Weigh your bike accurately. NOT with a bathroom scale. If you want to fuss about weight, you need a precise baseline. Digital hanging scale ($25 on Amazon), remove all accessories (bottles, cages, luggage, racks, lights, fenders, etc). To 0.1 lb. Tell us what it weighs.

After you know exactly what your bike weighs, you can assess if it is feasible, desirable, and practical to make it lighter.

You may find that it is reasonably light now. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and the bikes are lighter too - but they aren't always. I'd be surprised if your bike actually weighed more than a typical Surly. Surlys are not high end bikes, they are heavy steel frames with sound and utilitarian design, and the components are on the lower end. A Cross-Check probably weighs 26 lb in typical build.

If you still want to cut weight, the easiest places to cut weight are
Saddle/post - there are featherweight carbon saddles, if your rear likes that kind of thing
Wheels - these can be moved from bike to bike. Or could simply rebuild your existing hubs with lighter rims and thinner spokes. Go tubulars for least weight.
Tires - quite a variation in tire weights
Chain - there are lightweight chains; that's a lot of metal when you think about it

My Mountain bike is 32 pounds,

My LWB Tour Easy recumbent is 36 pounds plus 5 pounds of junk and my now 180 pound self,

My Delta Trike is 57 pounds plus 5 to 10 pounds of junk

They all ride great, shure the trike rides a bit slower, It don't feel all that safe going fast, hey It's a delta.

I ride for fun, got nothing to prove and I don't race.


Just sayin....:D

http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=314926

So in summary:

Weight is not important, except for the heavy parts. If you're slow you're doomed whether you ride an Iron Pigeon or a Cervelo. Get light weight wheels, unless you plan on riding on real roads. Weigh your bike, but wait until it takes a dump. None of it matters unless you climb hills. Better still, lose 50 lbs. You'll always be too fat for this sport.

Thats a touring bike - actually one-hell-of-a-nice touring bike! Why go and mess it up? The Blue Ridge has a reputation for feeling slower than it really is. Suggest you check yourself with a spedometer and then check out a few other bikes at the same speeds. You might find some of those other machines just 'feel' faster. Weight helps a bit with acceleration, and counts if you're trying to sprint and achieve a maximum top speed, but isn't all that important if you're just trying to maintain a good average speed over a longer distance.

Without making any judgment on what you want to do or why the answer is lighter parts. Mavic Ksyrum SLRs will save you about 1.5 pounds. Don't know what saddle you are using but a CF Seat post and lighter saddle could knock off another 1/2 pound. CF Bars, new double crankset to replace the triple, if yours still has the stock triple, dump the Chromoly fork for CF. You aren't going to turn it into a 15 pound climbing bike but it will be lighter.

Take off the saddle and put a new carbon fiber bike under it . . .

Here is how to ADD weight to your Blue Ridge!

http://www.pbase.com/canyonlands/image/140865618

:):):)

There it is. You just cant stress the point. Two summers ago I went from 195 in March to 170 in July while training for my first century. When you drop 5Lbs at that bodyweight you can feel quite "zippy", the difference is very noticeable in terms of feel.

:lol:

+1. Frame and wheel transplant is the best bet. Or N+1 of course. And then there is always improving power, a slow and painful process at best.

And re an earlier post, the difference between 11.9 and 13 mph is pretty significant in my book. YMMV I guess.

:roflmao:

Taking weight off a bike can be equated to what I heard a guy say about boats. A boat is a thing that makes a hole in the water that you fill with money.

As someone else said weight when it comes to an already good bike is over rated. Example is 15 grams less on say a RD worth another $100? Probably not.

Something I saw the other day applies here, I think;

Don't upgrade, go up grades.

http://www.bikepedia.com/QuickBike/B...idge&Type=bike

Touring bikes are not made to be light weight.
They are made to carry weight.

Buy a light weight compact double road bike.

It's all perception:

When I got my 19 lb. Klein, it felt like a feather under me, compared to the 25 lb. bike I was used to riding. Now that I'm used to the Klein....I can no longer feel the difference between the two bikes. And there never was any performance difference.

They did a study years ago: It takes 12 lbs. to make a 1 MPH difference, all other things being equal. 12 pounds!

Jeez ... I've been avoiding this thread, cuz I thought it was about rider weight. Oy.

I'm in general agreement with what's been said here. If you want to seriously reduce weight on your bike, you're probably best off getting a new one. Cutting significant weight off of an existing bike is expensive.

I also agree that if you still want to do it, start with wheels. Then you can move on to seats, seatposts, skewers (good suggestion, BTW) and the like.

How big a deal is the weight of the bike? The engineer in me says forget about it. Lose a few pounds on yourself instead. For pretty much ALL of us, there is a lot more weight savings to be had on ourselves than there is on the bike. And a little bit of weight doesn't make that much difference.

The rider in me says ... well ... I dunno. It may be the placebo effect, but to my mind, I tire less quickly and can go longer and faster on a lighter bike (provided, of course, that is equal in other respects, such as pedaling stiffness).

I've heard all kinds of explanations for this ... most of which revolve around the fact that we aren't just point masses dutifully chugging up the hill at a constant speed and direction. We make zillions of little steering and balance corrections, and the torque we apply to the bottom bracket is not constant. Since we aren't going a constant speed, but are in fact constantly accelerating and decelerating, differences in mass are magnified over what you might expect, and a little weight goes a long way.

If my kids were still doing science fairs, I'd cajole them into doing a study on this.

That's a very good point; and one which I had never considered. Likely explains why I do prefer climbing with my lighter, stiffer bike- even though it is geared much higher than my heavier bike.

I totally agree. I wouldn't have thought so, but just recently I took off my heavy (but very flat resistant!) Conti Gatorskins and replaced them with some light Vittoria tires . . . and WOW, what a difference! Huge difference and very easy to feel when getting up to speed, or grabbing a lot of speed quickly.

I'll probably have more flats now . . . but that's (part of) the price I pay.

Rick / OCRR

Which Gatorskins and which Vittorias? For 700x23C, the Kevlar beaded Gatorskin isn't much heavier than the GP4000S (Conti's flagship tire):

Gatorskin Wire bead: 280g
Gatorskin Kevlar bead: 230g
GP4000S: 205g

Here is my contribution to this "weight" thread. This simulator calculates climb times for local NorCal climbs as well as famous Euro climbs such as Alp D' Huez. You input, rider weight, equipment and watts. A reasonable but challenging power to use is 200 watts. I would use the default settings for the frontal area and drag but you can play with rolling resistance and drive train efficiency. I have found the simulator to be very accurate especially for the steeper climbs.

I ran a few cases for Alp D Huez, 8.1 miles, 8% grade, 3410 foot climb assuming a base case of a 150 pound rider at 200 watts with all other settings at default values.

150 pound rider = 1:13:17
151 pound rider = 1:13:41
160 pound rider = 1:17:15
150 pound rider @ 210 watts = 1:10:00

1 pound increased the time 24 seconds
10 pounds increased the time 3:58
10 watts more decreased the time 3:17

And of course .1 pounds would save ~ 2.4 seconds. I will take a hill climb win by 2.4 seconds.

I am assuming rider weight and bike weight are the same. In fact, they are probably not the same in actual human performance. The more weight one carries the higher the internal body temperature for a given power. As temperature increases, power production typically is limited or goes down.

I am an incremental improvement guy who likes to ride nice bicycles. I will not say that lighter is always better but from a pure physics standpoint lighter requires less energy to lift up a hill. YMwillnotV.:D

Actually, I think tires are the most effective upgrade, and it's easy to do. Don't skimp on tires.

True - but it may be the overwhelming majority of riders are genetically on the slim side, already.

I have a light weight racing bike hanging on the hook in the garage where it spends most of it's life. Light wheels, tires, components etc. It is not much fun to ride for more than about and hour or two. I ride my old steel bike most of the time, it is several pounds heavier. IMHO the best way to go faster and have more fun and even stay in a pack on a group ride is to improve the engine. But improving the engine to the extent needed may not bring you joy either - because the routine is hard and it takes a lot of commitment. You can work yourself up to a fine shape, be pretty fast and a strong climber but unless you stay at it all the time your ability will decline. Find a happy place between fitness and lifestyle and just enjoy the ride.

^^^That should be the mantra of this forum; nay, of all cycledom! Best. Advice. EVER! And succinctly and eloquently stated!

Worth quoting again.

It's a touring bike with very heavy wheels.

Weight will make the biggest difference when climbing and if you do a lot of climbing a few pounds will add to your fatigue by the end of the day.
You can go to a site like analytic cycling and plug in the numbers to see how much difference a given weight makes on a given climb.

At 205#, I am no weight weenie, but I can feel the difference between a 22 pound bike and an 18 pound bike. I can also feel it when I gain 4 or 5 pounds on the body.
On flat ground it doesn't make much difference, except during accelerations. Having climbed with a 55 pound touring bike, I can say on the flats it isn't as dramatic.

Thanks for the info. I think it's the nature of the bike.

My secret is that I got a high energy dog about 1.5 years ago. He needs at least 1 hour of exercise per day and many days we do more than that (walking, running, and off-leash dog parks). I've been riding only 30-40 minutes 2-3 times per week but have lost 20 lbs (i'm 5'9 140lbs) in the last 1.5 years because I'm out there every day with my dog. Oh, and I do not skip the pie. :D

OMG! 140lbs at 5'9"!!! I waffle between 138~142 at 5'7" and I'm thin--the wife already says hugging me is like hugging an oven rack. I would think you would be really thin. Maybe you should eat an occasional piece of pie. There is such a thing as too thin. When I got down to 136 one time, I felt I was too thin for my height.