Originally Posted by
MRT2
Good points. I am in the steel is real camp. It is somewhat of a niche these days but you don't have to buy a Waterford to get steel. Jamis, Surly, Soma, Velo Orange, and Salsa all make steel frames. Most are not in the super lightweight category, but is is possible to build up a 20 lb bike or slightly less for less than many carbon fiber bikes these days which isn't bad, maybe just a couple of lbs heavier than comparable cf. Unless you are planning on competing at an elite level, you will hardly notice a difference.
I love that there's a long discussion heading into frame weight on a Clyde forum. For most of us, the difference in frame weights between an epoxy bike and a steel one is less than the fluctuation of our weight over a day or two. Certainly it is the case with me, and I'm not big as Clydes go.
I think experience might also come into play here in having ridden many, many bikes as opposed to listening to a sales rep in an LBS. Carbon bikes can be made very light, and relatively easily so, especially by big manufacturers. If you make a living racing, yes, lighter is faster. But you don't feel weight much, and it's not much weight.
I have a lovely high-end custom steel bike. Built up, with wheels that last under 210 pounds of me hammering it, it weighs, oh, 19 pounds or so. With a carbon fork and lighter group set I could shave another 1.5 pounds off that.
For what it cost, in all, I could be riding, say a Madone or a Tarmac or a Roubaix, maybe even an S Works if I was careful. Those would weigh around 16 pounds. I've ridden them, and I don't like how they feel. I am reminded of a friend of mine who has a very similar steel bike and a c59, and prefers the steel bike except in very fast group rides or when climbing a lot (like more than 5,000 feet), and a c59 is far more lust-worthy in my mind than one of the big brand bikes I mentioned.
I also rode a Dogma 64.1 for a little over a week this summer. Weighed about 14 pounds in my size (!) and I was faster on it, probably, oh, by 3-5% by my calculations, and only on ascents. I was actually slower on descents, because it was more skittish. I liked it a lot, though it did poorly on anything not super-smooth, and it was a handful as a descender. It was also, roughly, $16,000. But it's the first carbon bike I've spent a lot of time with that I genuinely liked, in all its edgy Italian ugliness.
Bottom line: the weight argument is 95% marketing for anyone who doesn't make a living racing. If you do, it's legit, but you can still get a steel bike down to that weight. In fact, the Condor team in the UK is racing steel.