Touring bicycle frame weight - info gathering

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pwa
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Re: Touring bicycle frame weight - info gathering

Post by pwa »

bigjim wrote:There is always the halfway option. Not a tourer or a racer. but you may have to look at the used market. The Classic Clubmans bike. Which is more the do all bike IMO. My Raleigh Clubman seems to tick all the boxes. I use it on club runs and hostel tours. I don't know what the modern equivalent is.
Image


I have heard that sort of bike called "light tourer" or Audax. Great for long rides carrying a bit of baggage but not full on camping gear. Nice bike.
MikeDee
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Re: Touring bicycle frame weight - info gathering

Post by MikeDee »

Lots of people are touring with one wheeled trailers. You can tour with a light weight bike providing you have low enough gears.


I'm a trendy consumer. Just look at my wobbly bog brush using hovercraft full of eels Pro
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meic
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Re: Touring bicycle frame weight - info gathering

Post by meic »

I would make a distinction between an Audax and a light tourer.

The Audax would have max 28mm tyres and caliper brakes. The light tourer would have room for larger tyres and consequently a different type of brake.
This easy distinction has somewhat been torn up by the introduction of disk brakes.
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bigjim
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Re: Touring bicycle frame weight - info gathering

Post by bigjim »

I have heard that sort of bike called "light tourer" or Audax. Great for long rides carrying a bit of baggage but not full on camping gear. Nice bike.

I'm not sure. Back in the 80s Raleigh marketed their Royal as a light tourer. Slim forks and centrepull brakes. A very nice bike [I have one]. In the 90s this bike appeared with the same frame but now with cantis front and rear and fork braze-ons for front panniers, plus supplied with a rack. Now a full on tourer, but the same frame and forks as the light tourer.
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The utility cyclist
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Re: Touring bicycle frame weight - info gathering

Post by The utility cyclist »

meic wrote:I would make a distinction between an Audax and a light tourer.

The Audax would have max 28mm tyres and caliper brakes. The light tourer would have room for larger tyres and consequently a different type of brake.
This easy distinction has somewhat been torn up by the introduction of disk brakes.

Why does an audax bike have to be limited to 28mm tyres, it certainly wasn't back in the day?
My 2001 ridgeback day02 was a jack of all trades, racy geometry, caliper brakes but capable of taking a fairly wide tyre (32mm IIRC). Handling wise absolutely superb, 50mph no qualms at all, loaded touring or utility, no sweat. it also came with flat bars as std, so what is it, an audax bike, a tourer, a hybrid, a racer with braze ons for rack and guards or simply all of them?

There never was a distinction, just some people's rigid imaginations of what x type of bike should be, just like you insisting an audax bike is x and a light tourer (whatever that is) is y.
This is as much pushed by marketing people than any other group and those supposedly in the know telling others that's not a xxxx or you cant use that for xxxx.

As for the disc brake infusion, on road going bikes they are for mugs and the marketing people have done a grand job at pushing them onto the feeble minded.
They offer very little advantage over calipers (38mm is easy doable on dual pivots) so i guess if you want to ride with extremely wide road tyres theres the advantage) and none over v-brakes. They offer no safety enhancement whatsoever.
Anyway
Touring bike weight:
Airbourne Carpe Diem 54cm 1600g (1660 incl h/set cups and upper bearing)
Sintema 'mud' full carbon forks - alloy fork ends 240mm steerer 562g
Psamathe
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Re: Touring bicycle frame weight - info gathering

Post by Psamathe »

Gattonero wrote:....
It's ok for me, I never carry too much weight in baggage anyway, bags&gear being 7-8kg max.....

Is that for camping & cooking, just camping or using B&Bs/hotels ?

Ian
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meic
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Re: Touring bicycle frame weight - info gathering

Post by meic »

Why does an audax bike have to be limited to 28mm tyres, it certainly wasn't back in the day?

Because that is a significant step between bikes where as most other differences are a continuum.
The leap from a bike with long reach caliper brakes to brakes mounted on braze ons.
Sure you could have longer caliper brakes but nobody has been making brakes with them on for a long time. It was the typical bike for Audaxing 25/28mm tyres, mudguards, 57mm calipers.
It is just a name we are talking about not a restriction on its type of use.
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dg
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Re: Touring bicycle frame weight - info gathering

Post by dg »

I recently dismantled my 21 year old steel tourer for a respray, so I have some weights for your data collection.

It's a 23" Chas Roberts (branded "FW Evans"), 531ST double butted frame and forks.
Frame 2460g (including bottom bracket + axle and steering bearing cups)
Forks 760g.

The whole bike weighs 13.5kg fully assembled. The rear pannier on its own is 1410g; I might treat myself to a lighter one someday.

I bought it to replace a Claud Butler Mistral, which was also 531 DB, but from before the days when they divided into 531C and 531ST. It gave a livelier ride, which I preferred, and I put down to the thinner tubing. I've never been one for touring carrying a tent + kitchen sink, which is when i imagine the 531ST came into its own.

In the last couple of years I've started going out on short day rides with a club, and have bought a Spa Audax Ti for the summer, relegating the Evans to winter duties. The Spa handles beautifully. It weighs about 10.5kg fully assembled.
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Gattonero
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Re: Touring bicycle frame weight - info gathering

Post by Gattonero »

Psamathe wrote:
Gattonero wrote:....
It's ok for me, I never carry too much weight in baggage anyway, bags&gear being 7-8kg max.....

Is that for camping & cooking, just camping or using B&Bs/hotels ?

Ian


Camping.
My opinion is that I am to spend more time cycling than sleeping or faffing in the tent, so as long as I have a reliable shelter that allows me to sit up I'm fine with it. Same for all the kit, removing as many "gadgets" as possible to travel light.
7-8kg to fit in a Carradice Camper and Carradice Junior, that's all :D

Image

that was summertime so I reckon I was carrying less than 7kg, bike with bags& gear around 18kg. It was greatly appreciated when going up Bignor Hill! :mrgreen:
Image


Of course, other people have a different approach, and would carry a big tent with porch, camping chairs and so on. Is good to have a choice! :)
It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best,
since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.
Thus you remember them as they actually are...
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Gattonero
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Re: Touring bicycle frame weight - info gathering

Post by Gattonero »

ehelifecycle wrote:
Gattonero wrote:BTW, if that helps, I had a custom bike made by Condor


what frame size please?


53 c/t sloping seat tube and 54.5 c/c top tube, headtube is 15cm integrated (so there's no additional stack for headset cups)
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It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best,
since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.
Thus you remember them as they actually are...
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The utility cyclist
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Re: Touring bicycle frame weight - info gathering

Post by The utility cyclist »

CJ wrote:Just the other day we collected the frame and fork for my wife's new touring bike from Spa Cycles. Frame: 1580g, fork 600g. Is that a touring record? I should mention that Helen is a petite 157cm (5'2) and 50kg (8st), so by rights it ought not to be more than two-thirds the weight of a frameset for yer average bloke!

Yes it really is designed for touring - by yours truly - to fit 37-622 tyres with generous mudguard clearance in a frame only 42cm size - and NO toe overlap! Up-to-the-minute and ground-breaking features include the new 'flat-mount' brake fittings, thru-axle dropouts, a very short tapered headset, and a unique low-profile fork crown with internally routed brake pipe and dynamo cable emerging through it.

Why a titanium fork? Because the head angle is 70, which requires a correspondingly longer offset than any ready-made fork has. Plus they all (even the few that do boast enough clearance) have unnecessarily deep crowns, the undersides of which are stupidly square to the steerer rather than intelligently tangential to the tyre. So the fork also had to be custom-made, preferably in the same material as the frame, and now that steerer tubes can flare out to inch-and-a-half at the bottom, that solves the problem of excessive flex that has hitherto hampered the development of Ti forks.

This unique frame and fork took about a year for me to design and have made, thanks to John Pocklington's contacts in China. The process involved some 100 emails between myself and the Chinese manufacturer and a dozen iterations of the frame and fork drawings, before they'd drawn close enough (in both senses of the phrase) to my original concept. So you cannot imagine how relieved I was to find that the finished article also measured close enough to those final drawings! The build-up is now under way. Pictures may follow, but that probably merits a new thread.

The Carpe Diem I listed for a 54cm frame and forks had a slightly heavier frame @ 1590g raw and 562g for Sintema 'mud' full CF forks so a scant few grams lighter in total than your wife's frame. The clerance is up to about 40mm with guards. However you can tour on any bike you like, no problem at all carrying 10kg luggage on a racing carbon fibre frame or more on something that would be classed as a beefed up frameset @ 1700g. The specialized Sirrus Carbon pro ltd had eyelets for guards and rack as std as far back as 2008, very nice frameset with space for 40+mm tyres.

Mike Hall went around the world on a £600 CF frame in 2012.
PhilD28
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Re: Touring bicycle frame weight - info gathering

Post by PhilD28 »

That Condor is a beautiful bike with a tasteful selection of components. Can I ask about the extra stays you have added to the carradice carrier and the stay fixing to the carrier. I use a similar setup, but with a Nelson long flap, on my own amazingly similar Audax/light touring bike and was just about to reinforce the carrier with a single stay to the brake bridge.
I could do with a source for a double rod clamp to save making one.
Thanks
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deliquium
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Re: Touring bicycle frame weight - info gathering

Post by deliquium »

Brucey wrote:FWIW in about a 22-23" size typical frameset weights (in standard tube gauges) are

- 753 about 5-1/2lbs
- 531SL/653 about 5-3/4lbs
- 531 DB/531C about 6lbs
- 531ST (first version, with a light build) about 6-1/2lbs
- A typical PG frameset (not built for very much of a load) ~7lbs
- 531ST (later versions built for a load) 7-1/2 to 8-1/2lbs
- other touring frames built strong for load carrying; ~8-9lbs

A 20-30 Raleigh frameset (as used in many roadsters) weighs about 9lbs or perhaps a touch more
A 1977 Dawes galaxy frameset (531 PG main tubes, built to carry a load) weighs about 8-1/2 lbs (about the same as a current Surly LHT I think)
A Pashley Sovereign roadster frameset weighs over 12lbs.
A steel MTB frameset (suitable for touring on with a load) weighs between ~7lbs and 9lbs depending on tubeset. [Obviously MTB frames meant for XC racing can be a fair bit lighter.]

Oversize tubesets can make it so that a lighter frame is still suitable for a load, in theory. However such frames can give a somewhat harsh ride when unloaded.

cheers


Just weighed the most recent acquisition to the deliquium stable :D

22½" 1980 Dawes Super Galaxy butted 531 (pre ST) frame and forks including 'heavy' original steel headset = 7lb 2oz (3.23kg)
Current pedalable joys

"you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles"
steady eddy
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Re: Touring bicycle frame weight - info gathering

Post by steady eddy »

Pilgrim Audax bike 10.5 kgs with Spa wheels, Brooks saddle, Tubus rack, mudguards and campag triple chainset. Pilgrim reckon they could build one down to around 8kgs.
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