Of course, if he is racing say in the HK equivelent to the SCCA and racing other Lotus drivers, loss of 80 pounds is a big advantage!

He was probably not reading TTAC the whole time he worked on it. I was. Umm. Who’s the loser here?

Rivendell bikes come with kickstand mounts now. Grant Petersen is right. Weight weenie-ism is quite appropriate for racers and their teams and factory support if any, very fine indeed. If you are not racing its stupid and counterproductive unless hell, you just like a really light bike and are OK with the costs in which case its OK again. No worries.

Bikes- light is now coming with more and more divergent materials and designs. The improvements are also associated with altered bearing dimensions and locations and basic materials and electronics etc, although simple classic brazed lugged steel is still best for me.

The thing missingfrom my bike equation is time to ride and place, I am trapped by job in suburban Boston, an extremely bicycle unfriendly place.

With apologies to any sensitive readers…

There once was a young man from Hong Kong
Whose driver’s license read “Jimmy Wong”
Excess weight he could rid,
But from women he hid
The shame of his carbon fiber dong

$500? LOL. My cycling shoes cost that much. $500 barely gets you a middle range crank these days.

But, I have nothing to say… I was an early adopter of carbon fiber (mid 90’s) with my road bike… the frame weighs around 4 lbs with no components attached. (Kestrel)

He probably spent the extra money for quality too. You can’t buy a quality bike for $500 new. You can get something that will reliably get you around the city for $500, but it’s not something that you’re going to want to spend multiple hours a day riding. It usually takes $1000 or more to get a good quality mountain or road bike.

Some people are willing to spend ridiculous amounts of money to lose only a little bit of weight. $1600 to save 200g off the wheels is for the extremely wealthy or professional level athletes. Really, you could probably build a wheel without much more rotating mass for much cheaper anyway.

Why would I want a kickstand? If I’m not on my bike, it’s locked to something upright that can support it. I don’t think those who have never engaged in competitive cycling understand how much easier it is to control a lighter bike during quick transitions, or what it’s like to ride at your limit. That said, the mountain bike I used for racing was under $2000, and the BMX I used for racing was under $1000. The returns diminish quickly after a certain price level, and there would be no significant advantage to going above those levels unless you’re near the top, where every second counts and you’ve already reached peak physical condition.

To be fair, that’s not a carbon fiber body kit. It’s a carbon fiber body. Big difference.

I think the car looks great. Of course, it’s probably a little extreme considering the already light platform, but at least it’s not *only* cosmetic.

On that car, maaaaaybe it shaves a tenth off of his 1/4 mile and/or 0-60. And yes, that’s one expensive tenth… but who knows how much cash Jimmy Wong from Hong Kong has.

Yeah, but that is 7 ounces in the rotating wheel which is worth 10 pounds of love handles. Besides, after you lose the 10 pounds, you have the best of both worlds.

People obsess. Let them.

You people are hilarious, jumping all over bikers while 98 percent of the world would say, “Excuse me, you paid an extra $60,000 for that Corvette because it accelerates to 60 a second or two faster than the regular version? Do you have a life?” Unbelievable.

Actually I do have a life. I’m a cyclist and have a very expensive bike, but I spent the money for better reliability and not weight. My criticisms were directed primarily toward myself because I need to lose body weight before I can even think about obsessing over components on my vehicles.

While I might not spend $60k extra for a Corvette for a few extra seconds of acceleration, I will spend extra money on a car to get what I want. What I want always goes beyond simple zero to 60 times.

There is a point of diminished return with weight reduction. I’ve known people to obsess over a few grams of weight on a bike (a few ounces) that might be lost through perspiration anyway during the ride. The subject of the post is another example. While dropping several hundred pounds of vehicle weight is a great thing, a major effort to drop just 80 lbs probably wasn’t worth the expense.

When I bought my bike, I was offered upgraded wheels that would have dropped the weight of the bike by a couple of hundred grams – 7 ounces. The upgrade would have cost about $1600 if I remember correctly. Losing 7 ounces off of my body is not difficult, so I passed on it. I’ll pay extra money for performance, but when I can accomplish my goals using a cheaper or better alternative, I’ll go for it every time.

If you went nuts on a decent sportbike and lopped off 80 lbs (to the tune of many thousands of dollars), you would see a staggering change in perfomance. I spent a lot of time and effort shaving 40 lbs off one of my bikes, and the difference was very much noticeable (anyone who rides a motorcycle and has ridden with a heavy backpack can tell you how much you can feel a 20-30 lb difference in weight). But 80 lbs difference in a car is less than the difference between a full tank of gas and a near-empty one – you’d have to be quite mad to notice from the seat of your pants.

And yeah, losing the weight equivalent of a fashion model is significant, especially in a car where lightness is the entire point.

It would be very beneficial to remove some weight from regular production cars. You can get better performance and gas economy in one fell swoop. I wish more engineering effort was put into reducing weight and not compromising strength (which usually means more exotic materials). Can you think of a new car that got lighter without getting smaller?

Anyway, how is wanting the lightest bike any different than paying thousands for an audio system with inaudible improvement, a flat-screen TV with imperceptible benefits or Bugatti Veyron with unusable attributes?

You people are hilarious, jumping all over bikers while 98 percent of the world would say, “Excuse me, you paid an extra $60,000 for that Corvette because it accelerates to 60 a second or two faster than the regular version? Do you have a life?” Unbelievable.

Carbon fibre body kits are soooo last year.

Yeah I saw someone without whose bicycle didn’t have a kickstand. The reason they gave was weight saving. So saving around 1 kg is worth this inconvenience?