I would, and did. I went from a 16.75 Al race bike to my current 18.0 lb steel race bike. And by "race bike," I mean, I do race it. With respect to the argument about performance - if I were worried about it, I wouldn't have gone with the steel bike. Weight certainly matters, but it really is such a small part of the complete story, and the context of where you ride and race has a lot to do with what you'll get out of it. The carbon fiber Specialized Roubaix that Tom Boonen rode to win Paris-Roubaix in 2008 or 2009 was slightly heavier than my bike. Keeping in mind of course that he's a lot taller than I am, and therefore needs a much bigger frame than I do, so it's not a completely apples-to-apples comparison.

I like steel, but there's nothing special about it. It made sense to go with custom steel for this bike. Carbon fiber is nice too, and I'm sure I'll have a CF bike at some point. But steel is working out just fine for me. And seriously, if I get worried about weight and have money to burn, there are pounds and pounds of weight to shed from this steel bike by going to lighter components - Ultegra 6700 to SRAM Red, light aluminum wheels to lighter carbon wheels, etc. It'll still end up heavier than a similarly built CF bike, but riding steel doesn't doom you to riding a boat anchor, either.


That's probably true compared to true aero frames, but a whole lot of aluminum and carbon fiber frames are designed for stiffness and low weight, with big fat tubes. I suspect that my skinny-tubed steel frame is slightly more aero than the typical non-aero CF bikes that most people I know are riding. But like you, I also don't think it works out to be very important.