So I've just bought myself my first road bike - it's a Raleigh Airlite 200 which I paid £400 for; 3 months ago it was £600 because it's a 2011 model (no difference in 2012 models except the design, really).
It's a pretty standard entry level road bike - alloy frame, carbon forks, Shim Sora 18-speed gears.
Any of you lads ride a road bike? What do you ride?
Also, would you advise me getting a triple chainset so I can increase the number of gears to 27?
I'm going to have a look at the tool kit and winter clothing, but I have been warned - similar to the experience of >>/uhu/1085 - to go there when it opens or risk disappointment.
>>2193 Actually when I went there in the morning there was a part they needed to send off for. Went to Evans Cycles to look and they had a Tern on special offer for 299. I know from my research that Tern is quality and that the guy who started it basically jumped ship from Brompton so I snapped it up.
Terns are ace - they're eerily similar to Dahons, only with better-engineered hinge clamps. The whole Tern story is Shakespearian; Tern is run by Florence and Joshua Hon, the wife and son of Dahon founder David Hon. The cheeky bastards poached most of the best staff and claimed ownership of a stack of patents.
>>2205 I regret not getting a pair of the trousers, I picked up the winter jacket, gloves and the tool kit. I've tried on the jacket and I'm very happy with it, although the cheeky buggers had put large price tags for the cycling shirts (which were £7 cheaper) on them.
>>2210 Hah.
Everything looked ace, I had my hands full of gear for about 10 minutes, hopped up on consumer dope, until I realised I'm broke and dumped it all back into the cage, sulking to the checkout with my solitary purchase.
Anyone have experience with the 'performance enhancing' undergarments? I usually just wear long-johns during winter but always on the lookout for something better.
>>2182 RIP the Mu P8. In a rather shit-your-pants kind of moment the whatever its called where the steering post attaches through the frame to the front forks snapped during my commute this morning. It must've looked hilarious for onlookers.
Looks like I'll have to make use of my rainy day fund to get a replacement, and this thread should come in handy. I'm sorely tempted to dip into my overdraft and stretch to a Moulton TSR-2 at this stage…
>>2239 Actually snapped, see picture. I'm currently trying to hassle Raleigh (they took over Dahon sales in the UK earlier this year, it turns out) into giving me a replacement part, but in the mean time it's properly fudged and unusable.
I'd just set off from a set of traffic lights and maybe pedalled two or three times, so I was rolling but I wasn't going too fast. It's a bit of a blur, but at first I thought the handlebar post clamp had undone itself (that happened once before and is not a big deal).
>>2241 http://www.cyclescheme.co.uk/ ? Work is extremely bike friendly and it's a great scheme but we discussed it and came to the conclusion that there are good reasons not to bother in this particular case.
Lest the whole thing is made to sound too negative: it's still a great scheme. If you're looking to buy a bike but can't quite (or don't want to) plonk down the money now* then its the best of way bar none of securing financing for it. In a round-about way, it lets proper independent bike shops offer financing deals usually only offered by the big boys. It may not be one size fits all, but it will certainly fit some.
* This is not meant to be an invitation to spend beyond your means, be sensible ffs.
It was introduced as a government initiative, to provide a cycling equivalent to a company car. To encourage takeup, they gave the arrangement favourable tax status. A scheme could lease you a bike, charging the leasing fees as a pre-tax salary sacrifice, with a final payment to keep the bike. People totally took the piss, with firms like Planet X Bikes offering "Cyclescheme specials" - high-end road and triathlon bikes specced to come in at exactly the £1000 limit. HMRC changed the rules, taking away most of the tax incentive.
It's still an alright deal if you don't have the cash up front, but because of the admin costs, bike shops will only do cyclescheme on full-price bikes and won't haggle. If you have the cash up front (or put the bike on a 0% credit card) you can usually get a much better deal by shopping around for discounted end-of-season bikes.
Thinking of getting one of these on the CycleScheme. Comes in at exactly £1000, which is a bit over the odds compared to the Secteur Triple/Sport without the disc brakes, but I like them. Going to be used purely at weekends for long fitness rides. Work is a 55 mile round trip, I might do it once or twice but not every day.
Think I will change the tyres out to Marathon Plus's but thats about it.
>>2266 Looks quite neat, though I'd be a bit wary about the exact cycle-scheme friendly price. The brakes are fine — I've got BB7s on my bike, but by all accounts the BB5s are no worse to use. Only other thing I can think of is that you might want to consider Kojaks instead of the Marathons if you're staying on decent roads for your rides… no point getting a bike with carbon this-and-that only to weigh it down with some heavy rubber.
Can you lads recommend any bike racks? I'm planning on getting a high rear mounted one, but I'm not sure where to begin. I've had a quick look in Halfords, but that's it.
>>2623 Saris Bones, if you want it to fit every car ever (including MX-5).
If you don't have that requirement, I'm sure other racks are cheaper and fine.
Sorry to hijack the thread but I didn't think it necessary to create another bicycle thread.
I want to buy a bicycle for commuting.
I think I will be best served with a speed oriented hybrid, though i find the all terrain hybrids much more aesthetically pleasing.
I don't want to spend more than £400.
I live in a hilly city, and my commute is about 2 miles each way, through the city centre. The last time I rode a bicycle was at least 8 years ago.
A two mile commute should take you less than ten minutes, so practically any bike will do. Speed is essentially irrelevant over that distance, you're just not going to notice the difference between bikes in your journey time. I suggest visiting a couple of bike shops and test-riding a few bikes to see what you're comfortable with.
For commuting, the most important things are security and practicality. Most bikes can become an excellent commuter with the right accessories.
The bikes you've listed don't come with mudguards, which are absolutely essential on a commuter bike. Road spray is filthy and can badly stain your clothes, but good mudguards will keep you spotless.
Unless you have secure bike storage at work, you're going to need good locks. I recommend a Kryptonite Evolution or Abus Granit D-lock, plus a set of security skewers. Security skewers will help stop your wheels and saddle from getting nicked.
Punctures are the bane of the commuter cyclist's life. On glass-strewn city streets, a lot of people get punctures regularly. I always keep a spare tube and a pump in my messenger bag, because I prefer to mend a puncture and be on my way. If you really can't be arsed with punctures, fit a set of Schwalbe Marathon Plus or Durano Plus tyres. They're not cheap (about £50 a pair) and they don't roll quite as well as standard tyres, but they're almost completely punctureproof.
IMHO the best deal going at the moment for a commuter bike is the B'Twin NeWork 5. It's no featherweight, but it's amazingly well equipped for the price.
>>2650 Thanks for the advice about security and punctures.
That bikes really not my style though.
I want something I can twat about on, and have a bit of fun. Maybe take out for a blast at the weekends or after work.
Couldn't I fit mudguards to the bikes I posted?
I really like the gryphon but it only seems to be available in 21".
I'm only 5 8" , 21" will be too big?
I second this. My commuter bike has a pair and they are definitely worth it. I can happily ride straight over broken glass without worrying about a puncture or having to swerve to avoid it. The rolling isn't too noticeable, though I had just switched from 2.1 hybrid tyres. One thing is the higher profile means cornering can feel a little different with them
The 21" Gryphon will definitely be too big for you. Nearly all hybrids will take mudguards, although you can sometimes have issues with fitting both fat tyres and mudguards, especially on the back wheel. Fitting mudguards isn't hard, but it is an infuriatingly fiddly task.
I'd strongly recommend doing some test rides to work out what compromise between fun and practicality suits you. A fast bike is necessarily an uncomfortable one and vice-versa. For a weekend blast around the lanes, a road bike is a far better choice than any hybrid - the riding position is faster and more efficient and the bike feels sharper and more responsive. The tradeoff is that you're stuck with hard, skinny tyres and a hunched-over riding position.
Novice cyclists are notoriously bad at guessing this. If you have a skim through the YACF or CTC forums, you'll find scores of threads started by people who've just bought a new bike, asking things like "I can't get up the hills round here, how do I get lower gears?", "My saddle is a pain in the arse, what should I get?", "How do I stop my neck hurting on my road bike?" and "How do I fit faster tyres to my hybrid?". Most of these problems could have easily been avoided with a couple of test rides. Evans cycles will let you take anything in the shop out for a spin, as will EBC and any decent independent dealer.
>>2652 Ditto, I cannot recommend the Marathon Plus enough, though they do have downsides. One, they are comparatively heavy and as a spinning part of the bike that is noticeable. Two, they are a pain to get on and off the wheel unless you have a couple of cable ties handy, so emergency tube repair/replacement is no fun. That said, they are nigh on indestructible, so that doesn't come up too often. Keep them close to their max PSI and they even roll OK — not as well as Gatorskins or proper road slicks, of course, but well enough. When commuting longer distances, the peace of mind is great, though.
They are not peerless, however. Michelin City's (my front tyre for the past 2k odd miles has been a Michelin City 26x1.85) are also surprisingly glass resistant, have mostly slick tread when going straight and also tend be less than half as expensive than the Schwalbe's. They lack the lammelar edge structure of the Marathon Plus' as well as the dynamo rail, but unless you're cornering at 40mph on packed snow that hardly makes a difference.
>>2653 > Fitting mudguards isn't hard, but it is an infuriatingly fiddly task.
If you fit SKS ones, then yeah. You'll need a hack saw, maybe some pliers and a bit of patience because the instructions suck (you can tell how much they care when the first paragraph is "Make sure all parts are present" without giving you a parts list).
As a grumpy old bike snob, I am immensely gratified by the cyclocross trend - the market is now filling up with brilliant bikes like yours, lightweight and sporty machines that still have clearance for fat tyres. Not so long ago, your choices were generally limited to all-out racers with clearance for 25c tyres at best, or stodgy old tourers with heavy steel frames and slack angles. Now you can walk into any branch of Evans and buy a bike that can legitimately do anything well, from a local crit race to a worldwide tour.
>>2865 Yes! A friend at work turned me onto the whole cyclocross thing - most of my riding is on canal towpaths (I'm blessed with many miles of them near my house) which are just muddy enough and lumpy enough to give a normal road bike pause for thought, whilst I've always found mountain bikes just too slow. I thought the chunky tyres might slow it down a bit, but damn its quick. I love it very much already.
I'm bike shopping at the moment. It's distressing how much you're paying for a branded frame these days. I'm seeing Pinarellos, Cinellis, and Bianchis for £2.5k that are fitted with absolute entry level kit - Campy Veloce or Shimano Tiagra. The best I've seen is a Cinelli with Campy Athena, their cheapest possible 11 speed groupset. And it's not even the full fucking groupset, they've stuck an FSA crank on there to save money. Two and a half grand! The wheels are shit on them all too.
I have no choice but to go for a Ribble. Not that it's a bad choice at all. Fuck the eyeties. Look at that. Might go campy wheels too for full wanky effect.
>>2867 Yes, I was also looking at the Ribble site today too - their bike builder is very nice, I don't know why all bikes aren't bought that way (actually I do, as you point out, its so that manufacturers can quietly skimp on parts).
My new bike in >>2864 also has the cheap Shimano Tiagras - I was waiting for Cannondale to launch the model up which had the Ultegra group sets, but nobody seems to have any stock of them.
Allow me to ask a beginners question, I can just buy the Ultegra 10-speed cassette, derailleures and shifters and fit them myself, right? I'm going to stick with the FSA cranks until I get a proper fitting and I know the right size cranks for me - but there are no weird compatibility problems mixing up Shimanos as long as I buy 10-speed/dual levers? Forgive my ignorance.
That sort of puts it into perspective for me too. I could spend probably a grand less and have a bike that would be very nearly as wonderful, but I'll be buying it to reward myself for losing nearly eight stone (mostly by pedalling my fat arse off on a much cheaper bike), so I'm justifying it that way. It's worth almost twice as much as my car.
>Allow me to ask a beginners question, I can just buy the Ultegra 10-speed cassette, derailleures and shifters and fit them myself, right? I'm going to stick with the FSA cranks until I get a proper fitting and I know the right size cranks for me - but there are no weird compatibility problems mixing up Shimanos as long as I buy 10-speed/dual levers? Forgive my ignorance.
I'm not a Shimano expert, but there's almost no reason that won't work. The shifters share the same mechanics, and you are correct in thinking that as long as everything is 10-speed it'll all be compatible.
Entry-level kit is really good though, the trickle-down of technology means that mid-range groupsets of today shift better than Dura-Ace/Record of a few years ago and are scarcely heavier. Personally, I think that there's little reason to go beyond 105/Veloce unless you're a weight weenie or desperately keen to get 11spd or electric shifting. I agree with you on the shit wheels though.
The weak pound means we're getting absolutely battered on bike prices, but it's still possible to get an excellent carbon bike for under a grand from Ribble or Planet X. The latter will do you a carbon frame with full Ultegra 10 for £1000, or Ultegra 11 for £1200. God only knows how they do it. Admittedly their Pro Carbon frame is a bit old fashioned with round tubes and external cable routing, but it also has an excellent racing pedigree. If you attend any amateur race in this country you'll see a lot of Ribble, Planet X and Boardman bikes and for good reason.
Any road groupset will fit on any road bike. If you stick within Shimano 10 speed, you can freely mix and match - Ultegra, 105 and Tiagra will all work together perfectly. You'll see this often on new bikes, where manufacturers tend to scrimp on less glamorous bits like cassettes and front mechs. The only compatibility issue you might face is if you go up to 11 speed - most freehubs designed for 8/9/10 speed aren't wide enough to take a 10 speed cassette, so you might need a new back wheel.
>>2871 How much lighter are carbon frames compared to an equivalent level titanium or aluminium frame? Sure you're saving on density but you're going to need a much thicker frame to give the same strength, and the fracture toughness will be way lower regardless. Maybe for road bikes the stresses aren't huge but wouldn't carbon fibre composites be a bad idea for mountain bikes (the ones that actually go up mountains)?
I was talking to the guy in this bikeshop and he was telling me how some people pay £100 for two carbon fibre water bottle holders. Ridiculous when you can get polymer ones far far cheaper, for saving maybe a few grams?
Carbon is a better material in every respect but cost. It is both stiffer and stronger by weight than aluminium or titanium; Gram for gram, a carbon tube has considerably better breaking strength than any metal tube. There's a good reason why the pro peloton has been an all-carbon affair for years. That why requires a little bit of explanation, which I'll come to in a couple of paragraphs.
The lightest useable aluminium frame I'm aware of is the Kinesis Racelight Aithein, which weighs ~1200g plus 330g for a carbon monocoque fork. They use every trick in the book to get down to that weight; The Aithein really is the absolute limit of aluminium and comes with a strict rider weight limit of 14 stone. At a heavy discount, you can pick up an Aithein frameset for £545. For £45 less, you could have a Planet X RT-57 carbon frameset, which is stiffer and 200g lighter.
Titanium frames aren't significantly lighter than the best aluminium frames; Titanium is preferred mainly by touring cyclists, because unlike aluminium it has a defined fatigue limit and so is more resistant to fatigue cracking; In practice, this is undermined by the difficulty in cleanly welding titanium, leading to a lot of cracked welds. Titanium is of course drastically more expensive.
Where aluminium is running out of steam, carbon is just getting started. At the absolute elite end of the market, you have frames like the Cervelo R5Ca, weighing in at a mere 667g.
The weight advantage is just a small part of the story. Carbon composites are anisotropic, meaning that their strength and stiffness is not directionally uniform. Carbon fibres are stiff mainly along their length, which allows a designer to put stiffness only where it is needed. This allows forks and dropouts to be very stiff in torsion (providing a stable, sure ride) but somewhat flexible under vertical loads, providing some suspension effect.
Beyond the entry-level, what really excites designers about carbon is that you can mold it into practically any shape you like, which is terrific news for the aerodynamicists. Carbon can be contorted and tortured into shapes that cut through the air smoothly, shapes that would be all but impossible in metal. It more readily accommodates features like integrated cable routing and integrated brake calipers, hiding these aerodynamically dirty components from the wind. The frame you see to the left (the Cervelo P5) is still considerably lighter than any aluminium frame, but is vastly more aerodynamic. Aero advantages aren't terribly important to a recreational cyclist, but they are everything to a competitive sprinter or time triallist. Professional mechanics and directeurs sportifs don't pay much attention to weight any more, the number they care about is drag coefficient.
Exactly the same applies to wheels - carbon wheel rims are lighter and stiffer than aluminium, and can be made into deep foil shapes that offer big aerodynamic advantages.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with aluminium frames and they're excellent value for training or commuting, but the competitive advantages of carbon are immense.
>>2873 Ah I see, thanks for the explanation. I suppose the same arguments you would apply to cars don't apply equally to bikes. Titanium or alluminium alloys can withstand far greater strain (up to 10% compared to a fraction of a percent for composites) so I'd be worried about carbon-fibre or fibreglass cars shattering on impact, though I guess with bikes the rider will be thrown off from any serious impact and you're going to be a lot more worried about your skull cracking than your bike. When it comes to buckling there won't be much to choose between alloys or composites in terms of stiffness so having a thicker composite frame will beat a thinner alloy one.
Just wondering, the bike you posted looks very much like a very specialised racing bike. It was my naive impression that most serious racing bikes were singlespeed or even fixed gear but that appears to have rear dérailleurs? Is it more of a Tour De France type bike than a dedicated velodrome one?
>>2873 Oh and speaking of anisotropy, there will still be anisotropy present in alloy frames from cold-working (e.g extrusion), though not to the same extent as having uni- or bi-directional fibres.
>It is both stiffer and stronger by weight than aluminium or titanium; Gram for gram, a carbon tube has considerably better breaking strength than any metal tube.
CFRP can be stiffer than aluminium but is comparable to titanium and nowhere near as stiff as steel. And whilst it may have a better strength to weight ratio in both tension and compression, there are a couple of things you must remember here. Firstly, though tougher than its components carbon-fibre is still a brittle material compared to alloys. It's going to catastrophically fail with very little deformation, so will be more vulnerable to sudden impulses. Secondly even with the best manufacturing methods, the variance in strength is going to be far higher in composites than in alloys. Practically this means that if you want (say) less than 1 in 10000 bikes to fail under a given load, the usable strength will be significantly lower than the mean.
The only other option would be to build a certain number of frames and test each one up to the target strength, chucking away those that fail - however given that cost of manufacture this seems wasteful and likely to drive the price even higher.
The anisotropy that can be gained from cold-working has little or no practical application in bicycle frame design.
>Practically this means that if you want (say) less than 1 in 10000 bikes to fail under a given load, the usable strength will be significantly lower than the mean.
Bicycle frames are stiffness-critical. An adequately stiff carbon frame will automatically exceed the EN 14781 standards by a considerable margin. Carbon does fracture rather than deform, but that's relatively unimportant. Road cyclists don't go about dropping off ledges and launching off ramps, if their bike suffers a big impact then it's due to crash damage. It really doesn't matter much what happens to your bike if you've already fallen off it. Any impact that could possibly fracture a carbon frame or fork would be more than sufficient to unmount the rider. Two decades of experience in the pro peloton has borne this out. An impact severe enough to fracture a carbon frame will irreparably damage any metal frame - even a modest dent is a fatal wound to a thin-walled butted tube.
The biggest practical problem with CFRP is that of delamination due to crash damage, which can cause serious safety incidents, but the industry is well aware of the issue and all major manufacturers offer non-destructive testing services as part of their frame warranty. Frame failures during use are almost always down to user error, usually the use of inappropriate clamping surfaces or excessive torque. Catastrophic failure of aluminium is far more common due to fatigue. This is particularly problematic in the fork steerer, which is heavily stressed, safety-critical and very difficult to inspect (see Hincapie's 2006 Paris-Roubaix crash).
>CFRP can be stiffer than aluminium but is comparable to titanium and nowhere near as stiff as steel.
A modern high-modulus carbon in suitable layup is in fact absolutely stiffer and stronger in use than all but the most exotic maraging steels (~350GPa/2000MPa on axis), but that's irrelevant as we're interested in specific properties; In this respect, CFRP has steel knocked into a cocked hat. The low density of CFRP (~2.4g/cc) is absolutely crucial, allowing for hugely oversized structures and the benefits thereof. That was the key benefit of aluminium, which otherwise has little merit as a framebuilding material.
The war is over, composites have won. The last holdout of metal as a structural material in racing bicycles was the venerable Ambrosio Nemesis rim, which saw a once-yearly outing in the professional peloton for the cobbled classics. Zipp showed that a properly designed carbon rim is lighter, stiffer and stronger than any metallic rim.
>>2876 A very interesting reply thank you. I must confess that I'm not a serious cyclist so I'm just looking at it from a materials perspective. May I ask where you are getting your numbers from? My source gives values of between 69-150GPa Young's modulus and 28-60GPa shear modulus for CFRP, I'm guessing the large range takes into account different geometries and manufacture methods? Also it seems to suggest densities of more like 1500-1600kgm^-3; 2400kgm^-3 as you say is barely any less than wrought aluminium alloys so this seems suspect.
>>2876 >It really doesn't matter much what happens to your bike if you've already fallen off it.
True enough for road biking, though for mountain biking it's quite important to know when to ditch your bike before falling with it down a drop. I know I'd be much more willing to do so if I knew the frame wasn't going to shatter.
The gross and net result of all this is that people who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles. When a man lets things go so far that he is more than half a bicycle, you will not see him so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones.
CFRP is really complicated stuff. You're not so much dealing with a material as an engineering structure in its own right. It is very difficult to generalise and the "average" properties of CFRP depend enormously on the industry and application.
The properties of the fibre itself vary hugely depending on the fibre manufacturing process, with elastic moduli ranging from 55GPa to 900GPa and tensile strength from 2000MPa to 6000MPa. The best fibre is shockingly expensive, dwarfing the costs of even very exotic metal alloys. You generally can't get strength and stiffness in the same fibre, so there's a complex tradeoff between cost, strength and stiffness.
Once you've chosen your fibre, you need to look at the laminate. Fibre volume fractions can vary from 30% with a crude wet layup up to 60%+ with a pre-preg process. Excess resin is worse than useless, adding weight and undermining the strength of the laminate. Ideally, the fibre needs to be completely wetted-out without any surplus resin. Air bubbles (voids) severely undermine strength, riddling the laminate with nucleation points for stress fractures and delamination. Autoclave processing massively increases the strength of a laminate by reducing voids to a minimum, ensuring proper resin distribution and allowing for the use of stronger high cure temperature resins.
Standard woven cloth is very convenient (both in design and manufacturing), but it's a relatively poor way to use the fibre. The crimp created by the interlacing of the fibres translates some normal stress into shear and the uneven surface of the cloth reduces the fibre volume. Unidirectional fabrics maximise the properties of the fibre by avoiding crimp, but increase design complexity substantially and makes the laminate less resilient to mistreatment. A woven fabric allows neighbouring fibres to support each other, so that a break in a fibre caused by drilled holes or damage only affects the local area. With UD, a broken fibre can move within the matrix, contributing little to the mechanical properties of the laminate.
The net result is that there's a vast range in the practical properties of CFRP, with bicycle frames being at the higher end. Because a bicycle frame is relatively small and high-value, you can go hell-for-leather in optimising the layup. You can afford to use high-grade fibre, heated steel tooling with internal bladder moulding and a high-pressure autoclave; You can trust the user to care for the frame and inspect it regularly for damage, so you can get away with using mainly or exclusively unidirectional fabric. Most engineers using composite materials don't have those luxuries.
The range is fairly broad just within bicycle frames. A basic carbon frame costs about £500 and weighs about 1.2kg, a top frame might be ten times the price and half the weight for the same stiffness. The difference is mainly accounted for by better quality carbon fibre, a more complex layup schedule and more careful process control.
A road bike is easier in that it uses your strength and power more efficiently, so for the same amount of energy, you go farther and faster. But a hybrid is far more comfortable on your arms, back, arse, and feet, so the same ride may leave you feeling fresher on a hybrid. A hybrid may also be geared lower to make hills easier (but slower), though a compact crankset on a roadie does much the same thing.
A road bike is invariably more efficient though so if we're talking pure effort of legs vs miles traveled it will always win. In your case you may feel the fatigue in your body more than your legs, or maybe your road bike is less appropriately geared for your riding. Do you live in a particularly hilly area?
It may just be that your road bike is geared higher than your hybrid then. Though if you feel like your roadie is still harder to ride than your hybrid on flat roads, I may be talking out of my calloused arse.
