Having a bit of a discussion regarding the relative advancement (or not) of bike technology and weight on RetroBike at the moment, and the point was made that 20 years ago, £900 could buy you a 23lbs fully rigid bike with top-spec components, and that you’d struggle to do the same today.

I suggested that a Boardman Pro HT from Wiggle (challenger wasn’t in the UK) @ $1200 and 25.5lbs, sell the forks and buy carbon rigids, sell the wheelset and buy a lightweight XC wheelset on tubeless tyres – would be sub-22lbs and within budget.

Are there any other options?

I’d have thought it’d be dead easy to acheive. My old Inbred with RC31s etc wasn’t far off that I don’t think…

Bear in mind £900 today won’t buy you what you could get for £900 in 1993 in any walk of life. With regard to the question, there’s still technology in a bike, it’s just not all about getting it as light as possible.

The ‘dale Trail SL 29 SS 3 is about 23.5lbs weight OEM and is £599. Stick some light wheels on it and you’re done.

SS so doesn’t count – needs gears, sorry!

True, but the point was made that technological advancements should cancel out the inflation of price. ISWYM about ultimate lightness not being as big a goal anymore though.

I will be bold and say no. Most bikes (production) come with suspension forks so that kind of adds a pound or two.

Closest will be the Cannondale rigid singlespeed or some Scandal builds from on one.

I would be interested to know what people have in mind as sub £900 and sub 23lbs from back in the ’90’s because there could not have been many. All the Yeti, Pace etc was way over budget, maybe Marin Indian Fire Trail or Kona Kula could have hit the mark but very close on budget from memory and not necessarily with rigid forks. Most frames were steel and close to 5lbs before you add on components. A full XT build with reasonable wheels back in the day would be just about in budget at RRP if you were lucky.

I’m sure it’s possible,

carbon frame/fork from china
SLX groupset
bargain deore disk brakes from CRC
fish through the sale items on CRC for some light bragains

Low 20lb’s and under £900 shouldn’t be too hard.
And as someone said, £900, assuming 3.5% inflation over 20 years would be £1577 today (according to the calculator on the BoE website), which would make it even easier, youd get suspension and disk brakes for that!

i bought my boardman team r urban when it was on special offer £600, put the rest to upgrade wheels n tyres would take it to just under 22lb, mine is down to 22.5 with upgraded tyres tubeless, pedals, the bike is a craking piece of kit for the money, as i no longer needed full sus or front suspension i went rigid, very happy chappie also dont worry what certain people say about halfords, if you dont trust their workshop staff do what i did and totally service the bike when you get it home, you would be hard pushed to get a bike this light for the same money cheers steve

Bear in mind £900 today won’t buy you what you could get for £900 in 1993 in any walk of life. With regard to the question, there’s still technology in a bike, it’s just not all about getting it as light as possible.

TVs, computers, furniture, kids motorbikes…

Most non-essential stuff is cheaper now.

Sorry to be pedantic (I’m a Maths teacher and can’t help myself).

£900 inflated at 3.5% over 20 years gives you £1791 don’t care what any calculator on the net says.

900 x 1.035^20 (Take into account compound interest)

sory, 3.5 was a typo, the actual number was 2.8

Either way, we’re not allowing inflation…!

Did think about the Boardman Urban Team but it seems to have been replaced by the HT TeamR and I can’t find that for sale anywhere.

Maybe CX bikes have taken the place of oldschool rigid MTBs?

Following TINAS’s example, if you don’t demand the latest kit then you could get close I reckon. A month or two back a mate and I were speccing his rigid 1×9 scandal build (all new kit). Along the lines of…

Scandal frame (£150), Exotic Carbon forks (£90), Superstar Wheelset (£200), Tyres (£50), XT cranks (£85), BB (£12), Cassette (£25), rear mech (£33), shifter (£30), chain (£11), brakeset (£180), KCNC stem (£25), seatpost (£40), Bars (£40)…

Add in a headset (£30), cables and outers(£15), seatclamp (£10), grips (£10) and a guide (£20) and you’re over £1000 – things can get expensive pretty rapidly. You might spare a bit of cash on the above by swapping things and finding bargains and still be around the target weight though. Having said that, the brakes and geometry would be the major differences between this and a 90s bike.

I bought my top spec fully rigid bike in 1922 for £3 6′ 4d. Bet you cant get buy a top spec bike today for that money!

I’m still struggling to work out when int he 90s 900 quid could have bought you a sub-23 pound bike with top spec components. I can think of a few frames from the early 90s that would build to that weight, but they’d be £900+ for frame and forks. I’m off to retrobike to find this discussion 😉

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1633409/Historic-inflation-calculator-value-money-changed-1900.html

£900 in 1993 = ~ £1500 today.

You could get a nice hardtail for that, and a decent FS. 29er canyon bouncy bike not much more than that.

£900 could buy you a 23lbs fully rigid bike with top-spec components

I don’t remember much like that either .. Plus the bikes from back then were only any good cos we knew no better ) in hindsight they were a bit rubbish. Many were light because the rims were just smaller dia road rims, tyres were 1.9s, brakes were tiny cantis and the bars looked like something off a shoreditch fixie. I have no rose-tints on for the bikes, only the times..

If you change the criteria slightly……
sub-£22, sub-900lbs
This is definately possible as I managed it last year

Did you even read the thread!? 😉

I think it’s being claimed that the top Diamond Back Axis came in at around 23.5lbs and was about £900, hence where that start point came from. I certainly remember that the ’93 Kona range had components selected for weight as opposed to just fitting a full Shimano groupset. Yes, bikes from then would have been a lot more fragile, hence why I was trying to show that you can get a better bike for your money these days, comparing like for like (hence rigid).

It probably could be done if there was the market. But as it is, few people want to buy a rigid mtb. Most folks that do, want to build it themselves.

My Soda is under 22lbs and cost me less than £900 though 😉

Just because I was really bored I gave it a shot..

…and failed. Not that easy to do as your 900 quid doesn’t go far. Its that lump of pig iron Inbred frame that does the damage, no idea where I’d get something lighter for anywhere near the price however.

Inbred frame – 2500g – 130 quid
Exotic carbon fork – 780 g – 115 quid
Super star wheels plus tape, sealent and ralphs- 2650g – 250 quid
deore groupset in brakes rotors etc – 3176 g – 250 quid
raceface ride stem/bars/post 750g – 75 quid
foam grips – 20 g – 10 quid
Charge spoon 260 -20 quid
Headset – 80 g – 20 quid

Total cost – £870
Total weight 10216 g – or 22.5 pounds without pedals

26er Scandal is £150 and much lighter, that’d beat it. Or you could stay with on one and grab one of those SAB frames that totally was £600 😉

swap that inbred frame out for something else and you could probably lop at least 500g off if not near a kilo…

Early 90’s I bought my first decent MTB, a Cannondale F700 but then spent quite but upgrading to XT mechs and shifters.

It was light but I don’t know what the weight was but it was definitely well under 25lbs.

Price was just under £800

I kept it for a number of years and it had various upgrades including Pace RC35 forks, ti bars, XT V brakes when they came out, Syncros stem that I had imported from the US.

The reason for listing all of the above is that it got stolen around 1996 and the insurance valuation then was between £1600-1800. Upgrading and inflation.

I then got a nice F2000 Cannondale that was the top of the range HT and this weighed 22lbs with the headshock fork. Price £2k.

so swap the inbred for the scandal reduces weight by 900 grammes for 20 quid penalty. So new weight of 20.5 pounds without pedals for £890 quid!

What do I win? (shared with northwind for the frame suggestion obviously)

🙂

Shared? Without me you won nothing at all, I’m taking all the credit.

WTF??? my sponge grips and deore groupset was a stroke of genius..

🙂

My Dad got a like new Boardman Urban MTB Team from someone on here – cracking bit of kit for the money – the people who got them for £600 new from Halfords got a bargain. Properly light and with a few choice component changes could easily get under 22lbs for not too much outlay.