How much are you willing to spend to save a gram?

buckmulligan

I'm looking at some off-season upgrades and I tried crunching some numbers to assess just how much money I'm willing to spend in order to shave some weight.

Obviously, when it comes to upgrades you often justify them on a combination of factors (sure, those carbon bars are going to save weight and increase my comfort :roll: ) but I'd venture that more often that not, different models of a given component (e.g. brake calipers, cranks, seat-posts, stems, chains, pedals) are functionally-identical and the primary thing you're shelling out on the higher-end models is a modest weight-saving, and possibly a little sticker that says Dura Ace :?

Now, I'm very much a believer in the aggregated-gains philosophy and that shaving 100 grams from a number of components soon adds up to a significant saving; however, my bank balance has a finite number of zeroes and the line has to be drawn somewhere. I'd bet most people on here, like myself, wouldn't think twice about spending an extra £10 to shave 100 grams (10 pence per gram) when purchasing new components, but where do you draw the line?

Reviewing my recent purchases, it seems my sub-conscious limit has been around the 50p per gram mark; this sounds about right and personally, spending £500 to save a kilo doesn't sound too outrageous to me (although, admittedly in retrospect it probably should).

So, all other things being equal, just how much money are you willing to spend to save a gram?

ugo.santalucia

I think you should include grams of drag... to make the aero-weight doesn't matter people happy...

fat daddy

same as you ... I would happily pay £250 to shave 500g off my bike

people say "does it really make a difference on the overall side of things rider weight + bike weight will you really notice a few grams difference"

marginal gains though, eventually you do

one of my bikes weighs 7kg one weighs 12kg ... the 7kg feels a crap lot more spritely and accelerates a damn site quicker ... the 7kg does have the 150g lighter saddle, the 100g lighter tyre, the 50g lighter rear cassette .... eventually the little grams add up to the big KGs

Man Of Lard

I'll just squeeze an extra drip out in my pre-ride pee.

buckmulligan

ugo.santalucia wrote:

I think you should include grams of drag... to make the aero-weight doesn't matter people happy...

Haha, true

That is another thing I've been trying to systematically assess and improve since getting a PM and I'd probably pay more for a gram of drag than a gram in weight, but that's a bit more of a niche topic so we can leave that for another day.

rolf_f

Worst I've done is £250 for a Record Crankset (half price bargain!) which saved 50g over the Centaur one it replaced. £5 a gram. I thank you! Obviously worth every penny and the bike flies along now entirely thanks to the crankset...

fenix

Aaah I remember the days when we used to drill brake levers to save weight...

Easy way to save 500gr - simply leave a waterbottle at home. Perfect.

homers_double

I spend approximatly £30/month trying to shed grames. Useless gym membership...

dinyull

Although weight (for some reason) does play a part to me, I don't go out of my way to find lighter bars, stem, seat etc. than the oem.

I'm only interested in weight of frame, wheels, and possibly groupset.

buckmulligan

Rolf F wrote:

Worst I've done is £250 for a Record Crankset (half price bargain!) which saved 50g over the Centaur one it replaced. £5 a gram. I thank you! Obviously worth every penny and the bike flies along now entirely thanks to the crankset...

Haha, this is exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of. I don't think I've quite reached those heights (unless I've just blanked it out of my memory) but I've certainly made some similarly questionable decisions!

Carbon cranks, hollow-pin chains, titanium pedal spindles... the list is endless.

Looking at the bigger picture, you should at least see some good residual value in your Record Crankset if/when you come to sell it. A hollow-pin chain however... :oops:

imposter2.0

BuckMulligan wrote:

So, all other things being equal, just how much money are you willing to spend to save a gram?

How much do you weigh - and can you lose any?

fat daddy

Imposter wrote:

How much do you weigh - and can you lose any?

is this a negative cost ?

ie is 1kg is 7700 calories .. and a bottle of wine is 630 calories ..... then to lose 1kg, you need to not drink 12 bottles of wine

and if a bottle of wine is £10

then if you loose 1kg of weight you also gain £1200

how much would it cost to save 1kg on a bike ???? thousands (wheels, rubber, saddle, groupset EVERYTHING)

AK_jnr

People would jizz in their pants if their bike went from 7kg to 6kg but have 2 fat ass cheeks hanging over the side of their carbon railed saddle. Jokers.

buckmulligan

Imposter wrote:

How much do you weigh - and can you lose any?

Well, this morning I weighed 64.9 kg.

I can get myself down to around 62 kg in peak season, but maintaining that weight is pretty miserable when you're trying to crank out 15-20 hr training weeks. I agree though, it's fairly pointless focusing on the grams of your bike if you're carrying extra kilos around your gut.

And dare I say it, I dabble in triathlon, so whilst being on the lower sustainable limit of your weight is great for the run, it inevitably impacts your swim and bike power, so if it's a flat course you could easily be doing more harm than good. Whereas bike-weight is free-weight... apart from the whole cash thing :evil:

buckmulligan

fat daddy wrote:

is this a negative cost ?

Sad to say, but I've actually done this kind of man-maths before. Adding up all the pounds I've saved on small lunches and skipping trips to the pub and put that money to a better use. It's a double weight-win

Although unfortunately £10 x 12 bottles of wine does not equal £1200, that's stretching the man maths a little bit too far

fat daddy

damn .. I even used a calculator to figure that out ..... there is no hope !!!!!

londoncommuter

BuckMulligan wrote:

I'm looking at some off-season upgrades and I tried crunching some numbers to assess just how much money I'm willing to spend in order to shave some weight.

What has your crunching revealed? Ignoring anything other than weight, I'd guess framesets to be the worst e.g. Cervelo R3 to R5 is an extra £1.5k for what, maybe 150g/200g.

The best? Titanium wheel skewers drop you maybe 100g for £15?

Does it depend where you are on the price curve i.e. worth it to step up from Cyrano R3 to R1 bars but madness to go to 00 (OK, I've just bought some.....)?

superkenners

Spend a penny, lose over half a kilo (if you're busting)

iPete

I've looked at various upgrades and on average they fall between 50p-£1 per gram.
I'm yet to buy any mind.

Reading this thread, seemingly if you took off a waterbottle, visited the loo AND upgraded components, your bike would weigh the same as air.

keef66

I don't care about weight. Well mine I do, but the bike not so much. My buying priorities are Function, then Price, then appearance. Weight doesn't come into it.

The saddle on my winter bike is a case in point; a Brooks B17 Special in honey. It weighs more than a toddler, but it's been armchair comfy from the moment I fitted it, and with it's copper plated rails and hand beaten rivets it is a thing of rare beauty and it will likely see me to the end of my cycling days.

imposter2.0

BuckMulligan wrote:

And dare I say it, I dabble in triathlon, so whilst being on the lower sustainable limit of your weight is great for the run, it inevitably impacts your swim and bike power, so if it's a flat course you could easily be doing more harm than good. Whereas bike-weight is free-weight... apart from the whole cash thing :evil:

It can also be argued that bike weight on a flat course is kind of irrelevant too...

fat daddy

iPete wrote:

Reading this thread, seemingly if you took off a waterbottle, visited the loo AND upgraded components, your bike would weigh the same as air.

Kind of stupid really when you think about it .... why stop at taking off a water bottle .... if you took of 6 water bottles you could save 3kg and had 10 wees before you left that's another kilo there. People that only take of 1 water bottle need their head looking at :?

MiddleRinger

For the cost of a drill bit.........



:shock:

N0bodyOfTheGoat

£80 on Jumbo Jim tyres, saving ~800g
£34 on Knuckleball bars and £21 on Corto stem, saving ~300g
£11 on sv13f tubes, saving ~250g
£25 on C162 pedals, saving ~225g
£89 on carbon fork and £5 on carbon bung, saving ~900g
£150 on FatNotFat 29er wheels, saving ~1800(?)g
£12 on sv19a tubes, saving ~250(?)g

But most of the above were bought for other reasons than weight saving, exception being the tubes.;)

I nearly upgraded the seatpost and saddle the other day, £52 would have saved ~400g, but I stopped myself because I'm pretty sure the items have been £10 cheaper this year! :lol

I've also lost ~14Kg since the summer, ~1Kg short of my Wazoo's default weight, first time in more than a few years that I've been ~76Kg. So in skinny mode, the bike and myself have lost ~19Kg before I even get around to fitting the fork.

neeb

It seems to be fashionable these days to proclaim no interest in weight saving, which I find utterly bizzare. Anyone who has ridden two bikes where one is 3kg lighter than the other (assuming they are not carrying too much extra weight themselves) will know that a lighter bike is just much more fun to ride, all else being equal. If you don't thnk that weight makes any difference to short, sharp climbs especially, try running up four flights of stairs with and without a 3kg rucksack on your back. Of course a 6kg bike only differs from a 9kg bike because of many different 50g savings, so if you want a noticeably light bike you have to pay for many indidually non-noticeable weight savings.

chippyk

neeb wrote:

It seems to be fashionable these days to proclaim no interest in weight saving, which I find utterly bizzare. Anyone who has ridden two bikes where one is 3kg lighter than the other (assuming they are not carrying too much extra weight themselves) will know that a lighter bike is just much more fun to ride, all else being equal. If you don't thnk that weight makes any difference to short, sharp climbs especially, try running up four flights of stairs with and without a 3kg rucksack on your back. Of course a 6kg bike only differs from a 9kg bike because of many different 50g savings, so if you want a noticeably light bike you have to pay for many indidually non-noticeable weight savings.

You're correct but it's arguably a simplistic view and I don't think it's a case of I don't care about weight at all but more along the lines of I don't care about weight at the expense of all else. There is a difference between buying a heavy bike or a lighter bike and between when upgrading specifically looking for the lightest kit. So when buying a saddle, looking for a comfy one and not always the lightest, buying a Chorus groupset because it's almost as good as Super Record and half the cost, forgoing the extra grammes. Dura Ace pedals are twice the cost of 105 but save 50g, personally I'd buy the 105 probably and spend the difference on something else, but each to their own and all that.

In my opinion, that's what not bothering about weight means, not any old shit will do.

fat daddy

NitrousOxide wrote:

£80 on Jumbo Jim tyres, saving ~800g
£34 on Knuckleball bars and £21 on Corto stem, saving ~300g
£11 on sv13f tubes, saving ~250g
£25 on C162 pedals, saving ~225g
£89 on carbon fork and £5 on carbon bung, saving ~900g
£150 on FatNotFat 29er wheels, saving ~1800(?)g
£12 on sv19a tubes, saving ~250(?)g

pah, waste of money, you could have saved that weight by just removing 10 water bottles from your bike

impressive savings though .... makes me want to buy a Fatbike just so I can cheaply shed weight. 250g saving just by changing tubes ... awesome !!

out of interest what did the bike weigh before you put it on a diet ?

londoncommuter

neeb wrote:

It seems to be fashionable these days to proclaim no interest in weight saving, which I find utterly bizzare. Anyone who has ridden two bikes where one is 3kg lighter than the other (assuming they are not carrying too much extra weight themselves) will know that a lighter bike is just much more fun to ride, all else being equal. If you don't thnk that weight makes any difference to short, sharp climbs especially, try running up four flights of stairs with and without a 3kg rucksack on your back. Of course a 6kg bike only differs from a 9kg bike because of many different 50g savings, so if you want a noticeably light bike you have to pay for many indidually non-noticeable weight savings.

It is a bit annoying that you can't have any debate about where to save weight without the usual tedious comments about taking less water etc swamping the thread. We all love bikes on here, most of us buy stuff we don't "need" and sometimes it's just nice to buy that piece of carbon bling even though we know it won't make us any faster.

There must be a site somewhere that people who are happy to ride round on Raleigh Grifters can post on.

N0bodyOfTheGoat

fat daddy wrote:

NitrousOxide wrote:

£80 on Jumbo Jim tyres, saving ~800g
£34 on Knuckleball bars and £21 on Corto stem, saving ~300g
£11 on sv13f tubes, saving ~250g
£25 on C162 pedals, saving ~225g
£89 on carbon fork and £5 on carbon bung, saving ~900g
£150 on FatNotFat 29er wheels, saving ~1800(?)g
£12 on sv19a tubes, saving ~250(?)g

pah, waste of money, you could have saved that weight by just removing 10 water bottles from your bike

impressive savings though .... makes me want to buy a Fatbike just so I can cheaply shed weight. 250g saving just by changing tubes ... awesome !!

out of interest what did the bike weigh before you put it on a diet ?

I'm not sure how accurate our bathroom scales are, but originally the Wazoo was ~15Kg.

With the 29er wheels and 38c Marathon Cross tyres and "heavy" 29er tubes, it weighs ~10Kg now (without fitting the carbon fork).

With fat wheel setup, it now weighs ~13Kg.

Oh, I literally just spotted a tube weight error... The default fat tubes were ~500g each, the sv13f (not strictly fat tubes but work for many) are ~185g each, while sv13j tubes are ~390g each, exfcellent pence per gram savings!

N0bodyOfTheGoat

NitrousOxide wrote:

fat daddy wrote:

NitrousOxide wrote:

£80 on Jumbo Jim tyres, saving ~800g
£34 on Knuckleball bars and £21 on Corto stem, saving ~300g
£11 on sv13f tubes, saving ~250g
£25 on C162 pedals, saving ~225g
£89 on carbon fork and £5 on carbon bung, saving ~900g
£150 on FatNotFat 29er wheels, saving ~1800(?)g
£12 on sv19a tubes, saving ~250(?)g

pah, waste of money, you could have saved that weight by just removing 10 water bottles from your bike

impressive savings though .... makes me want to buy a Fatbike just so I can cheaply shed weight. 250g saving just by changing tubes ... awesome !!

out of interest what did the bike weigh before you put it on a diet ?

I'm not sure how accurate our bathroom scales are, but originally the Wazoo was ~15Kg.

With the 29er wheels and 38c Marathon Cross tyres and "heavy" 29er tubes (~250g? each), it weighs ~10Kg now (without fitting the carbon fork). I have some sv19a tubes coming in the post, to fit with some new On One BSC Type 1 29x2.3s arriving later today.

With fat wheel setup, it now weighs ~13Kg.

Oh, I literally just spotted a tube weight error... The default fat tubes were ~500g each, the sv13f (not strictly fat tubes but work for many) are ~185g each, while sv13j tubes are ~390g each, exfcellent pence per gram savings!

rolf_f

BuckMulligan wrote:

Rolf F wrote:

Worst I've done is £250 for a Record Crankset (half price bargain!) which saved 50g over the Centaur one it replaced. £5 a gram. I thank you! Obviously worth every penny and the bike flies along now entirely thanks to the crankset...

Haha, this is exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of. I don't think I've quite reached those heights (unless I've just blanked it out of my memory) but I've certainly made some similarly questionable decisions!

Carbon cranks, hollow-pin chains, titanium pedal spindles... the list is endless.

Looking at the bigger picture, you should at least see some good residual value in your Record Crankset if/when you come to sell it. A hollow-pin chain however... :oops:

Well, I doubt I'll sell it anyway so the cost gets effectively spread over many years - and the bike won't be replaced either. It's now down to the UCI weight limit which was an enjoyable arbitrary target to aim at and the 6-700g I saved overall really did make a difference to the feel of the bike.

It seems odd to me that people can laugh at this sort of process yet buy a new bike every few years which in most cases (assuming your bike is already pretty light) probably costs even more per gram saved when you account for depreciation. My bike dates from 2010 or so and there isn't a bike for sale today that I would swap it for. I spent most of 1k on the upgrades (bars, stem, saddle, brakes, crankset, wheels, tyres, pedals) and some of it represented really bad value for money but I have all the old components which are in the spares pot and will keep my lesser bikes going for years and the total cost of my bike since purchase, in over 6 years, is 1k. I suspect many of the people laughing at this thread pay a lot more for less over the years.