Road Bike Weight Effect
There are plenty of nice bikes on the road that are being ridden slowly.
Road bike weight effect. But more insidious than inaccurate vocabulary is a simple overestimation of how much bike weight matters for most riding. I am trying to understand the physics of bike weight. More mass on a bike can increase the friction in the bearings but again this won t matter where the mass is located. If the weight was lost from the rider s body instead of the bike then the predictions would remain the same.
Reducing the rotating mass of the wheels by 1lb would have a greater effect than the loss of the same mass from elsewhere on the bike because heavier things spin slower than light things. For many of us tweaking and upgrading your bike is part of the fun of cycling and ending up with a lighter bike is a common aim. If you have a book on the floor you could pick it up and put. They will easily allow you to ride very fast with minimal handling.
When i switched from aluminium frame to trek madone 6 9 carbon fibre i felt a stiffer more powerful bike the weight was actually the same. In reality a 2 kg weight saving 2 4 is probably more achievable but i focus on the results of the more extreme case. So what effect would a 5 kg reduction in total weight have on a rider s speed. 12 pounds to a bike and riding up a big climb namely l alpe d huez.
I have just made a switch from an 11kg road bike to an 8kg one obviously there are many more factors and differences between the 2 bikes other than weight and have noticed the benefit of reduced weight. The weight of a typical road bike is on average 18 pounds including the pedals and cages. Thus a slightly heavier time trial bike may be faster than a road bike on a hill climb of 3. Here s an experimental measurement of the effect of adding 1 3 as much weight as you re talking about four pounds vs.
These bikes are designed for riding on paved surfaces and tend to have lighter frames with relatively smaller tires. At certain speeds benefits from reducing aero drag outweigh weight savings.