Bike Frame Stiffness

Yes but are dispersing power. It’s the same (endless) story as the vinyl VS digital… you can “feel” better the vinyl but the digital is technically better.

Have you ridden aluminium bikes in a way that lets you compare? I have a steel and an aluminum frame, but they have different applications so I can't compare. I do feel more harshness in the bars on the ALU frames, like sharper peaks in vibrations.

Yes, sir, and you had to wait 10 years for it! I've only had steel frames myself but when I try out non-steel frames I can't say I dislike them, just that they feel strange.

I'm still trying to understand the talk about over/understeer and how the bottom bracket is involved. Are you saying you put down more weight on the outside pedal on each rotation of the crank as you're going through a turn?

Also, isn't there some wasted energy going into flexing the frame that should go into the road?

In bike messenger circles there is a phrase "steel is real". The idea being that when you inevitably eat shit going around a corner you might dent your frame, but the chances that a steel frame will crack or shatter is basically zero. And more importantly dings and scratches don't cause the structural integrity to degrade like happens with aluminum or carbon fiber. Your steel fork is bent? Hit it with a hammer until it's true again!

A good amount of “legacy” bike advocates are actively hostile to e-bikes, equating them to “cheating”. It’s gatekeeping bullshit.

Anytime someone asks me bike buying advice, my only reply is “go to your local dealer and talk with them”. That relationship and taking a few test rides are far more important than any spec on a sheet.

Try to get a bike fit first. Ideally after some basic stretchwork / few classes of mobility training just to get the feel of what Your body is capable of in the short term.

It sounds like waste of money for something people feel like they should be able to judge themselves, but bikes aren't shoes. The issues often develop only after some hours of effort. If You're a beginner, chances are the flexibility of Your back / hips / joints will be the most limiting factor.

Buying a racing bike, which a lot of people do, is as silly as buying GS racing skis, which hardly anyone does for recreational skiing because it's a Bad Idea. You won't like it unless you are as fit as a racer. Even then you won't find either the bike or skis pleasant for any purpose other than training to race.

Elite athletes are a different species from you and me.

Make sure you never ride a friends carbon bike then. The experience is really nice imho, independent of the weight.

Mass matters for the simple reason that if you need to climb a hill, the energy required to lift a mass is proportional to the mass. Granted, barring extremely heavy bikes, ~3/4 of the mass is the rider.

I ride daily, to commute and workout and just for joy on a Sunday. In a city.

I've never considered anything but a steel frame (most common), in the realm of $1000 or less fully built.

Sure, I desire more. But we're talking about 10% satisfaction improvement for my (our) needs. And I definitely will splurge on a new bike soon, but only because I have money to burn.

I am contemplating a $3-500ish fitting with all the latest tech and a trained expert. That feels honestly worth it for anyone because it will likely save you injury.

As another commenter said, bike fit is very important, especially to mitigate overuse injuries (don't be like me!). Beyond that I have found my $400 mish-mash of mid-2000s mid-range road parts attached to a $90 aluminum Nashbar frame to be sufficient for my road cycling needs.

You can read all the articles you want, but eventually you'll have to take the bike for a test ride, and you'll realize that you have no idea how anything you read translates to how the bike feels to you. You don't have the context to interpret all that information until your physical abilities and skills have outgrown a bicycle at least once. Get what fits your budget, your body, and the type of riding you'll do.

I bought two electric mountain bikes.

You don't care about "weight in grams" for each part.

You can get good exercise by lowering the assist level. You can raise the assist level for tricky parts or to get back to the car.

But the best part is getting TWO electric bikes - it lets you take someone with you, optimize for fun and minimize things like different ability or fitness levels.

Distance is a funny thing. I've done multi-day hundreds of mile charity rides for fun. I've trained and helped train people who would not think of doing such to do so. I've also done 20+ mile mountain bike rides on a single speed mountain bike. These days, I like to just get out and explore with no time or distance goals. Some of it is for exercise, some of it is for clearing my mind and having fun.

My recommendation for those getting into it, decide the type of riding you wnat to do, figure out a budget and try bikes (new and used) in that budget for the one you like.

For what it's worth, my main bike is a steel "gravel bike" with fairly beefy tires, disk breaks and no suspension. I take it most places I have taken my full suspension mountain bike when riding in the bay area.

As a (former) regular bike commuter, it was hilarious how some "serious" cyclists would say things like that, and then talk about the best ways to stay fit over the winter because obviously you're not gonna ride your bike when it's -5F out, right? Rather undermined my perception of how hardcore they were.

Similarly entertaining, leaving work one day when a dude in Lycra on a $3000 racing bike blew past me with hardly a glance. ...And then looked completely flabbergasted when I caught up with him and said "Hi!" at a stoplight a few miles down the road, riding my mountain bike and still wearing slacks and a button-down from work. Like, I may be a fatass, but I've been doing this every day for 15 years and my calves are solid rock.

By all means, avoid the gear rathole. But you should go deep enough to find a bike that feels good to ride and fits your body.

I tried to be a hardtail purist, and quit mountain biking because it just sucked. (Local terrain is all huge rocks and drops) Years later tried a full suspension carbon- whoa, mountain biking can be type I fun??

I tried to be a commuter purist, favoring simplicity, durability, and reliability. Riding my hybrid is un-gratifying and soul-sucking. Tried a racy road bike, awkward as hell. Tried a nice gravel bike, oh my god I don't want to stop pedaling!

It's worth spending a little more to get the bike that feels good for you to ride.

"Ride as much or as little, or as long or as short as you feel. But ride." - Eddy Merckx

I was a very casual and just enjoyed riding until I started getting into touring. You're right not to care, at all. Unless you are a professional or are riding competitively at high levels, you will always do better by losing a little bit of belly, focusing on technique, and having more miles on the road. Weight will not be the difference maker.

I would come back from a tour on my steel Surly and just whip by people with 7k+ bikes in Central Park on a regular basis. It was the miles and nothing else.

Rolling resistance and comfort matter. I never went less than 23mm and I wouldn't even do that today, I'd go far wider 28mm or 35mm. Being comfortable keeps you on your bike longer and the longer you're on your bike, the more fit you'll be and happy - since you're riding a bike for longer.

Your instincts are good, have fun.

A jump from, say, 23mm wide to 28mm on a standard road bike won't affect comfort much. Spend the money on getting the bike fit (or a beach cruiser).

Yeah, pretty much. Bicycle frames are basically completely rigid vertically, as far as the forces that are normally encountered is concerned. The only possible source of vertical compliance are the tires and the suspension, if there is any. Some frames may be more or less laterally or torsionally compliant, but I'm skeptic that either makes much of a difference while riding.

Perceptions on stiffness vary greatly with your inseam length, and I feel like it's fruitless to have conversations without stating what frame size you're looking at.

If you start with a bike model that is already known to be mushy and try to ride a 60 or 62cm size it's going to be even worse. When I still rode I chose a frame that some other club members characterized as 'harsh' but they were riding something more like a 56. Even a couple inches makes a huge difference in leverage.

A stiff bike is an efficient bike, but not a comfortable one.

I once rode in the Gong Ride (Sydney to Wollongong) and, determined to set my bike up as efficiently as possible, pumped my tyres up to 120 PSI. The bike felt incredibly fast ... but my testicles went numb.

Not only that but a frame that's not stiff is going to result in more play in the chain and cables that lever against the frame. That means uncommanded or skipped shifts, uneven brake feel, sloppy braking and cornering feel as the frame gets loaded/unloaded in different directions.

The real reason a frame should not be optimized entirely for stiffness at the expense of everything else is material fatigue. A frame that maximizes stiffness is a frame that puts its materials under more stress. So if you dial up the stiffness all the way, you'll get less longevity and eventual stress fractures or worse.

What most riders think of as stiffness/springiness/feel in their bike comes from the flex (or lack thereof) in their tires, seat, seatpost, spokes, and the harmonic response of their frame to vibrations from the ride. That response is actually a key part of subjective rider satisfaction, I think because we subconsciously feel more in control (because we can feel what the bike is doing better) when the vibrations are more pronounced.

This. You can more or less get any kind of stiffness, with any material by changing the geometry. I guess the different feel that people have when using frames of various materials is more due to geometric constraints of the frame. A frame with the same geometry (which includes tube thickness etc) and a different material will behave differently. But in theory you could construct a frame with equal stiffness in all directions from other materials. However, you might run into other problems, like fatigue resistance or tensile strength or sth with a particular geometry. That will then force you to choose another geometry for other materials (e.g. aluminum frames will have a bigger tube diameter than steel frames, due to buckling of the tubes - if you want equal weight)

It's easy with steel to go outside of the realm of easy repairability. In the last days of steel before aluminum became affordable and even before carbon fiber did, it was common to for fancier bikes to have tubing that changed thickness (interior of course) once or twice, as stiffness at the ends of the tubs tends to matter more, and it's easier to weld thicker pieces of metal.

And then you had Serotta, who before they switched to titanium, made steel frames that were not just double-butted, but they also spirally ground the butting to maintain most of the torsional stiffness but lose a couple more ounces of weight.

Yes. Imagine rowing a boat with flexible oars. Then it is easy to understand how much force is lost.

There are a bunch of photos showing the test fixtures that they're using to measure frame flex which pretty clearly show what they're constraining and where they're adding force with the cylinder. It's not a free body diagram and it doesn't show the rider, but what exactly are you looking for?

HELLO HAMBINI FANS AND WELCOME