Question on road bikes

[Arthur Clune]

Simon Brooke <[email protected]> wrote:

: Which by implication says your Audax weighed 24lbs, which
: is the same as Juliette's full-suspension, disk braked
: Santa Cruz Juliana. My (large) Cannondale Jekyll weighs
: only 3lbs more, and that's with the low-end steel sprung
: lefty - the titanium/carbon lefty on the high-end Jekylls
: would save another 2lbs.

24-25lbs is about right for a 531c framed bike, in a large
size (60cm) with cheapish bits on I'd say.

That Santa Cruz cost several times what a Dawes Audax costs
(about £700 ISTR). Mind, my road bike is about £2,500 worth
of replacement cost as well, so it's all little unfair as a
comparator.

A £700-£800 race bike in that sort of size would be 20-21
lbs these days.

Arthur

--
Arthur Clune http://www.clune.org "Technolibertarians make a
philosophy out of a personality defect"
- Paulina Borsook

 

[Arthur Clune]

Simon Brooke <[email protected]> wrote:

: Well I'll be something or othered. So much for the theory
: that full-suspension mountain bikes are heavy. OK, yes, I
: do appreciate that your weight includes lights... but mine
: includes a klick-fix as well. And pedals and bottle cages
: and bar-ends and stuff. I had assumed a reasonable audax
: would come in under 22lbs.

Mine weights 18lbs Since I always ride the race bike on
Audax events. Of course, a real top-notch race bike would be
6.8kg, which is the UCI weight limit (say £4000 for a Trek
Madone). Spend more and don't race and you can get under
that (sorry for the mixed units here. Conversion left as an
exercise for the reader)

My bike is a Airbourne Zepplinn. They do a bike called the
Valkeryie in an "Audax" model (rack + guard eyes +
clearance) and you could build that in a nice <22lbs with
guards etc Ti Audax bike I'm sure. Though it'd cost.

I think it's partly a style thing. There's a lot of Audaxes
who like taking the kitchen sink round with them and choose
their bike appropiately.

Arthur

--
Arthur Clune http://www.clune.org "Technolibertarians make a
philosophy out of a personality defect"
- Paulina Borsook

 

[Peter Clinch]

Arthur Clune wrote:

> Of course, a real top-notch race bike would be 6.8kg,
> which is the UCI weight limit

Though Cannondale now have a bike advertised with a "Free my
Cannondale!" campaign which weighs less, and is thus illegal
in a UCI race. [insert usual mutterings about Luddites,
progress, etc. etc.]

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch University of Dundee Tel 44 1382 660111 ext.
33637 Medical Physics, Ninewells Hospital Fax 44 1382 640177
Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK net [email protected]
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

 

[Arthur Clune]

Peter Clinch <[email protected]> wrote:

: Though Cannondale now have a bike advertised with a "Free
: my Cannondale!" campaign which weighs less, and is thus
: illegal in a UCI race. [insert usual mutterings about
: Luddites, progress, etc. etc.]

In this one, I'm with the UCI to a degree. Bikes were
getting light faster than the technology if you see what I
mean. Dodgy ti bits, carbon fibre used before the technology
was mature. Riders safety does matter.

That said, I'd be happy for the weight limit to decrease
slowly over time to allow for technical innovation while
preserving safety.

--
Arthur Clune http://www.clune.org "Technolibertarians make a
philosophy out of a personality defect"
- Paulina Borsook

 

[Velvet]

Wild Wind wrote:

> A big thank you to all who answered the questions I had on
> road bikes. I've been to Dawes website, and it looks like
> their Audax bike might be what I'm looking for.
>
> But again out of curiosity, I must ask - aren't there
> other bike manufacturers (apart from Dawes which seems to
> be the only manufacturer mentioned) that do road type
> bikes with the rack and guards? I would have thought that
> I'm not the only person who would like the speed of
> roadsters with the utility of tourers/hybrids, and that
> there would be a range of bikes to meet this demand.
>
> --
> Akin
>
> aknak at aksoto dot idps dot co dot uk
>
>
>
>
>
I think orbit might do a similar audax/light tourer, but
iirc it was over 1000 quid, which put it well out of my
budget. I couldn't find any that had a small enough frame
apart from those two, or that were light enough (even though
mine's not *all* that light in the scale of things)
- apart from the Dawes.

--

Velvet

 

[Peter Clinch]

Arthur Clune wrote:

> In this one, I'm with the UCI to a degree. Bikes were
> getting light faster than the technology if you see what I
> mean. Dodgy ti bits, carbon fibre used before the
> technology was mature. Riders safety does matter.

But the thing is the point is strength, not weight. It
strikes me as pretty Dopey that they're picking an arbitrary
weight rather than actually doing direct
strength/durability/whatever testing which would be far more
relevant to the safety of the rider than just hanging things
off a scale. Hanging things off a scale may be handy for a
local club event, but since people are willing to throw
money at it anyway why isn't there a system for UCI to
benchmark test a bike at the manufacturer's expense?

> That said, I'd be happy for the weight limit to decrease
> slowly over time to allow for technical innovation while
> preserving safety.

At the moment something make of chesse that's exactly 8.6
would get through better than the (I suspect) much better
made Cannondale. How does that preserve safety? If you
want a particular thing surely it's better to legislate
for that particular thing than sort of mostly get it by
legislating something that's usually, but not always or
entirely, related?

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch University of Dundee Tel 44 1382 660111 ext.
33637 Medical Physics, Ninewells Hospital Fax 44 1382 640177
Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK net [email protected]
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

 

[Davek]

Wild Wind:
> But again out of curiosity, I must ask - aren't there
> other bike manufacturers (apart from Dawes which seems to
> be the only manufacturer mentioned) that do road type
> bikes with the rack and guards?

Plenty. Not all as cheap as Dawes though.

Have a look at Mercian's Audax bike:
http://www.merciancycles.co.uk/complete_audax.html

d.