How light is your road bike?

I think the reason we all find the weight of the ribble unlikely is ask yourself which of these is more likely..

A- the 950 weight is significantly less than reality

B- 13 years ago a budget frame manufacturer managed to stumble across the design for one of the lightest alu frames ever, that has in all this time not been bettered on the scales by companies with far bigger budgets in r+d and manufacturing

Also, I’ll say it again, you haven’t included pedals. Edit.. I stand corrected you did in the second spreadsheet

Its not a budget frame though. And its not an alu frame.

Its not a budget frame though. And its not an alu frame.

What?

Its not a 7000 alu winter frame that cost £79.

Its deda scandium, well known for being light but not particularly durable. Very very thin and not like standard alu frames of the day. Memory not spot on but i think it cost 4-5 hundred at the time

Scandium has been used many times in light bike frames, my One9 Niner was scandium and that too weighted less than a Billy Goats farts.

Fair enough, quick Google suggests it’s was indeed very light and not very robust so perhaps it did weigh that. Likewise the wheels were apparently both ridiculously light and ridiculously flexy..but awesome value

Perhaps my thread should have said ‘we are lucky to have such light bikes with very few compromises’.

Just waiting for my scales to arrive

About 34lb for the Surly  🙂

The racer is an early bonded ally Trek frame with cheap factory Shimano wheels. Just over 21lb.

Daughter has a small PX Pro Carbon with some wheels built to suit her weight, which isn’t much. I love riding the thing, it’s like magic…

i got my specialized sl6 tarmac expert weighed in the shop when i bought it, all stock except pro one tubeless tyres and it weighed 7.58kg in 58cm frame size. but it is red so its really really fast.

6.5kg

https://www.bikeforums.net/road-cycling/452315-hot-r-not-1071.html#&gid=1&pid=6

its the Bianchi but can’t load the picture as I’ve only got my phone

I’ve got one of those Ribbles hung on the wall in my garage. I bought the complete bike off here from a nice chap in around 2007. Built up with campag 10s record, ksyriums and decent finishing kit it was around the 18lb mark, measured on my park scales which are known to be a bit optimistic. Size 56 with a Look fork (which was crazy light from what I remember).

Lovely bike to ride and if I could find a decent 1 inch ahead fork I’d build it back up.

So are you going to take it down and weigh it to settle the argument?

I’m going to go with around 1100g ..which is still bloody light.

I read somewhere that they were race only frames that had to be checked every 500 miles for structural integrity so maybe they are as light as claimed. And probably the reason noone else attempts to make something similar.

Just weighed mine at 6.7kg/14.8lbs. The 13.x must have been without Garmin Mount/bottle cages etc, as my pedals aren’t that heavy!

I can do when I’m back.  I’m in the US at the moment and not returning home for a week or so, but when I do I’ll weigh it.

To be fair, I raced and trained on mine through the winter and didn’t have any issues, or none that involved face to floor interfaces. It was a nice bike but nothing special, I built up a Storck around the same time and it was night and day despite the Storck only having Ultegra and rubbish wheels.  The Ribble was mega comfy though, I did the longest rides I’ve ever done on that thing and it didn’t get shown much love.

@njee – I remember when you built that up, it prompted me to build one for a mate.  Nice frames those!

//i have a cheap no name alloy frame of ebay (an old one nicely weld too) anodised in purple with matching anodised brakes, Q/R and other bits (I sent them off all at the same time) that weighs 6kg.

The new look 785 should be a bit lighter.

njee – I remember when you built that up, it prompted me to build one for a mate.  Nice frames those!

Yeah, obviously I’m always looking at ‘what next’ but it’s not killed me to death, it rides really nicely and I like the look of it, so struggling to be inspired! If the Chinese up their game with some lighter disc frames then I could be tempted!

/i have a cheap no name alloy frame of ebay (an old one nicely weld too) anodised in purple with matching anodised brakes, Q/R and other bits (I sent them off all at the same time) that weighs 6kg

C’mon then – what’s the spec? must be some lovely light bits on there!

The Trek ALR has the same lightweight focus as the carbon one, frame around 1200g which is comparable to Kinesis Aithein, CAAD, Giant TCR SLR etc etc.

My Trek Emonda is 17lb with 105, and Kysrium wheels.  I had an Aithein with Miicroshift Arsis which was just under 16lb.

my stock rose with force and (relatively) heavy cosmic carbones is around 7.5kg with caged and pedals (on my park scales).  For just over £2k.  Would drop under the 7 mark with a light set of wheels like r sys.  No silly light or expensive components.

I think the CAAD12 frameset is coming in around 1.1 or 1.2kg in the current rim-brake version.

Who has the time to run through this thread and set out some award ceremony?

🤷‍♀️🗣💪

C’mon then – what’s the spec? must be some lovely light bits on there

I too am intrigued by how a cheap alu frame can be built up to sub 6kg, when the likes of spesh struggle to get near that for 10k

17.38lbs (7.88kg) only difference from pic is Quarq now instead of vectors

edit – oh ive not got the eTap front mech on at the moment, so plus a 162g

is aluminum hydroxide a strong base

The x1 version of the sprint is the only Specialized bike I’ve properly fancied buying.

still searching for one of the polished alu versions.

It isn’t, it’s heavy

@tpbiker….. Mainstream manufacturers generally build bikes that will take say a 95kg mamil sat on them every weekend.  Some stuff will be overbuilt or they won’t take a chance on lightweight stuff because it might fail prematurely and would be bad for reputation regardless of the fact the user probably didn’t account for it being a lightweight component.  Or they have to use in-house components.

Careful specification of items and attention to detail will get you a lighter bike.  Things like basic Time Xpresso pedals are cheap but weigh little.  I found the bearings didn’t last though.  My Microshift Arsis groupset weighed less than Dura Ace but cost less than Ultegra.  Some cheap saddles are only 200g.  So sling all those carefully chosen components on an aluminium frame and it will make more difference than the frame itself.  Sub 900g carbon frames aren’t that common even further up the price ranges, so you’re only losing ~300g by choosing a light alu frame.

I was about to say the Spesh Smart Weld Allezs are pretty light, there’s some really nice builds on WW

Don’t have a racer but the bike i ride on the road is north of 30lbs.

More importantly…how much do your scales weigh? Mine weigh 0lbs which will make me the winner (what’s the prize again?)

You win the ‘misplaced smugness on the internet’ prize, well done!

505g for my scales, i run the batteries with around 20% charge, lighter innit

505g for my scales, i run the batteries with around 20% charge, lighter innit

As stupid as it sounds, I always think my ebike handles a bit better when it has low battery 😳 (I know it doesn’t really, honest)

Don’t have a racer but the bike i ride on the road is north of 30lbs.

Compared to my tandem, that is a lightweight. And I have not included the 25-30 kilos of “luggage”, AKA the stoker. Then when you add the tagalong…

Anything sub eight kilos is light enough. Sub seven is “ooh that’s light” light.

There’s not a lot of weight to be saved once you’ve gone decent carbon. My Defy frame and forks (ad seatpost) is 800-odd g in medium and was the lightest frame they ever made.

Lolling at dirtyrider. Eye rolling at njee2000. While your having a look for my prize, keep an eye out for your sense of humour.

Canyon Grail CF7 Small

Full Carbon, hydro 105, 40mm Schwable G-Ones now tubeless

Quoted weight for the Medium was 8.6kg  (18.96lb)

On the scales no pedals with 2 bottle cages and a garmin mount ;) 8.86kg (19.53lb)

I’m happy enough to thunder through some rough stuff on it too.

Giant TCR Alliance from about 2011, 8.7kg, with pedals, but without saddle bag.

The saddle is a charge spoon instead of the original Giant saddle (which broke) and the wheels are ultegra tubeless.

There’s also an extra piece of duct tape on the inside of the rear tyre – without that it would be well under 8kg….

Eye rolling at njee2000. While your having a look for my prize, keep an eye out for your sense of humour.

There are several possibilities here…

1) I did find your witty comment hilarious, but was unable to convey this through text

2) I do, indeed have no sense of humour

3) what you said wasn’t actually funny

Now, I know you think it’s 2. I can actually imagine the look on your face when you thought of it and your fingers stabbed away at the keys gleefully.

it could, of course be the case, and I’ll be honest, now you’ve followed it up by adding some extra 0s to the end of my user name I’m reconsidering, I mean that is absolutely hilarious. Real top draw stuff. Bet you’re a hit at parties.

But no, I’ll stick with 3.

By the way it’s ”you’re”; illiterate and unfunny is a poor combo. Have a nice day. Let’s keep talking about bikes eh?

Oh dear…

I just picked up a bottom of the range specialized allez, which with pedals out the box weighed. 9.8 kgs.

Anyhow, I changed the wheels and tyres to a set of lighter ones I had kicking around, swapped the drive train and shifters to 105, and put on a ti saddle. Swapping the wheels and tyres alone saved 900gms!

Its now 8.3kgs with bottle cage, garmin mount and pedals. Does make me wonder why I spend easily 3 times as much on my ‘nice’ roadie.

<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>Only issue is that it was bought as a winter bike but it now looks way tio nice to chuck mud guard and lights on it… </span>

Spesh Roubaix, quite an old model, it’s from 2010. With pedals, bottle cages, Garmin mount, small saddle bag with spare inner and multi-tool it’s 8.8kg

CAAD12 (alu), SRAM Red (mechanical) and Reynolds Assault (when racing) = 7.3kg. Gets me up Pitch hill 20th out of 20,000+ attempts. Crushing super light carbon bikes on an aluminium is hilarious!

Crushing super light carbon bikes on an aluminium is hilarious!

Its not exactly like you are riding a Tank yourself is it! My lightweight crarbon framed, carbon wheeled bike weighs about 100g less than that.