NormanF

On the upper end of the market, carbon has displaced steel because of its light weight and unrivaled comfort.

In the mass market, alloy has taken over from steel because its lighter in weight and thanks to modern welding technology, has a compliant and lively ride equal to the best steel bikes.

Steel will always have a place but carbon and alloy dominate the market because they're as good as they're going to get and they offer riding characteristics buyers within a given budget want.

mtnbke

Thank you for posting this.

So many cyclists pretend their preferences for frames/bikes have nothing to do with their advancing age, loss of flexibility or fitness and instead blame it on the bike. You do become more sensitive to the road as you age. There are thousands of us that recognize that the Klein or Cannondale we own is our best riding bike. Maybe someday we'll all need to transition to Magnesium customs, titanium, carbon or back to steel. However, it just feels disingenuous when you get an older cyclist complaining about the ride characteristics of oversized aluminum and advocating steel. At that point in their life they are looking for a comfort bike, not a performance bike. You can get both with titanium, carbon, or magnesium but my point has always been that steel is no longer relevant from a performance standpoint. Its still really cool that we can find epic steel vintage race bikes that effectively serve as comfort bikes, but to represent that these bikes compare on a performance level to a Klein, Calfee, high-end Cannondale, or the like is just patently absurd in my book.

ramzilla

unicrown robots started up around 1989 in Taiwan .................. So, ............1988

mtnbke

I was making fun. Some of the buffoons commenting in these threads have been representing that who brazed the frame had more to do with ride quality and characteristics than actual tube sets. Which I find absurd. The reality is that vintage race bikes with sought after tube sets aren't purchased by the dozen and then the "best" bike picked as a keeper. The reality is that any competent frame builder who properly brazes the bike will build essentially the same bike as the next guy. These are not Stradivarious violins and most cyclists do NOT ride a sample of the same bike in the same frame size to find the "good" ones. What makes a bike good is the tube set much more so than the frame builder, because as a rule most frames are competently built. Very few frames are defective because the person that built the lugged frame didn't know what they were doing.

I found it absurd that people were trying to assert that the frame builder was more important than the tube sets. The market doesn't speak to that. When most cyclists talk about their bikes they speak glowingly of certain tube sets, they NEVER really know the frame builder. Everyone who thinks that Ernesto built their Colnago while sipping a Cappucino is delusional. Someone like Mark Nobilette or Richard Sachs builds their own frames, the big nameplates used employed frame builders.

Master framebuilders mattered back in the early days of aluminum with Frank the Welder at Yeti, the master welders at Klein and Canonnondale, you needed that skill level & experience because of how difficult aluminum was to work with before welding technology advances with feed systems, computerized current controllers, and programmable "hot start" and variable bead end current.

So I wasn't being effective. I was making fun of the disingenuous "steel is real" cult members that painted themselves into a corner with some of their absurd claims. Of course tubing matters more than the $9/hr person that actually brazed the bike up. If the bike was properly brazed and the silver/brass was adequately pulled into the lug there really aren't levels of "artistry" with frame building. Anymore than your plumber is an "artist" because he sweated your pipes better than the next guy. Done properly its just done, there is no magical brazing. There is done right or wrong. Not much else.

ramzilla

BC vs AC .................. Pre - Robot vs After Robot ......... PR vs AR .... about 1985ish ( IMHO )

rekmeyata

The only very high end steel bike that is lighter than CF bikes which I already mentioned earlier called the Rodriguez Outlaw which weighs about 13.8 pounds, I'm sure this bike in the hands of a pro rider would easily stay with any CF bike being ridden by a pro.

Some people need a reality check when it comes to CF vs steel, instead of me typing for hours just read this instead, this will shed a lot of light on the CF being lighter myth, and why the pros ride what they ride. The New Carbon?.Carbon Steel! | Rodriguez Bike News

RobbieTunes

Good point. I didn't say anything about weight. Most TdF riders agree that once below 16 lbs, it simply is not much of an issue. Yes, they've been asked. Many top pro's would like a 16-lb min so they can use discs and descend faster.

I'm a layman, and my Wraith, with pedals and cages, is 16.34 lbs. I don't have a carbon seatpost or uber-light ass hatchet saddle, and I use an ISIS bottom bracket. My shifters are only 10-sp Utegra. Steel can approach carbon, and it can hit UCI minimums, and it doesn't have to be a Rodriguez Outlaw. You have to want it to. If I decided to spend $5000-$6000, I could call Adam Eldridge, or Snyder in Atlanta, or a couple of others, perhaps Primus Mootry in Colorado, and tell them what I want and how I want it. I've little doubt I can get a UCI min steel bike with a tapered head tube and stiff bottom bracket and ride like a maniac on it.

Steel bike framing hasn't peaked because there is still steel on the planet. If it finally peaks, it will be because of scarcity and priority usage, like in medical equipment, or sadly, military use.

I also look forward to the day when there's a C&V category for carbon bikes, or aluminum bikes, at some big cycling event. You know, when people wear polyester and lycra jerseys and carry clinchers wrapped around their torso, and the bike requirements specify toothpaste welds, 9-sp limit, and cartridge bottom brackets.

Steel hasn't peaked, when people are looking back at it as well as looking forward at it. It's hot, it's cool, it's sexy, and it's prudent. Few shows have a "Keeper of the Monocoque Layup Mold" award. Give me mine with well-filed lugs or smooth battleship grey, but it's better to just toss another bowling pin on the fire pit and hand me that growler. I've got grinning to do.

rekmeyata

I understand you didn't ask about the weight but if you read the article I posted it tells you why a place like Rodriguez Cycles don't sponsor pros...MONEY! Read the article, it has nothing to do with weight, material, etc, it quite simply means that small manufacturers can't afford to foot a million dollars a year to sponsor a pro team.

LesterOfPuppets

They have a stock 13.5 lb option, also. It's a little cheaper than the 13.8 lb option, even.

I'd really like to try the carbon seatmast inserted into steel frame idea:

RobbieTunes

Sorry about any confusion, but I took your post to mean the only sub-CF frame of steel is the Rodriguez. I just wanted to point out that there are probably 10-15 builders who can put out the frames. I totally understand they are not financially able to fund a pro team. The money for that needs to come from a fan who wants to prove a point; unless I win the lottery. A pro program using steel bikes would be high on my list.

Think of all the other sponsors who would have to take notice, and get on the page, not wanting to be left out. Hell, they'd fork over money just to be on the bike when the magazines test it.....

rekmeyata

I hear you, I too would love to foot the bill of a pro team on a steel ride like the Rodriguez just to get team on steel back on the circuit, but like you a million dollars to do that doesn't exist for me either. It would also be interesting to find out how such a light weight steel bike would hold up in the rigors of pro racing vs CF. There also isn't enough cyclists that have bought the Rodriguez to comment on long term reliability, I couldn't find one review by an owner on any independent site unless it's posted on Rodriquez site but that would make me think that Rodriguez could have cherry picked the comments.

Waterford R33 can dip below 16 pounds and be at UCI legal limit. Basically any steel bike maker could make a bike as light as the Rodriguez, or at least close, by using the same tubeset they do, the True Temper S3.

I would love to own a Rodriguez but spending that kind of money on a bike for me personally would be insane and I would have to be committed.

mtnbke

The lighter steel gets, the less stiff and efficient a steel frame becomes. Rodriguez didn't suddenly discover alchemy and figure out how to turn lead to gold. Don't confuse their attempt to build a hyper lightweight bike with actual performance. Why on earth would you just categorically assume that a pro rider on a Rodriguez Outlaw would stay with a Pro on a carbon fiber bike, rekmeyata?

Bianchi has been in the bike business essentially longer than just about anyone. Campagnolo, Olmo, Colnago, Cinelli, Pinarello these are all upstarts in comparison. Yet somehow Rodriquez reinvented the wheel? What is this cult of steel that we just suspend disbelief and swallow the Rodriguez marketing rhetoric whole? Bianchi has been building bikes since 1885, and guess what, I'll bet they built an ultralight proof of concept bike or two over the years. You know what comes to mind for me when I think about what happens when you try to go too light with steel? The Serotta/TrueTemper nightmare for the Team 7-11 bikes. They literally were breaking under the cyclists. Yet Rodriguez isn't a tubing manufacturer. They are just a frambuilder. Despite all the millions of dollars spent on steel industrial engineering and tubing developments, we're to believe that a frame builder, independent of an actual tubing company like Columubus or TrueTemper, figured out how to use existent tubing and make it "lighter" and still make a bike faster when bikes with "more" steel in them have consistently been more flexy and less efficient than oversized aluminum, titanium, or carbon fiber? You want to talk about something ultra light and strong figure out how to build a bike frame out of an epoxy matrix of spider web. Spider web can be five times stronger than steel of the same diameter. That's an unfair comparison because spider web is six times less dense than steel. However, there is more to building a bike than tensile strength. Stiffness matters. There is no magical recipe to take a very dense material, like steel, and use very little of it, and yet end up with a frame that gives you comparable stiffness to oversize tubing of materials that are 1/4, 1/3 or 1/2 less dense. A magnesium, aluminum, titanium, or carbon fiber bike is ALWAYS going to be a better "performance" frame as a given (all other things being equal) because for given mass of material they have so much more material to work with. When you try to go light with steel, everything else is a compromise. There is no other way around that. Now if you want a very light springy inefficient bike that is essentially "air steel" than this might be the bike. However, let's actually ride it instead of thinking that there is nothing to making bicycles beyond it being 1. "steel is real" and 2. weight.

The lightest custom racing bicycles | Lighter than carbon fiber | The Steel Rodriguez Outlaw

Here's a hint. They probably got out of the Carbon Fiber business when they couldn't maintain a competitive advantage as the technological and engineering inherent barriers to production ramped up. Building a super light bicycle means nothing beyond that they built a super light bicycle.

When the Cannondale 3.0 series debuted it was the lightest frame set in the world. It was also the STIFFEST frame ever tested by Bicycling magazine on the famous 'tarantula' testing jig that Gary Klein built for them (interestingly it was NOT one of his frames set this benchmark on his testing device). Cannondale frames were also tested to be stronger than the lugged steel frames. That's a bit impressive really.

This is what I know about the Rodriquez so far. It's light. Let's not abandon critical thought and think he who bends a balloon in the shape of a bicycle which weighs the least has built the best bicycle. Steel has fundamental limitations in terms building bicycle frames.

For a given volume of material if Steel is a baseline reference weight of 100, look at the graph of how much lighter magnesium, titanium, and aluminum are:
Paketa Custom Magnesium Bicycles :: Stronger Than Carbon Fiber and Aluminum

Say what you want about the ride characteristics of steel but Magnesium is where its at if we were really being intellectually honest about optimum frame materials. Better vibration dampening characteristics than ANYTHING, end of story. Lighter than titanium and aluminum, and roughly 1/4 the weight of steel. Better ride, hyperlite.

Rodriquez didn't reinvent steel. They built a very superlight weight bike. Anyone who thinks a 13.8lb steel bike is going to be able to climb with the efficiency of a carbon-fiber, or aluminum/titanium/magnesium bicycle is being fundamentally disingenuous about basic materials science. You can't build a "better" something out of something that suffers from a fundamental competitive disadvantage of weight in the first place. The lighter materials already were stiffer and more efficient. Somehow Rodriguez overcame the stiffness/efficiency issue using LESS steel?

Serotta once challenged the notion that lugged steel bicycle frame construction was ideal and built a very successful iconic company before it unraveled. He turned out to be right, but that also ruffled feathers in the industry and of consumers who took it as gospel that their "master frame builder" built lugged steel bike was actually a good way to approach the steel frame:

https://velonews.competitor.com/2013/...uilding_299896

Many people used to bad mouth Serottas just like they used to mealy mouth Cannondale and Kleins. That's what you do when you're behind the engineering and technology curve and you can't keep pace with innovation, you have to trash the other comparative product.

Rodriguez could have figured out some similar innovation to the Ben Serotta recognizing the false idol of lugged steel and advancing the steel bike with his shaped and flared tubing at the BB. However, I doubt it.

C'mon people. Think for yourselves. How 'bout you actually go ride one and compare it to say a Calfee on a rigorous extended hors catagorie climb before you actually drink the Rodriguez Kool-Aid. How 'bout you actually ride one and see how it does in a group sprint amongst the rocket Carbon fiber and aluminum bikes. How 'bout you actually ride one and then see how it performs on a long rolleur type route, for which you have baseline times of personal bests on titanium, carbon fiber, aluminum, and steel bikes. Then share your thoughts and data.

Other frame builders and their tubing partners have spent millions of dollars and decades of research advancing the engineering and art of frame building out of steel. Rodriguez somehow figured out how to take a material that is irrelevant in any modern context of performance bicycle frames and somehow take the densest frame material and build a LIGHTER bike frame that manages the flex/efficiency issues that heavier steel frames can't?

For the love of pete people don't just read some marketing rhetoric and just start assuming via Fiat that this little dinky steel frame builder somehow turned water into wine. Steel isn't a good bicycle frame material just because you emotionally are all vested in wanting it to be.

mtnbke

BS. Let's actually qualify this discussion into something intelligent.

How many of the Div I pro cycling teams are actually sponsored by a Bicycle/Frame manufacturer versus teams that do not have a primary or secondary bicycle/frame sponsor. I'll tell you what, big Pro team want one thing more than anything else. To win the Tour de France, and the other two gran tours. The mickey mouse arrangements they might have with a manufacturer/frame sponsor isn't going to compel them to all ride Carbon Fiber if there was a steel bike out there that would win them more races. The value to the primary sponsor of the exposure for the team and their brand from winning trumps EVERYTHING. If steel bikes were actually better bikes, and faster, please believe these pro teams would be racing on steel.

The agenda in pro racing is to get the sponsor exposure: T-Mobile, USPS, Discovery Channel, Phonak, Garmin, Rabobank, etc historically.

Looking at current 2015 teams, sure I can see an agenda of teams that have primary sponsors of bike manufacturers, but that's not EVERY team:
Pro Cycling Teams & Riders | Cyclingnews.com

Take the aluminum foil hats off people. There is no deep industry conspiracy hatched by our alien overlords to keep humans on slower/heavier carbon fiber bikes compared to wonders of what fantastically light steel bikes could realize in competition. The steel bike had its day, and it was found wanting. Its good enough for almost ALL of us, but for the pro peloton, please. Think for yourselves people.

mtnbke

Now carbon and steel hybrid frames…that could produce some very special outcomes, potentially. Notice the tiny seat stays? I'll bet that bike is a dream in terms of comfort and ride quality.

Maybe a carbon fork that "sleeves" or surrounds a very tiny steel head tube, reversing the current approach of steerer within the steel head tube. That would be interesting to say the least.

brandon98

Don't go away mad. Just go away.

mtnbke

Didn't mean to intervene in your Jonestown thing right before you drank the Kool-Aid. Oh wait. Yes I did. Surrounding yourself with erroneous opinions in an attempt to validate or placate something you want to be true doesn't make it true. It just reveals a need to deceive yourself. There is nothing pure, ideal, or special about steel. Its strong, its dense, its heavy. There are less dense, less heavy materials that build stiffer frames that climb better, accelerate faster, sprint better, and have better vibration dampening charactristics.

You want to talk about a magic metal to make bicycle frames of its magnesium. Steel is a false god for so many of you in this cult. I get it, Grant Peterson wanted to carve out a niche to sell essentially the same Japanese steel bikes you could buy on Craigslist for a couple of hundred dollars, only with drop dead gorgeous paint and more modern bits. You all read his marketing rhetoric and his simple folksy appealing message. Go read your vintage Cannondale catalogs from the era of them being a backpacking company. Grant not only lifted the Sport Touring ethos straight from Cannondale (the bike inspired everything he believes about what a bike should be) with the single exception of his being steel, but he literally borrowed the folksy style of communication that was in Cannondale sales literature first.

My freakin' goodness. Not everything older is better. Lots of C&V cycling stuff is cool as hell, but cult members are delusional when you start believing there is some kind of global conspiracy to prevent steel bikes from realizing their racing primacy. Steel builds your grandfathers bike. Carbon fiber like aluminum are going to be very limited runs in terms of what is competitive in professional cycling. The ideal material to make bicycle frames from is magnesium. Magnesium as a medium for building bicycle frames is in its infancy. Its an exotic metal that has its own current limitations.

Anyone wanting a bit of history, an education regarding the master welders (the true craftsmen of frame building) of Klein/Cannondale and a wake-up call from someone that has spent a career thinking about things intelligently, not just being a lemming well read this:
Bicycle Framebuilding ? Magnesium and Aluminum Compared and Contrasted

and this:

Technology and Business is Not Either/Or ? Magnesium Rising?

Enough with the steel cult. The future of cycling is magnesium.

Magnesium.org | Magnesium information

Steel is not an environmentally friendly alloy. The carbon footprint of a steel bike is HUGE. You need to burn TONS of coal to make steel. Magnesium is one of the most environmentally available metals. It gives the best vibration dampening that industry knows of, and its 1/5 the weight of steel. You can use Oversize magnesium tubes and get a better ride quality than from any known frame material all while giving you unrivaled stiffness and pedaling efficiency and energy transfer.

Enough people! The intelligent dialog has NEVER been about steel being relevant again. The intelligent dialog is that the magnesium market for bicycle frames will roughly displace steel.

brandon98

Take a knee and realize that calling people buffoons, idiots, cultists, or whatever term of exasperation you wish to use isn't going to advance your position.

Magnesium has some fabrication, porosity, and corrosion problems. A magnesium bike is on my list of "one days" and it'll be a Segal as I think they've cracked the code addressing those issues.

Full disclosure: I've been an aircraft maintainer and I have first hand knowledge of how various metals interact and weather. Mg can be fantastically light but also needs a lot of special care.

I've tried Cannondales: they beat the living daylights out of me, even at 220lbs on route OO in Central Missouri. I felt every bit of chip seal and paint stripe on the road. These were cantilever stay SR models...tried it twice. Fast to accelerate but unpleasant to ride for distance. I had a 160lb friend warranty two of the Black Lightnings for cracks in the stays at the bottom bracket or dropout. How 'bout them state of the art master welders? Maybe a little hair of the dog before shift that day?

I've had a Litespeed-built titanium: I liked it but somebody liked it more than me and helped themselves to it with a set of bolt cutters on the cable holding it to my car's rack. C'est la vie.

Currently, my favorite go to bike for any sort of use is a Match-design, Taiwan-built Reynolds 853 Peloton with a carbon fork. It just works for me. It's got a mix of Campy and Mavic components and a Selle An Atomica Saddle. It's a 19lb bike with a 230lb fat guy on it. When I do my part, it'll do it's part. Bottom bracket is stable, stays and fork are somewhat compliant, and it doesn't shimmy and shake on descents, but I am a mere Lilliputian on a 61cm frame at 6'2".

I don't have a dog in any bike fight. I spend my dollars as I see fit on used machines that suit my needs, budget, or aesthetics. I was very tempted by a carbon Cannondale Synapse 5 from my local dealer but the teardrop shaped "cut to fit" seatpost/mast and Cannondale's notorious habit of discontinuing proprietary parts and technologies (Headshok, derailleur hangers, cable guides, etc) makes me leery of it. So, given my previous experience with Cannondale QC, brutal ride, and leaving customers swinging once a bike is more than 3-4 years old puts them on my "Fool me once" list.

I've never purchased anything from Grant Peterson/Rivendell. I bought a Bridgestone RB-2 in college because it was a last year's model on sale and the Bianchi I wanted wasn't in stock. It was nothing special but it was a smooth riding interchangeable Japanese made steel bike of its era.

Also, your assertations about "environmentally friendly" materials? That's just reaching and flailing. The fraction of world steel production going into bicycles is probably less than 1 percent. In other words, insignificatn. Truffula trees and thneeds!

Do what you need to do but try laying off the personal insults. And appeal to authority is a common fallacy.

cb400bill

mtnbke,

This has gone on way too long. Stop being disruptive.

This is a thread about steel bikes. Everyone in the C&V forum knows that you like aluminum bikes more, especially Cannondale bikes. We get it. Name calling and such are not permissible here.

Please leave this thread. Thank you.

LesterOfPuppets

Kirk made mag frames years ago. Apparently they suffered some frame failures.

But, yes, Mg frame building is still in its infancy because not many people have been doing R&D using Mg.

How about beryllium?

brandon98

Beryllium and Scandium aluminum alloys were the rage in the Mid 90's (Specialized M2 comes to mind) and were actually doable at consumer level prices because the fabrication and process R&D had already been done by the aerospace industry.

Segal in Israel makes a lot of magnesium aerospace components and has taken that knowledge and process R&D to bicycle frames, especially with chrome plating of the tubes to mitigate galvanic corrosion with dissimilar metals like steel and aluminum components. Aesthetics? Not so much as they have big toothpaste welds and are some what brutal in appearance. Unfortunately, there really isn't much US distribution (Trish Cohen's website appears to be cyber deadwood and she isn't listed as a US distributor).

At the end of the day, it's dollar driven and in a reverse of the Wright Brothers, aerospace provides the technology transfer to bicycles with composite carbon fiber, magnesium, stainless, and exotic aluminum alloys crossing over from aircraft to bikes. The defense and aviation industries have less of a budget cap than most cyclists and only when the bikes can piggyback off the R&D that "pays the freight" like military aerospace do you see affordable exotic frames. AH-64 Apache rotor blades can be extremely expensive and the customer base will still buy them. There's a soft cap somewhere around $2000-3000 for high end road bikes before sales become negligible "halo" sales that add brand prestige value, not net $ to the bottom line.

Bikes are very low margin with complex distribution chains and high initial startup cost, even for mature technologies like brazed and welded steels: I'm not sure how many framebuilders and small companies fail, but I'd guess it's on order with restaurants...80%. A lot of affordable steel now is contract production in Taiwan to specs provided by marketers and branders. And you can thank Schwinn (1.0) and Giant for building the Taiwanese industry.

rekmeyata

MTNBKE...are you done with your very lengthy tirade? All that you said was just BS.

Serotta when they made their lightweight steel bike was using standard small diameter tube sets which flex and broke just like small diameter aluminum like Vitus and few others, just like small diameter Carbon Fiber that Trek and a few others did. The Rodriguez is not a copy of Serotta tubing, it has a large diameter down tube like you see on titanium frames, a slightly larger top tube similar to a lot of TI builds.

Unless you own one and rode it a lot professionally, which means you hammered it a lot, I don't think you're in any position to be critical of a bike you know absolutely nothing, zero, zilch, about!

Next tirade please.

PS: manufacturing of a Carbon fiber bike is more damaging to the environment than steel, geez.

Gotcha38

When I saw this thread, I was sure it was just going to be amazing steel bike porn. And then it turned into a complete **** show. Thank you Bikeforums for having an ignore list.

Now, if I could only get you guys to stop quoting Mtnbike.

cb400bill

Please do not start piling onto mtnbike.

Thank you.

Bandera

Oddly enough most BF members are not professional, or even amateur bicycle road racers.
While the Halo Effect for major mfgs is from the CF hydraulic shift/'lectric brake uber $$,$$$$ UCI race bikes most of us are ignored for real world versatility in wonder materials.



The niche mfgs of modern steel frames are perfectly happy to provide framesets that accommodate wider tires, mudguards and a light load for long distance un-supported rides on variable surfaces at pace.
Where are the CF Audax/Rando bikes that experienced club cyclists can afford and would ride if they were offered?

-Bandera

andr0id

I went on a A group ride last Saturday on my Waterford. I'm near the front of the pack and pulling a reasonable amount of the time, so not slacking at all, but certainly not killing myself in any way.

When we get to the rest stop one of the other riders compliments me for being able to keep up on such a heavy steel bike. I thought he was joking for a minute, but he was quite serious.

I didn't have the heart to tell him I was also riding on fat, under-inflated tires also. (Well 700x25s)