At 10:15 AM -0500 1/15/03, LouDeeter@aol.com wrote:
> Boy George asks: (sorry, didn't include your last name in the post)
>
>Where does Super Vitus 980 tubing rank say compared to Reynolds 531?
>
>Here is an excerpt from the Used Bike Buyers Guide (scroll down).
>The tubesets can be compared by weight within a family but not
>family to family as my source(s) often included different tubes in
>each set of weights, i.e. some included the fork steerer tube and
>fork blades.
Note also that _all_ kinds of steel have the same specific gravity, so if one tubeset is lighter than another, it indicates that the lighter tubeset has thinner walls (or shorter tubes) so there is a smaller actual volume of material.
Differences in weight between different grades of steel tubing don't indicate that that kind of material is any lighter, but rather that the manufacturer feels that an adequately strong frame can be built with a thinner-wall tube because of greater strength/stiffness of the particular alloy.
Some manufacturers hype their products in a way that would seem to indicate a difference in weight that doesn't exist. One of the bike brands we sell claims to be made of "lite steel" but that's advertising BS, not fact.
Sheldon "It All Weighs The Same" Brown
Newtonville, Massachusetts
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| The difference between truth and fiction: |
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