Sheep-Dog Bites 4.0
How Light is Dumb

Weight rant
(I promise not to even mention Euro's or internal headsets)

Have we passed the point that things are getting stupid?

Some people are struggling to hit 25 pounds., this is pointless. Your bike at this point is a race bike with pegs. Yet the same person will laugh if someone says it is one. Just because a frame says its street, does not mean its much different than a race frame.  Think about this.. Standard has used OX tubing for years, on street and race frame. They have use double butted tubing on race frames for years. What differentiates a Supertherm double-butted street frame from  a Supertherm double butted race frame? If the weights are close.. Guess what? The only difference.. is the dropouts.. 

In other words, you are riding a race frame.  That nice Kink Jim C.. Is a race frame with thicker dropouts.  So are some of the other newer street frames. They may be called a street frame, but its not. It's a glorified race frame. Same as we used to use in the late 80's and early 90's for street..  In fact, the Dirt Bike Classic, and Holmes Classics, were actually jumping/race/trails frames back in the day.  Their original design is what street frames were just a year ago. Yes, they have been gone through a bit over the years but not that much. So, is retro in, or was Moeller just that far ahead? 3 years ago people shy'd away from the Dirt Bike Classic, thinking it was not strong enough.. now its almost considered heavy. Metals technology did not change that much.

Then you have the people complaining all frames look alike..  Well in order to make a light frame, you have to remove anything un-necessary, and use tried and true methods to make it as strong and light as possible. This means minimal gussettes, no doo-dads, and a very basic design. Anything extra ads weight. So you have to choose. Bland or heavy, sorry, there is just no way around this. In some ways, basic is good. Keeps people who have no clue about design from making as many mistakes.. though it seems to not have stopped them. Poorly designed frames just keep on coming and will continue to do so.

We have parts that are lighter than some race parts. Stems being one of them. Some new stems weigh less than normal race stems. People are using race forks, race rims, and we have “street” rims that are race weight.  Why people expect some of these to hold up as well I am not sure. Its true metals get better year by year, but not all of them, and not that much. Many of the people designing bmx parts either have no bmx experience, or have no real engineering experience. Not many have both working for them, and even less have one person handling both. Throw in the bean counters and you have a real mess..

I see people all the time wanting to remove a pound here or there. On a part that only weighs a few, where do you realistically expect to remove it from? Think about this, a typical front wheel weighs roughly 3-3.5 pounds. If the rim weighs 1.4,spokes weigh .6 and the hub weighs just over a pound. There is not much to shave weight from. Same goes for a frame, and most other parts. You reach a point where you have nothing left to remove. You cannot remove more than a few thousandths of an inch of tubing thickness in current frames.  We are no longer riding over-built 8 pound frames.

Some Other things I have been seeing lately are all trends that were used in racing and in years gone by.  I want to discuss a few of them.

Drilled rims.. Mongoose did this in the 80's. Your drilling thin aluminum. The weigh loss is so minimal is ridiculous, and you have to plug the holes somehow, or your tube will pop out. Mongoose used a thin aluminum strip that were anodized. They also did not use double wall rims. Now you have 2 holes to fill or you end up with dirt and dust inside. So what you say.. Well what is the point of removing metal, only to allow dirt back in.

One area of severe miss-information is spokes. As I mentioned above.. A set of 48 spokes and nipples is  .6 pounds.  That means each spoke and nipple weighs .0125 pounds each. So removing a few spokes will not do a whole lot at all. Considering how much strength each one adds, is it really worth messing with odd spoke numbers? This leads to a problem with hubs..  Odd spoke numbers are gimmicks.  We have 36 and 48, do we really need another number?  

AND QUIT TRYING TO RE-INVENT SPOKE LACING!  Spokes work in 4's. I hate having to repeat that every week someone thinks they have some incredible way to save weight on spokes.  Wheel spoking has been around a long time and is extremely efficient. You are not going to revolutionize it without a new metal, or completely new concept from the begging. It cannot be done with current parts. Straight pull is not new, and skipping a spoke per side or every 4^th and such is simply not possible. Learn to build a wheel, and come to understand how it all works before you try to change it. It is a great system. It either will not work, or will not be strong enough..  Your wrong, it won't work that way. So quit. It wont save you 3 pounds anyhow.

Using race hubs, or “street” hubs. These hubs usually cannot take the stress of pegs. I have even seen people trying to use aluminum center sections from Profiles. If its not meant for it, It will likely not hold up, since an aluminum part meant for a race hub is entirely different than an aluminum axled street hub. Some of you guys are asking to get hurt with this stuff. And watch out for gimmicks on hubs. Most are just that.. Gimmicks.

Another one I have seen is removing center deck on double wall rims. Why? Why not just buy a lighter rim. The one I saw this being done to was a rim that was heavily over-hyped. The Odyssey 7k. So in his case, I have to excuse it. He was expecting a stronger wheel to begin with. Others have no real excuse.

Cutting brake posts..-  Who thought of this dumb idea..  I am not referring to brakeless riders cutting them off. I am referring to people trimming 1/8in in height. I have heard of people doing it for weight reasons. Bad idea.. you have to modify the brakes to match and your springs no longer fit..  So you must use rubber bands. AND.. your brakes will deflect (twist) on the mount more. Possibly causing excessive friction, and wedging itself on the post.  Doing it for sprocket clearance.. I have issues with as well, but doing it for weight.. just dumb. 

Then there is one mini riders dads used to use.. stripping paint. Yes, it can save some weight,. Especially on powder coat. Not a good idea though. Rust is not good, and not just for strength reasons. Lots of work for how little it saves.

Weight saving is a complete system of parts.. Not simply changing one part. Things are already down to nearly bare minimum. There is nothing major to dump weight from in one place. If you are going to lose a pound, count on a few hundred bucks to accomplish it.

While it is possible to build a 25 pound street bike, is it truly a street bike?  Can you really beat on it? Its true people are not bashing parts as bad as they used to, but you cannot expect a 25 pound bike to holdup as well as a 30pounder, and it definitely will not feel as strong and stiff. The good news is that it seems the pros have settled on a basic weight area..  At the moment it seems most people are all over the place, but most pros are running between 28 and 32 pounds. Heavily dependent on brake and peg setup.  

Where do you fall in?