Hi Snafu,
Originally Posted by
snafu21
"tire weight is virtually irrelevant."
Unless you have to carry the bike. :-)
Whoa! Isn't that a bit like going up hill? Do we get the extra half a kilo up there without an increase in energy expenditure? Do you have anti-matter tyres, Charles? Actually half a kilo is less than the weight of a full water bottle. But, still, yannow....
The point is that tire weight is no worse than weight anywhere on the bike or even the rider for climbing. And weight doesn't affect bicycle performance much at all on level ground.
Getting big tires is probably lighter overall than suspension, so there you go. And for most of us, if we're going to worry about a couple hundred grams, we should pay attention to what we're eating instead of what tires we're riding.
(Anti-matter is affected by gravity the same way matter is, so it would not add negative mass to the tires. It would cause the tires to explode when they touched the air or road (or anything else), so for that reason, they wouldn't ride very smoothly at all...
)
Originally Posted by
snafu21
"I'm not a big fan of suspension on upright (as opposed to recumbent) bicycles. It is often lossy'
That's what Jur said in his eloquent list of generalisations. Come on Charles, you know that bouncing around on a fat floppy tyre heats the air inside it through compression and flexes the tyre wall. That's a bit, um, er lossy, isn't it? Stiffen up, man!
First, you're now talking about rolling resistance which can make a big difference. Second, you can have heavy tires with low rolling resistance and light tires with high rolling resistance. So, again, tire weight isn't terribly relevant.
Originally Posted by
snafu21
Oh you have. That suspension fork on your 'bent looks just like the one on a DownTube/Origami. You see, you know you like suspension, really. No fat heavy tyres on that.
On my Origami converted 'bent, it should look exactly like it does on an Origami Mantis, because it is. But there are two big differences between uprights and my bents:
1) On an upright, you can lift yourself out of the saddle going over bumps. You can't do that nearly as easily on a 'bent.
2) Pedaling on my bike is almost completely orthogonal to the direction of compression of the suspension, so it is much less lossy. My hybrid with front suspension, by contrast, bounces horribly when I'm really mashing on it. And as I did point out, it still may be what the OP wants given his condition.
For a folding bike, weight matters because you carry the bike folded. Reducing bike weight (and rotating weight) is a common goal among bicyclists wanting to go faster. It just isn't a terribly reasonable one in most cases.
In any case, we agree on the most important:
Originally Posted by
snafu21
We want him to be happy.
If suspension makes him happy (and it might), then he should get that. If BAs will make him happy, then that's what he should do. (Or even both.) The rub comes where he really needs to ride different things to figure out what works for him.
Cheers,
Charles