What's the best way to save weight on your bike?
Have you ever thought about how much it costs to reduce weight on your bike?
When you are thinking about that, have you ever thought about comparing what things cost per gram of weight reduction? So what is the bang for your buck?
We went though an exercise of examining HUNDREDS of products available online to establish what we have called "standard" weight items, and then "light" items.
We have not trawled the web for the cheapest stuff available to establish our standard metrics.
We have done this all in USD as we sell globally.
When we were looking at frames and wheels it quickly became obvious there were two levels to look at. We have split frames and wheels into what we have called "mid level" and "high level". Note we have not taken materials into account on these rather just weight and quality.
We have used our own tubes as the light tube product. We have then taken some averages (and rounded them to tidy things up).
Results
To be honest we had not idea what to expect from this exercise but we were actually quite surprised. The table below shows what we found, but please note the numbers are per saleable unit (each tube, each tire, a pair of shoes, a frame or a wheel set). To look at total weight savings on the bike you need to look at maybe 2 tires and 3 tubes (if you carry one spare).
From a $ per gram basis the tubes come out on top at around 20 cents per gram. Compare that to tires at around 50 cents then take a look at frames and wheels which can be up to almost $12 per gram!
We think it is telling that you get the same weight savings spending an extra $50 on tubes as you do spending and extra $2-3,000 on a frame or an extra circa $1,500 on wheels. That's a big difference!
So in order of bang for your buck the order is:
- Tubes
- Tires
- Shoes
- Wheels
- Frames
Once you then take into account the lower rolling resistance offered by our nano tubes there is certainly a compelling argument to give them a try. Remember of course we also give away a set our our carbon race wheels each month to one of our customers.
