Your bike always follows your head. Any bike.

yes, I know. I've been riding motorcycles for years. Some bikes though don't react as abruptly as this one. It's scary at times.

This one is about 23lbs with the pedals (and with DT Swiss 240s hubs on 4.1 rims, not with the powertap)



only CF is the handle bar.

Ok, your brakes are lighter + integrated shifters. Wheelset... is that significantly lighter than mine?

I bet our bars are about the same, then my seatpost is lighter (bontrager CF.) Are you counting the saddle bag?

Including all that XTR, I'm wondering if 1.5lbs for like a grand is really worth it. That's not much weight. lol What do you have into that bike? about $4,000?

That's without the saddlebag.
I can take another 1 lb or 1.5 off with lighter rubber, since those are heavy tires, but I like not getting flats.
I have some Kenda Negeval's (sp) that are like 2lbs each. I had some old Moab sweet rolls (wish I could find more) that were
probably under a 1lb each, they would bring it in around 21lbs, but I wore them out.

I built this off Ebay for about $1400, everything was new except the frame/thomson seat post and CK headset.

I built this one for about $1800 (S-works Stumpjumper with XTR). I have since replaced the fork with a 15mm 140mm FOX RLC
I put tthe one in the picture on my other Kona Kula.

Light tyres suck a dirty scone. Meat will give you confidence, allow you to push hard in a corner, grab in a sketchy climb. Your Nev's are a great all'rounder IMO. I like the Excavator more though the added weight and rolling resistance from the more squarish face where it contacts the ground may be a turn off to some. I still think the Nev or the Exc way overshadows the ultra light weight of a SB8 or Conti MtnKing.

Yeah just the look of the Negevals are awesome, the sidewalls even look bulletproof,
but at 880gms a tire they better be. I noticed in the 2nd picture of the Kona I have the Moab sweet rolls on the bike,
they had red sidewalls. I never had a flat until I wore them so thin I ran over the remnants of broken glass from a car door
and flatted both at once. They went into the trash when I got home.

I run light but not obscenely light tires. Makes no sense to put extra weight on the part of the bike where you really feel it.

To each his own, I guess. With the raceday wheelset, my SID-equipped XC race bike is in the low 20-pound area sans accessories. Prior to that, I had a 22-pound Stumpjumper with a Fox F90 RL, which was also good, but I really wanted a bar-mounted lockout for racing. It might be worth mentioning that modern SIDs (1) have bigger stanchions than the old noodly ones did, and (2) come with through-axle options in the longer-travel flavors. Mine's a SID XX 100mm, short-stroked to 80mm, classic 9mm axle, and seems adequate for fast XC.

Regarding "twitchy," if I remember correctly, that Kona has a pretty slack head-tube angle already, 68° isn't it? Versus 71° on my Stumpjumper, for example.

It depends strongly on what you pick. PricePoint has a sub-200-gram saddle for $40, which might be a good 0.3-0.4 pounds less than your WTB. For myself, the first place I'd go to save weight would be the tires, and the tubes if you're using tubes, but then again not everyone likes light "raceday" tires like the Continental RaceKing 2.2 Supersonic.

Anyway, you might want to just pick up a cheap digital scale from eBay, weigh your bike's parts, and heave the weights into a spreadsheet, then mess around with alternate configurations and see what gets you good bang for the buck. Here are a couple sites you can use to find real-world weights:

https://www.velovert.com/matos
https://www.veloptimal.com/index.php?menu=photos_poids
https://www.fotos.light-bikes.de/main.php?g2_itemId=199
https://www.sicklines.com/weights/

Yeah tires are surprisingly heavy.

But:

https://cgi.ebay.com/Continental-Spee...item588d7a5be3

Wow! 370gms/tire. That might get me down in the 20's, but I think I would do a lot of walking.

Or check out the Schwalbe Furious Freds. And then the Maxxis Maxlite 285s (as in 285 grams). Personally I like the RK 2.2 Supersonic because at 465 grams for a 54mm casing, it's got a lot of volume for its weight (note that the RaceKing is an entirely different tire from the SpeedKing). They hold up a good while for a "raceday tire," too. But my new race tire to try out is the Schalbe Rocket Ron 2.25" in the tubeless-ready flavor. They've got a reputation for wearing fast, and are very expensive + hard to find in stock, so I'm saving them for later.

As far as going fast in an XC scenario, personally I find that a long, relatively low cockpit is important for me. Try rowing a racing shell... do you sit upright, or do you lean forward and get your whole body into the pull? The "trail-rider" position imposed by short stems and riser bars doesn't work well for me, I need the classic John Tomac-style XC cockpit.

Maybe you can get a deal on these. They are used but look pretty good and for a good price hmmmm!

https://cgi.ebay.com/Schwalbe-Rocket-...item4aaa7ad94c

You have to be open to the idea that other people are heavier than you, ride rougher terrain, shred the gnar, or ride like hacks. If I had a scrawney little SID...I'd be a grumpy man fo sho. I'm really not happy anymore w/o a 20mm TA and 2.35" + tires. My hardtail is 35lbs...and I consider it a minimalist trail bike.

New SID is vastly improved. For $1000.00/MSRP...it BETTER be!!!

Open the floodgates to your bank account - your bike can lose another 3 pounds. But, keeping that frame/fork is not in the equation.

It cost me $3200/total to turn my 2005 Cannondale hardtail into a 19-pound climbing rocket...in 2008 dollars: