Frame Material
 

I always prefered the ride of steel over aluminum for frame material on my DF bikes. I know that there's a weight penalty, but on a long ride, aluminum will shake your fillings out. I'm willing to pay the weight penalty in order to arrive at my destination with my fillings intact. Do any of you find that, on recumbent trikes, steel rides better than aluminum?

Are those crickets i hear?

Can't say I've noticed all that much difference (though the only trike I've ridden a lot was a Trice QNT which had a steel main section and aluminium extremities). On recumbent bikes I'd ridden a Streetmachine (steel), Grasshopper (aluminium) and both a Giro 20 & 26 (both steel) and to be honest I think the design of the seat and presence/absence of suspension make far more difference than the choice of frame material.

That said, it would be interesting to line up a Giro 26, Corsa, Ti Aero and Carbon Aero (with suitable quantities of duct tape to disguise things) and see if people really could tell the difference!

I might even go a step farther. I'm not convinced that, if you hold the tires constant, not very many people would be able to tell the difference in a DF "taste test" either. I know I couldn't.

In general, any differences in ride quality are almost wholly determined by the engineering and not the material. For instance, people quote aluminum as "harsh riding" and yet, if I give you two 3/4" tubes of aluminum and steel with the same .025" wall thickness, it will be easier for you to bend the aluminum over your knee.

So what makes the difference?

Simple... it's the combination of material, tube sizing and even the alloy. Take aluminum... they typically use 6061-T6 and 7005-T6. Since the 6061 is about half as strong, they use 50% larger tubes for it. Now, here's the kicker, while the 7005 is about the same strength as 4130 CrMo tubing, it is also more prone to stress fractures. So they overbuild a 7005 bike with larger tubes to prevent catastrophic failure. Some people characterize this as a harsh ride, when in fact it is designed to be just as durable.

IOW, the only way to tell is to ride the frame and decided after.

:)ensen.

Steel has a very long fatigue cycle, as long as the stresses are kept below the failure point. That means it can be bent (deflected) for years in a bicycle application, with no apparent harm. Aluminum is different, though. ANY bending will work-harden it, and eventually it will become so brittle from the work-hardening that it will crack from a minor shock. So, you can say that by design, aluminum frames are not allowed to bend; which is another way of saying they're engineered to be harsh-riding.

Recumbent applications are a bit different from uprights in that the seat is mounted on a horizontal tube between the two wheels, not at the top of a post that's tied to the rear axle. Between that design fact and the seat padding that most recumbents have, I think the average rider would be hard-pressed to notice a difference in feel between the two.

Then I guess weight moves up the ladder, in importance, in my selection process.

Why? Weight only matters (a little) when climbing, when accelerating, and when you're lifting the bike into your car at the end of a ride. On the flats and down hills, aero trumps weight. Me and my 30 pound Gold Rush are minutes faster on the flats than equivalent riders on 20 pound uprights, and I can ride their wheels off down slope. Going back up I go at about the same speed as them, but then I'm 6-foot-4... not the classic "climber".

At 6 feet and 205-210lbs I've never been a climber. When I was 30 I wasn't a climber and the past 25 years has done nothing to help. Luckily, I live & do most of my riding in Southeast Virginia where hills are a minor problem. I've considered the whole body in motion tends to remain in motion thing when considering weight in bicycles, both DF & recumbent, but there's so much emphasis on weight in practically everything you read about bikes that it's hard to completely dismiss it.