Singlespeed & Fixed Gear - Is weight a consideration for fixies?

Hey everyone, I'm in the market for a fixed-gear bike. I'm new to this forum so I've been living in the stickied posts but was unable to find anything pertaining to the weight of fixies. I assumed that most people customize theirs but what about off the peg bikes like the LeMond Fillmore? It's been a toss-up between the Fillmore and the (gasp) Langster so I'd be interesting in the weights of both.

langster are like 19lbs. or something stock. the fillmore probably a little more given it's steel. all in all, cutting the weight down on a fixed gear is easy because there aren't a lot of parts.

langsters aren't bad in my opinion. the city editions are lame to me, but the regular ones can be cool, given the right build.

imo the weight on a fixed gear isnt really that important

i welcome weight! ME LOVES TEH INERTIA


until im climbing, then i f'in hate it

weight matters in climbing and sprinting

if you concern yourself with such particulars then

weight matters

what ae these things people are calling fixies?

dunno but it annoys the heck out of me

especially when someone says it in real life

what ae these things people are calling fixies?

It's a refurbished bike that has undergone some type of previous repair. Whatever the
problem was has been "fixed", and the endearing term "fixie" is used by people who
enjoy these types of bikes.

Anything under 20lb is great (I've been riding for several years and the lightest bike I've ever had was 19lb). If you want to spend a few hundred extra, you can get most stock frames down to 16lb or so. But unless you're racing, it probably won't matter much. The fit of the bike will be much more important so I'd say make he decision by riding them. My best climbing frame was also my heaviest at close to 22lb.

So you're faster uphills with a heavier frame, compared to a lighter frame?

amazing

I have no idea about the weight of the bikes, but the difference can't be more than a couple lbs. Your water weight probably fluctuates more than that through the day. If you can't decide between them and they are from different shops, go with the bike shop that you like better.
PS I'd get the LeMond, those may be real hard to come by in a few months.

Repost;
The primary concern of hip FG riders is a tight geometry and a complete lack of safety features.
Therefore they never worry about the weight of their bike because it could never outweigh the balls it takes to ride it.

drop a few pounds.

...fatty. =)

Mass does not like to change speed or direction. Sometimes this is good, sometimes it is bad. As applied to a bike, it is generally bad. Makes it harder to go uphill and harder to accelerate.

Everything else equal, I prefer to haul less mass around with me when I am pedaling. But then, everything else is never equal.

j

I have a Pista frame set with very, very light components.

The low inertia wheels and tires help with acceleration and braking.

Otherwise, the lightness just feels good, especially when I lift the rear wheel with my pedal in order to reposition the crank.

no weight does not matter, unless it matters to you, then yes weight matters. That said. If you think you are too slow, its not the bikes fault

i have a light bike, a lighter bike and a heavy bike. the light bike (fixed) gets me from point a to b the fastest by far. the heavy bike (also fixed, same ratio), the slowest. this could have something to do with the components and the geometry, but it "feels" heavier when i ride it. it's also a bigger pain in the ass to hang up when i get home.

I also have a harder time sprinting up steeper climbs with it, but it could have something to do with it having risers vs. bullhorns on my other bikes. i almost always end up out of saddle on the larger hills north west of philly when i ride it.

Does anyone know the weight of the Fillmore off the top of their head?

My fixed gear is 23 lbs, and it has yet to really be a problem. It could be due to the fact that I'm rocking some road cranks for the added torque, and I'm tall and skinny, giving me some leverage when pedaling.

In fact, I kind of like it at the weight it is right now. I've tried, within reason, to do some weight-dropping upgrades, but I feel really silly sporting some super-lightweight components with an old steel road frame. Plus, it allows me to beat it up on a daily basis without really having to worry.

I think it depends on your priorities. A lighter bike would be nice, but you may sacrifice money and durability. And for me, I'd rather have a bike I can beat the **** out of and have a slightly harder time climbing with (especially since it's 90% flat here). I don't even know what my bike weighs. I think around 18lbs? But that was me standing on a crappy scale with the bike and guessing.

As does spOOki, I have a light fixed gear bike and a heavy fixed gear bike; my spring/summer/fall good weather bike and my winter Ice Bike.

I enjoy riding both of them, but I find the light bike much easier to ride, and quicker to climb and accelerate, mostly because of the low mass/inertia of the wheels and tires.

Low inertia matters in climbing because unless the rider has some sort of devinely-given perfect spin, his wheels speed up and slow down with each revolution of the crank, and probably twice with each revolution of the crank.

Therefore, with each revolution of the crank, against gravity, the rider has to re-accelerate his wheels twice per revolution.
This significantly adds to the effort required to climb.

If a person wants to climb easier and accelerate more quickly, he should invest in low-inertia wheels, tubes and tires.
In my mind, money spent on wheels, tubes and tires represents the best money a person can spend on upgrades.

I presently ride on Cane Creek Volos Track wheels with Schwalbe Ultremo tires and Salsa Superlite tubes.
This setup has very low rotational inertia, and it makes a big difference climbing, braking, and accelerating.

In two or three years I plan to build the third and last fixed gear bike I will build in this life.
I would like to have a more conventional wheel set for this future bike.
So far, in my mind, I have chosen Phil low flange hubs with DT Swiss RR 1.1 rims, DT Swiss Aerolite spokes (28 in front, 32 in back), and DT Swiss aluminum nipples (I feel good about the aluminum nipples because the DT Swiss rims have steel eyelets).
This wheel set will weigh 1646 grams, and will have the lowest rotational inertia possible for a wheel having nipples in the rim and yet still capable of carrying my considerable weight (235 all up with bag).

If buying a cheap factory made fixed gear bike, like my Pista, I would, if I had the money, upgrade the wheels as described above and change either the cog, the chain ring, or both, to get the specific gear ratio I know from experience works for me (different gear ratios for different people).
This would double the price of the bike and many people would consider that money poorly spent.
I understand why some people would see it that way.
However, at my point in life I have more money than youth, and so it works for me.
If 18 years-old again, I wouldn't upgrade anything.
I'd just ride and enjoy. :)

yes...true oneness begins under 17 pounds.

I don't believe in weight weenie-ism. IMO, at the cat 6 level most of us ride at, an extra pound or three on your bike will make no appreciable difference to your overall speed compared to how much you train. You don't want a bike that's much heavier than it's got to be for its intended purpose, but it's not worth obsessing over if you're not racing at a fairly high level.

i built my IRO group buy up with weight in mind, but not necessarily at the top of my list of priorities.

the stock fork alone (which i never put on) weighs more than the frame by itself, so i put a carbon fork on it when i built it up. for only 50 bucks, why wouldn't i?

i also have a carbon brake lever and suzue promax carbon hubs, but--i'm not gonna lie--those were mostly for aesthetics. any weight savings there were just fringe benefit.

weight also played a role in my rim choice--i went with open pros because i knew they'd be light and strong. also because they are not velocity deep v's which was also a major factor.

i havent weighed the bike but it's remarkably light. that is, people lift it and remark on how light it is.

it makes climbing noticeably easier than it was on my panasonic conversion i had prior to this build.

A lighter bike is nice if you often use it to do hilly long distance rides.

Aluminum bikes are almost automatically 2lbs lighter than the same size steel bike w/ similar components. You will have to spend quite a bit to drop 2lbs on non-frame/fork components on a steel bike.

Getting a bike down to 18lbs is easy. Getting it to 16 or sub 16 is exponentially more expensive.

Fit is more important than weight, but if the Langster fits you better, then you get fit and a lighter bike.

Weight... is sign of reliability...

I like to go fast and enjoy things like climbing hills and doing intervals. Weight is a factor for me but there's other important aspects of a bike as well. I think a lighter bike feels better in most conditions. A couple exceptions are bombing big hills (more weight makes me feel more stable and less like I'm going to start flying away) and riding in really ****ty conditions (like snow or wind). Other than that, less weight is nice for me. I've got two bikes, one is ~19 or 19.5lb, the other is ~17. While there's a couple important variables (17lb bike has looseball bearings, 19lb has sealed; 17lb bike has track drops, 19lb has bullhorns), the 17 feels nicer to ride. I'm gonna sell off the 17lb and build a Concept to have something like 15 or 16lb, too, if I can get my hands on one.

Like Ken said, one of the most important areas to look is the wheels, and specifically the TIRES. Rotational weight matters more the farther you move away from the hub: therefore hub weight doesn't matter a whole lot for ratational mass (mostly it's a factor for weight weenie roadies doing long climbs), while tires are the most important. Want to rapidly change the feel of your bike? Go from 700x23 racing slicks to 700x35 touring tires... you'll see what I'm saying. Rims are also pretty important: I can't see myself riding any rim over 500g unless it was a nice Zipp or HED that I got for cheap.

It's important to remember the non-weight factors that change the bike's feel too: drivetrain efficiency (having good components, keeping your chain clean/lubed, replacing things when they die out) as well as bearings. Ride some ****ty old bearings, or ill-maintained looseballs, and then compare it to some freshly broken-in quality sealed bearings and see how each feel. Then compare all of it to loose ball and see how superior that is!

But none of this really matters if you just go cruise and most of it doesn't matter if you don't want to take your riding to the next level and race. And less weight often comes at the expense of less durability. There's a nice balance one needs to strike when building up a bike.

My Pista is 17-19 pounds depending on component selection. I can tell the difference on hills. When I made the switch to a lighter wheelset, the improvement was significant.

WHEN YOUR ONLY 58KG LIKE ME, WEIGHT DEFINATELY MAKES A DIFERRENCE....

whoops sorry for shouting, cant be bothered to type it again

Want to rapidly change the feel of your bike? Go from 700x23 racing slicks to 700x35 touring tires...

Think there'd be any noticeable difference between 700x25 and 700x23? I'm running 700x25s right now because I like how they roll on city streets and I feel more confident bashing on them than I would on 700x23s. But I've been interested to see how different they feel, if much at all.

Crappy roads = slightly wider tires are going to be better not because of weight but because they take the potholes, bumps and ****ty surfaces a lot better. So of course there's lots of factors going into play. 700x23's excel best on smooth pavement. It's not that easy to tell the difference between the two though because there's not much of a jump in size or weight. Some people are more sensitive to these things than others though...

Totally depends what you're using the bike for. I have a Steamroller with 36 spoke Deep V's, but it feels light to me, because it's the lightest bike I've owned. And I carry tools, locks, work clothes, groceries, etc. in my mess bag most of the time, so how the hell am I gonna notice a half pound difference on my bike? Besides, I'm a big guy. If you race competitively and weigh 120 lbs., be a weight weenie, but otherwise don't waste time worrying about it.

I will care about the weight of my bike when I am skinny. Until then, I am ditching weight off my bike the cheap way.

So you're faster uphills with a heavier frame, compared to a lighter frame?

amazing

It's called geometry... it has some profound effects on how different bike's perform.

All my fixed gear bikes are steel and lugged.

My 1955 Lenton... despite hitting the curb at 32 pounds it is still an amazingly good climber, very fast on the flats, and very stable on descents. It is also an excellent long tour bike and is comfortable enough that riding 100 miles will just make you want to ride 100 more. It has very slack frame angles.

My 1963 Peugeot is 22 pounds (with fender and rack) and is much stiffer and tighter than the Lenton... it's is a rocket on flat ground, climbs exceptionally well, handles like it is on rails, but can get a little twitchy on really fast descents if things aren't perfectly set up. It runs 77 gear inches and has a typical road geometry on a slightly more compact frame.

My 1973 Phillip's Twenty folder is 26 pounds and runs 70 gear inches on 1.95 Kenda Contact semi slicks... it dials up faster than any bike I own and will cruise nicely at 30 kmh, handles very well, but does fall a little short in the hill climbing department as it has shorter cranks that decrease pedalling leverage.

My 1987 Kuwahara Cascade mtb/tourer/commuter hits the curb at 26 pounds with full fenders and front and rear racks and with the lowest gearing I have (65 gear inches) and a touring geometry is a great climber and stable descender. Despite running 26 by 2.0 semi slicks it is still capable of some decent flat ground speeds and is on a par with the Lenton when it comes to comfort and ride.

i like lighter bikes
makes it easier when u travel w/ them and take them nice places

Do you high performance riders also wear bibs and shave your legs? :D

i do. why do you ask?

Weight... is sign of reliability...

If it doesn't work... you can always hit them with it.

i do. why do you ask?

I'm teasing only the people who require weight weenie machines to commute to work in jeans and sneakers... as (I assume) an actual roadie, you are exempt.

If it doesn't work... you can always hit them with it.

*BUZZER* Oooohhhh, that's wrong but great try. The next line is when Boris the Sneaky ****ing Russian says, "I always go for reliability." Thanks for playing!

:D

Great movie, innit?

Ahem, I love light weight bikes.

I went from a bikeboom 10 speed to a threadless Kilo with mavic 22s and formula hubs. The difference between the two was like night and day. Hills that would leave me gasping for breath on my old bike, I could clear quickly. Plus it's easier to carry it up and down stairs. I have to carry my girlfriend's 3-speed ross up the stairs while she carries my kilo.

only when going uphill...

Do you high performance riders also wear bibs and shave your legs? :D

Bike shorts on anything over 30 minutes in the saddle. My leg hairs would likely clog even the heaviest duty razors though, I'll wait until track season on the whole shaving thing...

Given that a bike is a small percentage of the total weight of the rider and machine together, I think a lower polar moment of inertia is of high importance while sheer "bike weight" is less important. This means lighter wheels, cranks, pedals etc...

Don't get me wrong, the frame weight, for example, does matter. But I think having a light bike is more about it feeling good and feeling nimble, while lower rotational masses are more about tangible increases in performance. Then again, an ounce is an ounce, so any weight savings does matter. It all adds up.

Smaller crank arms, smaller wheels etc... greatly decrease the polar moment of inertia on those parts, but also have downsides (less leverage, less distance per rotation), so at a given size, lighter is better.

I do not think using light wheels, cranks, chainrings etc... on a heavy frame is a waste of money, or pointless.