Originally Posted by
goatalope
But sometimes they will describe one component as aluminum and another as alloy when describing the same bike. For example, they may say a bike has 6061 aluminum handlebars and alloy seatpost. Is "alloy" bike maker code for cheap aluminum?
Yes, exactly. If the aluminum alloy being used is known, they always state it because it makes it sound better to have "6061" or "7075" instead of just "aluminum pot metal". For the cases where they really are just using aluminum pot metal, they call it "alloy".