losing weight? (the bike not me)

marinrs07

i have a 2007 marin rock springs which is totally standard any advice on making it lighter would be great. i still need it to be strong though as i am a touch heavy handed when decending

blakef111

id say a decent tubeless set up, the main thing to remember with weight crunching is to reduce rotational weight first as this improves acceleration, just by getting a tubeless ready tyre set and a conversion kit you can lose around 1-2 kg in weight, next id look at the crankset they normally weigh a good bit and finally what forks do you have? they will make one of the biggest differences to the bike weight and feel hope this helps bf111

Salsa

Losing 1-2kg with tubeless is WAY optimistic, you will lose a bit of weight but it will be in the 100's of grams range. Though upgrading to lighter tyres is a good idea, move onto other cheapish small upgrades like decent branded seat post/bars/stem/saddle/pedals/cassette etc. If you have lots of cash then upgrade wheels/cranks/forks/groupdset components.

supersonic

Without spending a lot of money it will be difficult to drop the weight by more than a couple of pounds.

Dazza993

One of the best pound per gramme saving I've seen it swapping the rear cassette.

The bog stanard Deore one that came on my Spesh was something like 450-480g

I got an XT one for £22 (eBay I think) which is about 200g lighter.

I've been looking at bars/seatposts/stems and saddles to save weight but you spend quite a bit of dosh to save not a lot of weight.

My plan is to swap the entire bike for a lighter model in 6 months time (or go for a custom build)

Cranks are another area where you seem to save get quite a weight saving for you money.

littleandy0410

Take bits off and weigh them, then look out for good deals on replacement parts. No point in buying, say, a seatpost for £50-odd quid then finding you've saved <100g!

As people have said, tyres are probably a good start. See what your current ones weigh. I've just upgraded to Maxxis High Roller 2.1 Kevlars, they're 488g each, so I saved over 1/2lb for both tyres.

Wheels will also save a bit, but obviously more expensive. I would say cassette too, but yours is quite a high spec one anyway I think? (Assuming it's standard)

ride_whenever

Go singlespeed, best money saving change you'll make.

My inbred is lighter than my friends old road bike!!!!!

littleandy0410

Or remove the wheels altogether and carry it!

blakef111

have a poo before your ride cheapest way to lose 100-200grams!

Northwind

blakef111 wrote:

just by getting a tubeless ready tyre set and a conversion kit you can lose around 1-2 kg in weight

Only if you use solid lead inner tubes Couple of hundred grams tops, assuming your tubeless tyres are comparable to the old ones. The entire inner and outer tube setup on this bike only weighs about a kilo and a half.

Lighter tyres can be good but according to the speclist your bike came with motoraptors, they're only about 600 grams which is pretty reasonable for a trail tyre. You can go lighter but not hugely. Mountain Kings or the light Holy Rollers or somesuch will save you a couple of hundred grams, and they're good tyres.

There's some savings in your cassette, if the speclist is right it's a 950 11-34 which is about 380 grams, not light but you'll only save a hundred grams here with an equivalent cassette. If you went to a 32 instead of a 34 that'd save a wee bit more with XT or similiar. But nothing you'll notice.

I'd be sticking the finishing kit and wheels on the scales to get an idea of what they're like, you never really know with OEM. And crankset, maybe, how much is that Blaze, about 1250g? SLX worth a look maybe, £100 for probably around £250 grams. But it looks like a fairly nice spec already. You certainly don't want to weight-weenie it on a bike like that. it's not going to be cheap to ditch a kilo, that's for sure.

allthegearnoidea

blakef111 wrote:

have a poo before your ride cheapest way to lose 100-200grams!

Pah, my morning constitutionals are in the 3lb mark! (yes, pre and post poo weighing is required!)

if you rlooking at replacing the bike in 6 months then it would be worth finding out what your going to get if you know so you can plan the upgrades for the current bike to swap straight over!

wheels can save a lot of weight over std ones, my currebnt rear wheel weighs more than a set of fulcrum red metal 5's! can save 100grams on a new bar, another 100 ish on a stem and same on a seatpost, but you'll be looking at £125ish for that!!

cranks and cassette's are good for weight loss as mentioned, tyres can also help, but too light and you'll be risking more punctures,

forks can save a few lb's to odepending on what yo uhave! if i swap my bomber mx comps for sids i could save close to 2lb!

depends how mad you want to go! and more importantly, how much you want to spend!!