I guess what I find to be most interesting about this thread is that over the years people have gotten the weight of bikes down to amazingly low numbers (certifiably low numbers in fact) but it turns out this marvels of lightness handle like crap and don't last longer that an event.
What I remember from the days of drillium in the 1970s (drillium = you just go nuts on your bike with the trusty ol' Black & Decker) was friends that had custom bikes made out of really light weight tube sets (these would be their ultimate cost is no object dream bikes) and after they got them they were disappointed. Same refrain... "handles like crap, speed wobbles, scary descending, wet noodle in a sprint." Then they would go back to their 21 lb. racer with renewed respect.
Of course the whole drill would be repeated with each new Junior racer that showed up in the club... "Gotta have a light bike!" pant, pant!
This was true year after year, decade after decade until the current picture emerged; truely light racing bikes that are stiff and handle.
Chuck Schmidt SoPas, SoCal
Jan Heine wrote:
>
> As Joel pointed out, the bikes in the trials were weighed by the
> _organizers_, not the _builders_. Before the war, the entire bike was
> weighed. After the war, good tires were not available, so the bikes
> were weighed minus tires and bags. It's not rocket science to make a
> bike light - Singer had a guy who did nothing but make stems, racks
> (for production bikes) and parts for trials bikes. Full time. Also, a
> good Singer rack weighs about 100-120 grams (front), while the
> fenders don't add more than 2 lbs. in standard form. Generators are
> heavy, but the lights themselves are featherweight. So if you can
> build a 12 lb. racer, a 16 lb touring bike is doable as well.
>
> To quote from Joel's charts: The lightest bike in the 1938 Concours
> du Duraluminum, the Narcisse of Rene Herse, weighed 7 kg 940 for a 55
> cm frame (Le Cycliste, October 1938). That translates into 17.468
> lbs. for a bike with fat 650 B tires. I haven't seen the official
> results for 1939, where Singer won with a bike that beat all the
> others - check Raymond Henry's story in the proceedings of the
> Bicycle History Conference for the exact weight.
>
> Take a Stronglight crank, already quite light, file off 30% of the
> metal on the arms, then file off the protrusion with the threads for
> the crank puller, and so on, and do the same for every part, and soon
> you get there.
>
> I have seen a few parts that either were for trials bikes or modified
> by somebody who wanted to recreate a trials Singer in the late 1940s,
> and it is amazing how much was taken off many of the parts.
>
> I would like to thank Joel Metz for sharing his priceless library for
> the upcoming newsletter - which (shameless self-promotion) is coming
> along nicely - first issue due in August.
>
> Jan Heine, who still doesn't care all that much about weight but
> would like to organize technical trials some day in Seattle - any
> takers?
>
> >From: "joel metz, ifbma/sfbma" <magpie@messengers.org>
> >Subject: Re: [CR]Technical trials > scepticism regarding weights...
> >
> >weights are listed to the
> > nearest .005 kg, km/hr to 2 decimal places, etc. there were
> > formulas to calculate weight penalties based on frame
> weight compensated for frame size... things like that.