Best Steel Road Bike

[Benjamin Lewis]

Ryan Cousineau wrote:

> In article <[email protected]>, Benjamin Lewis <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Ryan Cousineau wrote:
>>
>>> If you have an MTB, the Twoonie races are a great place to race. There's one tonight, and one in
>>> two weeks.
>>
>> I sort of do, but it's barely a MTB at this point. The tires I have on it are slicker than the
>> ones on my road bike.
>
> Tires Schmires. Spend the $40, get a set of knobbies from MEC, and come out to Buntzen Lake on
> Thursday night. (And that goes for the rest of you, too.)

That's a long way to ride on knobby tires. Also, on Thursday evenings my roommates aren't home, and
I get to play Frank Zappa as loud as I want.

I'll think about it, though.

--
Benjamin Lewis

On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague: "This isn't right. This isn't even wrong." --
Wolfgang Pauli

 

[Peter Headland]

> Check out the results of Damon Rinard's frame deflection tests, and you'll see that the Trek OCLV
> (in this case the
> 5200) is not any stiffer than similar sized steel frames.

Actually, now I think about it, Damon's tests were somewhat flawed, because they combine lateral
bending with twisting, with the emphasis on bending (his statement). So two frames might have the
same deflection on Damon's test rig, but be very different in the way in which they deflect. I have
absolutely no idea how this would translate into behaviour/"feel" when being ridden, but it might
explain riders' perceptions of differences between frames despite Damon's test results.

 

[Peter Headland]

> as Todd has pointed out, with proper component selection steel can be "light"

Actually, Todd's figures show that the steel frame he used was about
1.5lb heavier than the same size Trek 5500 frame. He compensates for that by using lighweight parts
elsewhere. With the same parts, the CF bike would be nearly 10% lighter.

> the majority of the weight of almost any bike is in the componentry, not the frame.

With a 4lb steel frame (Todd's figure), nearly 25% of the weight of a super-light bike is in the
frame. That is indeed a minority, but a pretty substantial one. No other single component comes
close. And this one component can be reduced in weight by about 38% by a switch in materials.

> anyone riding a lot of hills would be better off with carbon due to lightness and stiffness.

Do you seriously suggest that lighter is not better up hills? I know some people don't think
stiffness is important; personally, I do not believe that a bike frame needs to flex at all and I
prefer the "direct" feel of a stiff bike with stiff components. On the evidence we have seen so far
(from both sides of the debate), CF provides the *combination* of lightness and stiffness better
than steel. So does oversized Al, come to that.

> I ride a lot of hills on steel and carbon

Let's talk about your carbon bike for a moment. Is it really a 5500 series frame? Or is it a Trek
Y-foil (nice frame, but not at all the same when it comes to climbing, being quite a bit heavier and
not so stiff)? It seems that my steel frame is not the ultimate expression of steel for the task
under discussion (climbing), but maybe your carbon frame is not the ultimate expression of CF for
that purpose either?

 

[Eric Salathe]

Jasper Janssen <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:<[email protected]>...
> On Tue, 03 Jun 2003 10:29:00 -0500, Tim McNamara <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >There are rather more than 20 custom frame builders in the US who will build you a work of art.
>
> But are there any custom frame builders who will build you a decent frame, for comparitively
> little money, rather than a work of art that costs more than most of the bikes I lust after, let
> alone buy?

Yes, but usually not the builders with the name recognition like many of those Tim listed. Name
recognition adds 50% to the cost of the frame. How much real quality does it add? Also, true custom
usually adds gratuitously to the price. A stock size is fine for just about everyone. Why get
finicky about things like seat tube angle when the choice of seat post has more effect than even 4
degrees in seat angle? How do you choose top tube length to the cm when no one can say what the
ideal stem length is to within that range?

See, for example, Lyon <http://www.lyonsport.com/road_bike.html> -- $800 for a fillet brazed frame,
no filling (which just weakens the frame). We paid only a little more for our Bilenky tandem (again
with unfilled fillets) than the cost of a Trek or Burley tandem and less than a Santana. Bilenky has
12 stock tandem sizes compared to standard three sizes of factory tandems, none of which fit us.
Marinoni used to make very nice lugged frames in the $650 range in enough variations (including
26-in wheel road bikes) to satisfy most needs without custom.

In England, hand-built frames are much less pricey. I think there is less the boutique quality that
they have in the US. For example, Hewitt makes really nice custom lugged steel frames starting at
440 british pounds,about $700.

-Eric