What are the good points about heavy bikes?

Because I just realised how heavy my steel Cove Sanchez is in comparison to my old frame…

is it easier to keep a constant momentum, due to the weight?

Another excuse….

“Another excuse….”
Excuse for what?

I’m not making excuses for anything.

Anything really……..(insert failure here) because my bike is heavy.

Can feel a bit more stable downhill imho but aside from that, can’t really see any benefits. Heavy doesn’t always mean stronger..

Anything really……..(insert failure here) because my bike is heavy.

I’m not blaming my bike for anything. In fact I can’t wait to get my wheel built and then ride it, I imagine that it’ll be super stiff and sturdy, if not slightly challenging to ride, but hey I could use the exercise of riding it. I’m just wondering what kinda benefits go with weightiness…

Bike weights along with wheels weights, and along with the minutiae of stem, handlebar, seatpost etc., are massively over-rated in terms of performance.

Consider your all up, ready to ride, stepping out of the door weight with your other bike, then compare it to your new bike.

What’s the real difference? 2kg? 3kg? from an all up weight of 95kg? 100kg? 120kg?

Think about it sensibly….

If the combined weight of you & your bike is heavier than anyone else you ride with then you will go faster downhills. To some degree/at some/given point.

I know this cos I’m loads heavier than my mate (same bike weight or thereabouts) & I go faster than him without pedalling, generally.

i dont reckon weight makes that much difference.
geometry on the other hand . . . .

From Cove’s website:

For those who aren’t afraid of the nasty, we introduce Sanchez, our dirt jump/street weapon

So nothing wrong with a bit of weight for dirt jumping or street riding.

Bike weight’s just something to get used to. I’ve always owned heavy bikes and get on fine with climbs as well as descents. Makes life a lot easier when I borrow a lightweight bike too.

PS Tyre choice and pressure will make a whole lot more difference to downhill speed than bike weight ever will

i dont reckon weight makes that much difference.

Some law of fizzics would probly suggest otherwise.

The good point about my heavy bike is that it has lovely plush-feeling coil shocks front and rear, and a dropper seatpost.

Main benefit of a heavy bike over a light one that I can see… You will get fitter!

Otherwise, too many variables. Heavy does not equal strong all the time, nor faster DH, nor easier to keep momentum etc. Heavier just means heavier, which definitely means harder to pedal uphill.

generally, heavier isn’t better*. But saving weight gets very expensive, very quickly.

(*although i find that light wheels can feel a little nervous in techy bits compared to heavier wheels/tyres, yes i am rubbish, and could use a big dose of man-up)

well obviously id rather ride a 7kg superbike than 18kg supermarket special, but i weigh 135kg, losing a kg off a bike doesnt even equate to 1%.
geometry is probably going to have a bigger effect on ride feel than bike weight.
mebbe not as much as going on a diet tho.

I’m 9 stone, my big bike is 33lb/15kilo so in effect a quarter of my bodyweight, which is probably a higher ratio than most people on here.
I can climb easily enough on it, not as fast as on my 26lb bike but not that much slower.
Personally i think geometry etc are far more important than weight alone.

Heavy can be more stable- I knocked 10lbs off my downhill bike over time and it does get bounced around more easily than it used to. But that’s just a flipside of it being easier for me to move around.

Me & my pal have very similar bikes, mines about 2 lbs lighter & I’m about 3.5 st heavier than him. On a similar climb he’s quicker than me & on a similar descent I’m quicker than him.
It’s all relevant innit.

My bike weighs about 35lbs. I’m closer to 210. My bike is stable at speed through the rough stuff and I’m never last up the hill so it must be making me stronger.

So ! A good point about a heavy bike is….

It makes you strong 🙂

They make better anchors? 😛

Make you strong, like bear.

They are more robust, generally, because the parts are strong, as opposed to some super lightweight weight-weenie stuff which fails if looked at in the wrong way.

Other than that I don’t see any benefits – even downhill I much prefer a lighter bike as it’s much easier to chuck around and flick, rather than having to wrestle it around.

I suppose it will make you stronger as it takes a bit more effort to ride.

Stick 2.35 Stickee Nevegals on a 24lb rigid ht & I bet it will feel slower than a set of Smallblock8’s on a 30lb fs bike. Inbreds, on paper, are hefty old iron clunkers, but they don’t ride like it.

If the combined weight of you & your bike is heavier than anyone else you ride with then you will go faster downhills. To some degree/at some/given point.

I know this cos I’m loads heavier than my mate (same bike weight or thereabouts) & I go faster than him without pedalling, generally.

Have you tried swapping bikes? My physics is a bit rusty. but shouldn’t all things fall at the same rate on Earth.. air resistance etc aside and being fat should increase resistance. I’m guessing your bike has less rolling resistance or it’s your technique (subtle pumping etc).

For bikes, choose two of the following only.

Cheap,
Light,
Strong.

If your bike is heavy, you can conclude then that it’s cheap and strong. They must be the advantages of a heavy bike if you like it or not.

If the combined weight of you & your bike is heavier than anyone else you ride with then you will go faster downhills. To some degree/at some/given point.

I know this cos I’m loads heavier than my mate (same bike weight or thereabouts) & I go faster than him without pedalling, generally.

Have you tried swapping bikes? My physics is a bit rusty. but shouldn’t all things fall at the same rate on Earth.. air resistance etc aside and being fat should increase resistance. I’m guessing your bike has less rolling resistance or it’s your technique (subtle pumping etc).

Yes. If you dropped two bikes off a cliff and one was 20lbs and the other was 35lbs, it would be resistance that dictates which one hits the ground first not weight. It’s possible that the lighter bike will hit the deck first if it falls in a manner that offers less air resistance.

So the fat boys should accelerate faster, no?

I guided for a season overseas, and it was always the people with super-lightweight bikes who went home gutted thanks to big dents in their wafer-thin down tubes after the inevitable crashes. Occasionally their bikes snapped too, but at least they were light enough to carry back to the chalet.

So the fat boys should accelerate faster, no?

nice diagram.

but no.

So the fat boys should accelerate faster, no?

Inertia is something that you might want to read about

yeah being heavy doesn’t make you descend faster (think of the feather vs lead experiment on Moon). acceleration due to gravity is a constant 9.81 ms^2 approx. but being heavy means more kinetic energy (0.5mv^2) which will make braking less effective. heavy wheels might make the bike more stable due to gyroscopic forces (can’t think of formula – that’s above GCSE physics!) though, no other advantages i can think of.. assuming light bike is strong enough.
one thing i thought maybe weight could push the tyres into corners so perhaps more grip is an advantage, but then it’s harder to get round the corner (cornering is also a change in velocity (even if speed is constant), more mass to accelerate) so that probably cancels out any advantage there.

TL:DR more weight is probably a slight disadvantage going down, and a big disadvantage going up, which you and bike makers already knew :p

Being heavier doesn’t necessarily mean any more grip – friction is proportional to force applied (i.e. mass), at a macro Newtonian level, but so is the force you need to chance direction, so it all cancels out.

If you want to beat someone to death and only have your bike at your disposal, heavier is better.

In the case of a frame like a Sanchez, a lot of the extra weight will come from the thicker tubing used. Meaning you’ll be able to case jumps and smack into stuff with less fear of something like this happening.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/74729001@N00/4725375799

Good point – cheaper than a lighter one.

OP you’ve combined 2 separate things: your frame is heavier because it is built for thrashing n crashing. As long as a bike is strong enough for the rider and purpose it does not benefit from surplus material.

Unless competing I don’t think it’s worth getting hung up on weight. My current bike is heavier than the last but performs better and as such I am riding the same trails faster. I climb a little slower (or sweatier) but I see uphill as a necessary evil.

As mentioned body type relative to the bike has a big affect. A biffer on a feather or a XC mincesnake on a DH bike aren’t quite optimal due to the demands/function of the task in hand.

Do you ride DJ/street/jumps etc? If not you may have an inappropriate frame. If you do ride that sort of thing, then you’re in the wrong club for weenie weight watching.

Without a heavy bike I wouldn’t be able to go for a bike ride at all. (I don’t own any weeny-weighty bikes, y’see.)

Your girlfriend won’t nick it? I only ‘borrow’ the light bikes from my long suffering bf…. reckon it’s justified on weight to bike ratio 😀