How much bike do I really need, I have found the limit.

[cyberknight]

did a search i got the halfords rack on mine, i did sand the edge of the rack down so it fitted on the hole around the seat stay edge .
The rack is still in use 8 years later so it is fine
photo my cyclechat may 2014

 

[mustang1]

When I used to commute by bike, it was on a Cannondale supersix and while I had a sweaty back due to the rucksack, it was FUN! I had a few sensible commuters (what people call gravel bikes these days) and while they were fantastic, they were no where near as much fun as the Cannondale.

I did not understand the phrase "life is too short" back then. All I knew is I did not want to settle for a bike that was not fun. Now, older, and at least a tiny bit wiser, I know what that phrase means. And so, I will roll with a fast light bike for as long as possible. When I'm too old, I'll work with an e-bike.

 

[rivers]

When I used to commute by bike, it was on a Cannondale supersix and while I had a sweaty back due to the rucksack, it was FUN! I had a few sensible commuters (what people call gravel bikes these days) and while they were fantastic, they were no where near as much fun as the Cannondale.

I did not understand the phrase "life is too short" back then. All I knew is I did not want to settle for a bike that was not fun. Now, older, and at least a tiny bit wiser, I know what that phrase means. And so, I will roll with a fast light bike for as long as possible. When I'm too old, I'll work with an e-bike.

I love commuting on my summer road bike- as you say, it's fun. My off-road commute is also quite fun as well. Even my gravel bike with road wheels isn't a slouch (but not as fun as the summer road bike). My commute is something I need to do most days, why not make it something enjoyable?

 

[bonzobanana]

Carbon fares just as well as steel and better fatigue life than aluminium imho.
Titanium has its issues too.

CF frames and forks are the least consistent material because they are hand made by different people who lay up the material and so you are dealing with a material which is much more inconsistent overall. Any minor problem in construction acts as a sort of fatigue point as the movement of the frame will gradually weaken that area in a similar way to performance aluminium frames. I guess if you have a very overbuilt CF frame like a mountain bike it may be less of an issue. Typically the whole point of CF is to a make a lighter frame with better performance so the less material the better which is not good for the lifespan of the frame. It's better explained by a manufacturer. Here is Giant's text;

 

[Jameshow]

CF frames and forks are the least consistent material because they are hand made by different people who lay up the material and so you are dealing with a material which is much more inconsistent overall. Any minor problem in construction acts as a sort of fatigue point as the movement of the frame will gradually weaken that area in a similar way to performance aluminium frames. I guess if you have a very overbuilt CF frame like a mountain bike it may be less of an issue. Typically the whole point of CF is to a make a lighter frame with better performance so the less material the better which is not good for the lifespan of the frame. It's better explained by a manufacturer. Here is Giant's text;

View attachment 663407

I'm going to have to go out and tell that to my 12 yo Cannondale supersix... It's done c2c lejog audax type rides all with bikepacking gear often on roads which gave me a puncture and broke spokes.

Not all carbon is fragile!

SM and HM feel totally different.

Like 501 Vs 853.

Or 7005 scaffolding Vs caad13 alloy.

 

[StuAff]

My Viner's only thirteen years old. It's done many centuries in all weathers and London-JOG. It seems to have held up OK…

 

[Alex321]

CF frames and forks are the least consistent material because they are hand made by different people who lay up the material and so you are dealing with a material which is much more inconsistent overall. Any minor problem in construction acts as a sort of fatigue point as the movement of the frame will gradually weaken that area in a similar way to performance aluminium frames. I guess if you have a very overbuilt CF frame like a mountain bike it may be less of an issue. Typically the whole point of CF is to a make a lighter frame with better performance so the less material the better which is not good for the lifespan of the frame. It's better explained by a manufacturer. Here is Giant's text;

View attachment 663407

That text is not specific to CF at all. And doesn't say anything about how consistent or otherwise CF frames may be.

 

[bonzobanana]

I'm going to have to go out and tell that to my 12 yo Cannondale supersix... It's done c2c lejog audax type rides all with bikepacking gear often on roads which gave me a puncture and broke spokes.

Not all carbon is fragile!

SM and HM feel totally different.

Like 501 Vs 853.

Or 7005 scaffolding Vs caad13 alloy.

Well certainly you aren't going to have to tell it on my account as the whole point of what I've written is to say inconsistent quality and possible reduced lifespan but of course it doesn't apply to all. It's all a probability game plus of course some people will give their bikes a much easier time, they could be lighter, weaker or used less often, how they ride and where they ride are factors too.

Halfords send a huge amount of bikes to Africa as their charity. Those bikes are super strong abuse-able typically high tensile steel bikes, expected to last decades and take years of abuse including being overloaded.

You also have the Buffalo bike designed for that environment with ridiculous load ratings like 100kg on the rear rack.

http://www.buffalobicycle.com/why-buffalo

Bikes not suitable for Africa, typically aluminium and carbon fibre because of short lifespans, less abuse-able and more expensive ongoing maintenance are sold to help finance the charity.

https://re-cycle.org/buy-a-bike/

Almost all bike recalls which are related to frames or forks are for aluminium or carbon fibre frames or forks, i.e. dangerous chance of failure despite steel still representing over 95% of all bikes sold in the world.

It's all perfectly logical as you engineer a product to be lightweight you lose material and strength or use lighter weight materials which may have higher fatigue rates or directional strength rather than multi-directional strength. If you use butting in a frame tube its clearly going to be weaker at that point maybe damaged by a smaller accident. If you have butted chromoly steel frame i.e. high end steel frame then the corrosion will be most damaging in the thin butted sections of the tubes because the corrosion will have a greater impact on the strength there. This shortens the lifespan of the frame as you would expect compared to a high tensile steel frame which has thicker unbutted tubes so the corrosion takes much, much longer to impact strength.

 

[bonzobanana]

That text is not specific to CF at all. And doesn't say anything about how consistent or otherwise CF frames may be.

No its a general lifespan warning for all lightweight performance road bikes be it aluminium, CF or even butted chromoly frames. Any frame optimised for performance so with a reduced lifespan not just CF. I think the weakest frame I've ever seen was a Columbus steel road bike. They designed it to be weight competitive with aluminium so had a lot of butted tubes and when tested some years ago was exceptionally weak. It's more about making lightweight frames and forks than the material itself. You used to get non-butted tube titanium frames and they were known for their exceptionally long lifespan but then you got titanium frames with milled out and butted tubes and they had much shorter lifespans due to fatigue in the same way as aluminium. It's more about how a frame is made. Carbon fibre is always pretty much a performance road bike frame and designed to be very lightweight. You don't really get overbuilt CF frames so much. If you want a strong overbuilt frame capable of more abuse then other materials would be a better choice.

 

[Cycleops]

Halfords send a huge amount of bikes to Africa as their charity. Those bikes are super strong abuse-able typically high tensile steel bikes, expected to last decades and take years of abuse including being overloaded.

View attachment 663427
Bikes not suitable for Africa, typically aluminium and carbon fibre because of short lifespans, less abuse-able and more expensive ongoing maintenance are sold to help finance the charity.

While that might be true in rural communities where bikes are more valued in other locations bikes are treated very poorly with low maintenance.
In fact aluminium bikes fetch a premium over steel bikes which are not valued for their longer lasting properties. Aluminium is considered better as it's lighter and more 'modern'.
Just an observation.

 

[Illaveago]

Good morning,

This is a follow on to https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/how-much-bike-do-i-really-need-a-6-month-experiment.284154/

Someone nicked the Norco and it has been replaced by this, bought from a Cash Convertors branch, a chain of Pawn/Second hand shops for £90, typically they go for between.£50 and £90 on ebay around here.

View attachment 657250

It is a Carrera Virtuoso, similar in market position to the current version and really quite old. It is a step down from the Norco in that the gears are Shimano 2000 series with the thumb release for changing up a gear and has a carbon steel fork and steerer.

Weighing 12kg with the rack, which is mounted the wrong way round as it doesn’t fit the correct way round, it is heavy in the way that 501 main frame tubes only or 531st with racks and mudguards is.

In reality it seems to be about 5 minutes slower on the commute, getting slower as the number and steepness of the hills increases. Yes this is a “so what” slower, but if I were riding in a group this may put me into the category of annoyingly slow when the road rises just because of the bike.

For me a big problem is the thumb levers, I can’t operate them from the drops which is a problem as 2 or 3 times a week I come home mostly flat out. I found that as I wanted to keep the weekends for recovery I was losing a lot of fitness just riding at commute speeds. Of course I could resolve this by getting a new set of Claris shifters, but that starts me off the just upgrade this and then that and then route ……. a set of CF forks would be an upgrade, as would lighter wheels and better tyres.

What is much harder to be clear over is that the ride is just not fun, when commuting you have to ride even if you don’t want to and this makes those days horrible.

On the Jamis I can come up to a hill, change down chainrings and spin up it and feel good. Regardless of the gear, being 3kg+ heavier than the Jamis means that I would expect to need the next gear down, the hill is always an obstacle for the Carrera and on the flats it just seem like riding with slightly too soft tyres, every change in speed takes longer.

The Jamis has gained some weight as the RS10s were on the Norco, it currently has wheels that weigh 3.7kg with tyres, tubes and cassette, this is about 0.9kg more than the RS10s! But they are also rock solid with Sora hubs and 36 thick spokes they have probably covered at least 40k miles over the last 9 years.

IF you have ever ridden Vittoria Randonneurs and then you may get what I mean. J

If I had never ridden the Jamis then maybe I wouldn’t know what I was missing and the Carrera certainly can do the journey, but over the week it becomes a chore. Is it because I know what I am missing or is it that the Carrera is outside of its comfort zone?

After all is still 4-6lbs lighter than the 5 speed Raleigh “racer” that many of us have had, and it has a lot more gears. Although for a commute bike I would be very happy with a 1x8 (50-11/32)

As the commute requires riding twice a day this means that you only have 12 hours recovery between rides, this requires either a quite high level of fitness or riding within your comfort zone. I could skip the high intensity rides and budget the exertion but that is a route that I don’t intend to go down.

It is possible to use public transport on the commute route, but the door to door time is greater than riding, on a really good day it can be an hour home by bike compared to the 90-120 minutes by bus/train.

Bye

Ian

I was surprised by the weight of your bike . I just compared it with my 70's 22 inch Viking Severn Valley butted 531 with Schwalbe Marathons , with lights and a padlock and it came out 1 lb lighter.
I have liked the look of the Carrera Virtuoso but now I will stick with my old steel framed bikes .

 

[bonzobanana]

While that might be true in rural communities where bikes are more valued in other locations bikes are treated very poorly with low maintenance.
In fact aluminium bikes fetch a premium over steel bikes which are not valued for their longer lasting properties. Aluminium is considered better as it's lighter and more 'modern'.
Just an observation.

I was just explaining why bike brands give a lifespan warning for performance road bikes and how they vary from steel bicycles typically. Steel is still being developed. There are more modern steel alloys used in bicycles. Some of the chinese high tensile steel bikes are using steel close to the strength of entry level chromoly frames of the past. They are also robot welded with better welds typically and phosphate dipped for galvanising so have less strength loss through corrosion. Admittedly it was some years ago I looked into this but fuji-ta were selling such frames for about $3-5 factory door price. Steel has the most advanced manufacturing processes hence the low price. CF is the least advanced in manufacturing processes with a high level of manual labour and aluminium sits between the two typically requiring manual welding although this may have changed. In the time it takes to make one CF frame you can probably make 100s of steel frames. If you were comparing bike frames to types of cars, a steel frame would be a Ford Fiesta and a CF frame would be a Morgan sports car.

There may come a time when CF can be manufactured efficiently and quickly and we will know that time as the price of such bikes will fall dramatically and likely their quality consistency will improve too. I personally feel steel is still the most environmentally responsible material but aluminium is also very good. I feel CF is inefficiently produced, likely to be shorter life and destined for landfill rather than recycling. So less than ideal.

https://www.makeitfrom.com/compare/...Steel/SAE-AISI-4130-SCM430-G41300-Cr-Mo-Steel