Hi all,

I've just stripped my aluminium frame Giant of components inorder to transfer some of them to my new Hillbrick lugged steel (Zona) frame so I've compared the weights of the bare frames.

The lugged Zona frame weighs in at 1650 gm (about 3lb 10 oz) The Giant aluminium (Allux 6061) weighs in at 1450gm (3lb 3oz) 200gm or about 7oz difference. A standard water bottle carries 600ml these day's so that's 1/3 a bottle of water!

WOOP-DA-DOO!

OK so the Giant frame isn't in the super lightweight league but then neither is my Zona frame.

I went to the Columbus site, http://www.columbustubi.com/ and did a few comparisons. Based on a nominaly standard 54cm frame the weight of the 8 dressed and mitred tubes required for a frame made with Zona is 1390gm. OK add 250gm for the other parts. Now if I forked out the money for high end steel like the Spirit tube set I could save 330gms.

Compare this to firstly aluminium Zonal (equivelent to Zona) the 8 tubes weigh in at 1138 gms. This looks to be pretty comparable to my Giant frame when you add the other parts required. OK you could go for a nice aluminium set like Airplane at 965 gms for the tubes and yes some are even lighter but at what cost? Remember that the steel Spirit tubeset is only 1060 gms.

Now I suffer badly from vibrations so a nice riding frame will provide considerable performance advantages to me over a harsh frame so is the small weight savings in aluminium frames overblown?

Regards, Anthony