wolfchild

Aluminium can be very durable...I have a 13 year old aluminium framed MTB with a rigid steel fork and the frame is still solid, despite all the abuse and hard riding....Airplanes are also made out of aluminium.

General Geoff

Aluminum frames can be more durable than steel or titanium. Durability and longevity depend entirely upon design geometry and quality control of welds.

Nyah

Some parts can be (if made that way). Not parts that get threading though.

General Geoff

I've never had any issues with bottom bracket threading on my aluminum bike frames. and there are millions of aluminum engine blocks out there that make hundreds of horsepower dependent entirely upon the strength of the threading that holds the cylinder heads in place. While correct torque specifications are arguably more important in aluminum threading than steel, the resultant mechanical fastening can be just as robust as if you were threading into steel.

Oh and I also have two aluminum-framed motorcycles that endure far greater stresses than any bicycle which have gone over a hundred thousand miles without any stripped threads or stress failures. The material is about as sound as you can get from an engineering perspective.

Nyah

It happens to peoples' rack bosses. Aluminum is soft. I'll continue leaving it to the experimenters.

General Geoff

Never had any issues with my rack bosses over the past decade of heavy rack usage on an aluminum frame. Again, proper torque spec is key. Once it's torqued down with some blue loctite, it's set it and forget it.

livedarklions

My village smithy is jonesing.

cyccommute 

The straw grasping is just incredible. I have a rack on an aluminum frame that has been there for 12 years and 25,000 miles. No thread issues. My current aluminum touring bike has 3000 loaded touring miles on it...no issues. My T800 touring bike had 10,000 loaded touring miles on it...no stripped threads. I have several other aluminum bikes and I’ve never stripped a thread in one. Yes, you have to more careful with threading and torque but bicycles don’t need gorillas to tighten bolts on them anyway.

livedarklions

I've been running that particular experiment for 25 years so far. Still seems ok, but I'll keep you posted.

CaptainPlanet

Are there any chromoly hardtail 29ers that use replaceable derailleur hangers (let's say around the thousand dollar range)? Most steel alloy bikes I come across, haven't seen any of them with replaceable derailleur hangers. Wonder why.

DropBarFan

I got a bit turned off against aluminum racks after I found a pannier attachment strap had actually gouged a notch in the rack. OTOH I haven't experienced things wearing into alu frame tubes; clamping accessories onto alu handlebars doesn't seem to cause damage.

cyccommute 

All of Salsa’s line uses replaceable hangers. Even on steel bikes (the few made), replaceable derailer hangers are a good idea.

dedhed

https://www.schwinnbikes.com/pages/collegiate

dedhed

FWIW here is a repair on a steel Lotus frame of Tange Champion tubing that broke at the bottom bracket. In addition, a gusset tube was added to reinforce.
Done by a motorcycle repair shop. Done about 10 years ago, as afar as I now the bike is still on the road

wjjones

I have nothing to contribute to this frame material Holy War (even though I own three steel bikes), but can someone please tell me what “Steel is real” even means?

Leinster

It's a meaningless catchphrase that is intended to suggest there is something synthetic to aluminium or titanium, or that carbon fiber is really plastic. it's an effort to position steel as the "organic" material of choice.

cyccommute 

Generally, it is a dig at aluminum. In the minds of the Holy Steel Warriors, aluminum...the metal of the infidel...is soft, weak, and “shatters at the slightest impact” or, in the bicycle vernacular, “it asplodes”. It is not even worthy of the title “metal” in their eyes...even as those self same Holy Steel Warriors take weight off the steel by using aluminum in other critical places.

In a less “religious” context, it was coined back when aluminum bikes started to come on the market to disparage aluminum. It’s meant in the manner as “real bicyclist don’t ride aluminum”. The saying is likely 40 years old by now and is the cry of people who have seen the market share of steel bicycles erode to the point of being a blip in the bicycle market. At this point it is a nostalgia sentiment.

livedarklions

It means "aluminum, carbon and titanium are really hard to rhyme.".

" Steel is teal" didn't catch on, however.

thehammerdog

well, better stuff out there plus the cost of well made chromo frame is as much or more than CF or Aluminum.
but ride quality is wonderful.

cyccommute 

elcruxio

With all that you still have the audacity to write that you do not put down people who ride or are fans of steel bikes. Their arguments do not matter because they're religious zealots? Cool beans.

You use steel spokes though. Why not aluminum? They should be better right?

Trakhak

Use of steel in applications such as spokes and bearing surfaces is uncontroversial, as is the use of aluminum in pretty much all applications throughout the industrial world except in threads like this.

By the way, SpeedofLite recently posted a PDF from a Bicycling Magazine article titled Road Test/Bike Review (1983) CANNONDALE Touring Bike.

The reviewers agreed that they thought highly of the Cannondale touring bike in many regards, including comfort.

rydabent

Its MONEY people. The absolutely beautiful brazed lug frame went out of style because of money!!! It is cheaper to throw tubing into a fixture and have a robot weld them. This goes for both steel and aluminum.

But then we also have the carbon frames. The manufactures have brain washed the "real cyclist" into thinking they HAVE TO HAVE a carbon frame. Once again it is money. The manufactures can contract with some company in China that pay poor Chinese women to lay up a carbon frame, paying her probably 75 cents an hour. Thru channels they end up in you local bike shop and sell to the well heeled for $5000 and up. Money money money!!!!

I would really like to know just how much it cost a bike company in China to lay up a carbon frame bike. I would be willing to bet it is not very much.

cyccommute 

The first part of my comment was with tongue firmly in cheek. It is reflective of the attitude of anti-aluminum people, however...as pointed out in the second part of my post.

I have not put down anyone...well, not put down anyone who didn’t start the put downs. You have made similar arguments towards aluminum that are equally as baseless. Aluminum has proven itself as a tough material capable of withstanding the (rather minor) rigors of bicycling over the last 40 years.

You are just grasping at straws now. If you can play tricks with the tubing diameter of the frame tubes, you can make a light frame out of aluminum that is strong. You can’t play the same game with a thin wire. Aluminum would be a very poor choice for a spoke unless you actually made it so that it weighed as much as a steel spoke which would mean at least 3 times the diameter at the spoke head. That would also require new hubs to fit the 6mm wide spoke plus larger flanges to be able to fit the spokes around the hub. And it would necessitate changes in rims. All of that would add up to extra weight or taking a trade off of less strength.

And for your “yabuts”, I never said that steel doesn’t have its place. I just said that aluminum has its place as well.

Trakhak

I've seen at least one wheel with aluminum spokes. The Hi-E company used to bring wacky designs to the bike industry trade show, and that was one of them. As I recall, it had something like 30 individual spokes, but each spoke ran continuously from a nipple on one side of the wheel through the hub and to another nipple on the other side of the wheel.