails stuff that I know works and its coming in at 32.5lbs. Not bothered as i know i can smash this thing into anything with confidence.

Some people get hung up on weight when how it rides is more important.

Here’s nu-skool for you. A 30lb Pivot Phoenix.

They’ve clearly cut a corner with the shock to get that 30 number, but it’s otherwise good to go.

All forks should IMO be dual crowns, single crowns are ridiculous – I don’t do bar spins.

You want dual crown forks just to make stantion replacement easier…? Right. Marzocchi used to have replaceable stantions on their single crown forks, did make life easier it must be said.

Must say I’m looking forward to treborrobert2’s return to this thread, his contributions were a new sort of special!

You want dual crown forks just to make stantion replacement easier…? Right. Marzocchi used to have replaceable stantions on their single crown forks, did make life easier it must be said.

Must say I’m looking forward to treborrobert2’s return to this thread, his contributions were a new sort of special!

Of course not, but they are stiffer and the upside is, is that they are easier to work on and keep going for many years.

Plus they look more radcore… 😆