Originally Posted by
Bandera
So your "local riders" were a LBS that doesn't sell modern lightweight steel road bikes?
No better way to get a fair & impartial overview of a variety of materials, designs and construction techniques in bicycles.
Try asking a Waterford dealer the same question, that would be fair.
-Bandera
Really? You are going to compare a custom made "modern" lightweight steel bike that costs $2500 for a frame and fork to a complete bike that cost $1550 for everything?
Originally Posted by
Jarrett2
Maybe that's the issue. No modern lightweight steel road bike dealers in my area. Never heard of Waterford.
There's a reason you don't have a "modern lightweight steel road bike dealer" in your area Jarrett2. They basically don't exist. You can find a few steel bikes in some companies' lines but, for the most part, steel bikes are part of the boutique market (aka custom market) and have been since around the late 90s.
Steel bikes were never all that lightweight to begin with which is why nearly all manufacturers transitioned to aluminum and then carbon. There are exceptions but, for the most part, steel bikes are going to be significantly heavier than just about anything else. World class race bikes, i.e. the kind ridden by professional racers, from the early 80s to early 90s weighed in at around 20 lbs. That's superbly lightweight but by today's standards that in boat anchor class. If it weren't for the backwardness of of the UCI, racing bike weights could easily be under 12 lbs.
I do agree (somewhat) with Bandera's previous comment about learning a bit more about
materials and design. Any bike material can be used to make a bike that is stiffer than you'd want to ride. Steel, for example, isn't a "compliant" material. It's actually much stiffer than aluminum...by a factor of nearly 3. But the way the material is used has a large effect on the way it rides. A steel bike wouldn't necessarily be "noodly" unless the manufacturer used thin tubes and a small diameter. That's generally what they do with steel to make it "lightweight" because that's the flip side of the stiffness issue.
Steel has a density that is about 3 times that of aluminum. A cube of aluminum that is a foot square, for example, would weigh 168 lbs. A cube of the same size in steel weight 490 lbs. Because of the lack of stiffness in aluminum, you need to use more of it to make a frame stiff enough so that is isn't "noodly" but you don't have to use 3 times as much. If you increase the diameter of the tubing, you can use less material to achieve the stiffness that you want while using slightly less material. A large tubed aluminum frame uses about 1.5 times the volume of steel but, because of the density differences, the steel bike still weighs more. You can thin out the steel to make the frame lighter but there is a limit to how thin you can make the frame before you start denting it too easily.
Finally, go read the link to materials above. A bike's ride is more dependent on the tires, saddle and how the rider rides the bike then on the frame material. If you read enough of these "steel is real/aluminum is crap" discussions, you find that the real differences boil down to aesthetics more than any other factor.