I was waiting for you to pounce.

Thanks for not disappointing!

My bike is just under 21 pounds. My A1C is below 6! My blood pressure is excellent! My cholesterol is outstanding! My weight is awesome!
I don't think a lighter bike would change any of those things.
Obviously, I ride for a different reason than most!

Thanks for the apology. This is really interesting. It is as if this forum has a predetermined set of positions on current bicycling topics. All the old timers are in the know about what is and what is not acceptable to say. Instead of debating a forbidden topic, you guys eliminate it my making fun of it. Reminds me of the story about the prisoners who after a while being incarcerated knew all the few jokes so well that someone would just call out a number and everyone would crack up laughing. Newcomers wouldn't have a clue. What does it mean for a topic to be provocative? You have settled all the questions, and now you just refer to the prior decisions? "Say, have you heard the one about light weight?" Ha. Ha. Sad.

I built up an EVO with Ultegra DI2, reynolds DV3K wheels FSA bars,stem and crank and I'm down to (I say down to because my original frame was warrantied and had 105 group )15.00 lbs. I've changed the seat, stem and looked at every part on my bike and I could still save a little on pedals , a new hollowgram crank but I'll replace those parts when I find a back up /winter frame and put all the old parts from my original bike on it.
I will say because I didn't need to replace my crank right away (have FSA carbon light) the DI2 only added 212 grams vs DA mech. group and I would do it again . DI2 is NOT a must have item but I have put on around 1,500 miles on mine and love it. It's worth the 1/2 pound..BTW evo frame at 1/2 price (due to warranty), i'm into it for under 5K

Glad my response was up to your standards. I'd also like to add my 12.99lbs bike is also an aero 1100g+ frame weight bike. I also have way less than $10,000 in it. Probably close to half of that. I don't buy bikes, I build them. Manufactures always skimp out on stuff on off the shelf builds.

I have hands.

I prefer sarcasm to pedantry and condescension any day. Your brakes are a horrible compromise -- single pivot mechanism with very little travel and precious little tire clearance. They may work for you but they are a great example of how you've sacrificed the much superior but heavier mechanism of a good dual pivot brake for something that doesn't matter -- weight. I'll take a Shimano Ultegra brake set over those Zero Gravity's 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Your lousy shifting FSA cranks with their proprietary and poorly sealed bottom brackets are another example of a bad tradeoff. I'd also expect your wheels are underbuilt and noodly for many riders and American Classic hubs aren't exactly a paragon of reliability either. I do like their freehub clip kits though. I add them to all of my alloy freehubs even though it's extra grams.

When it comes right down to it, the weight of a road bike within a reasonable range (say 14-20 pounds) doesn't matter a hill of beans to most riders (Soloist Assassin is an example of an exception). You only think you've made incredibly optimal tradeoffs but I wouldn't touch one of your bikes with a ten foot pole. There are other attributes that I value much more highly than lightness.

I'll point out that I edited out the P&R. Keep it in the appropriate forum.

unless you've found a way to negate the laws of physics, weight clearly matters. It certainly matters more depending on how you're using your bike. Mountains favor lighter bikes. It matters less if you ride to the coffee shop. It may or may not matter as much depending on what kind of criterium racer one may be.

Whether it's worth worrying about, spending money on, or what trade offs are justifiable, are all certainly choices for the individual. But to categorically deny that weight matters is silly.

The biggest variable in my performance is me. When I'm off form, I'm not fast on any bike. When I'm on form, I'm fast enough on every bike. I've never been able to look at my ride data and tell which of my bikes (7 pounds range from lightest to heaviest) I was riding on a given day.

Edit:

The bikes don't feel different with/without the 1 pound tool bag, and they don't feel different with/without 3 pounds of water either.

I am with svtmike on this.

I upgraded from a 24 pound steel bike to a 17 pound Ti bike. That's 7 pounds lighter. The difference in speed is marginal.

I do believe the difference between my 17 pound bike and a 14 pound weight weenie bike is going to be even smaller. Sure, it's there, but it's miniscule.

Yeah, I saw that. I don't really see it as P&R since he isn't running, or hasn't ran for anything in some time, but I am not going to question your authority as a moderator. My brain still isn't functioning correctly as I am recovering from a brain injury. So that comment might of been off base. Also I would like to say great job, you edited that, like right after I posted it. As long as we are talking about light bikes however, I'll try to stay on the topic. While we are talking about weight, here is what Lance Pharmstrong has to say about weight, since most of the Freds in the 41 worship him. He's talking about rider weight, but having the lightest bike possible means you can eat cake a little more often.

how they feel isn't really empirical. climb a long hill on a 14 pound bike; take time. repeat on 20 pound bike with 3 pounds of water and a 1 pound of tools. Your time will be faster on one. Clearly your data is lacking. This is simply science.

If you are only doing a point-to-point hillclimb, i.e. Mt Washington, I would agree.

But in a real world situation, much of the riding is reasonably flat, in which case the weight matters not at all (except acceleration at the start).

Here is a fun calculator that you can plug numbers into and see how much/little a weight change in the bike makes:

http://bikecalculator.com/veloMetricNum.html

When I built my 12.99lbs bike, it was not purely built for extreme lightness. If that was the case, a lot of the parts selected would seem to be mistakes. My S2 was built with a combination of aero, lightness, and stiffness as the focus. It could be lighter, or more aero, but the stiffness is pretty much about as stiff as it could be at least for me being 155lbs it seems that way. The KCNC brakes I use work as good as any Ultegra, or Force brakes I've ever used they are just lighter. That's the cool thing is some companies make stuff that is just awesome like those brakes. Then there are companies like AX Lightness, that make stupid light parts, that are not stiff at all, and are susceptible to failure. The challenge is to make cuts in weight where you can, but still have good performance. My S2 does everything my 5200 does. It just does all of those things better.

This guy gets it. Physics is pretty simple, but it seems to elude the logic of some.

It depends on the course. If it's flat aero means more than weight. As soon as things go vertical, you are carrying every single gram up those hills. Less mass=less work, simple as that.

I'm a flatlander and big for a cyclist (6'3", 190 lbs) so I'm a bad climber no matter what bike I'm on. The weight really doesn't matter.

When I do go to climb big steep hills, bringing multiple bikes and leaving water/tools behind really isn't an option. In fact I opt for my mid-range weight bike with the triple for really nasty rides (Arcadia's Brute, Kickapoo Kicker, that kind of ride) because gearing is much more important than bike weight for me.

For Christ sake, someone finally gets it here in the 41. All you idiots need to listen to this guy. Simple freaking physics you numskulls.

Rule #4

It’s all about the bike.

It is, absolutely, without question, unequivocally, about the bike. Anyone who says otherwise is obviously a twatwaffle

Really? We have a self proclaimed "flatlander" @190lbs, who rides a triple, and lives in a flat, and windy city, telling us weight doesn't matter. Just checking if I read that right?

No one's denying Newtonian mechanics. But we are dealing with very marginal differences. You obviously know that certain things are not negotiable for your riding and you will sacrifice lightness to maintain those things. I know what matters in my riding too -- and weight really isn't one of those things that's high on my list. Hydration, ability to make common repairs on the road in the middle of nowhere, durability, stiffness, a stable ride, minimal flat tires, smoothness, great shifting ... these are the things that I look for and will without hesitation sacrifice weight for.

Marginal weight differences -- 220 lb. bike+rider vs. 214 lb. bike+rider is really not much different. So, yes, you read that right.

Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about!

A slightly different tone in the original post and this thread would have gone in another direction. Too bad.

So remember the bikes that started all this discussion. Well when I first got on one of them instead of my 18-19 lb custom steel build, I could feel the difference right away. The acceleration response on the flats was amazingly better that what I was accustomed to. Just pushing forward with my arms from a stop light was a whole different experience. The lighter bikes just seem to glide forward when you are starting up with no resistance. Sure that is an exaggeration, but the feeling is wonderful.

Interesting that you say that. Tell me what you mean. I have to feel that there is a sensitivity in this forum to a certain style of language that goes unnoticed elsewhere like in normal conversation, emailing, and even other subject (non-cycling) forums. What exactly is that? What are the peculiar triggers that set folks off on a tirade of accusations (e.g. trolling), inuendo, sarcasm, yuk-yukking at an inside joke, etc. instead of eliciting simple and factual replies? It certainly seems to be ingrained in the culture of the forum. How did that happen? I am not suggesting the original post was perfection incarnate, but rather that it was not intended to offend. So why did it?

Post 17 is where the wheels came off.