31–40 of 152 posts
Favorite road bike I’ve ever owned was the aluminum Klein Quantum Race designed by Greg Klein.
> He ruled out magnesium, which is best per unit weight in compressive buckling but is brittle and difficult to extrude. There's a fascinating, and very new, class of nano-laminate magnesium alloys called Long Period Stacking-Ordered (LPSO) alloys. These are very lean -- the standard version is 97% Mg + 1% Zn + 2% Y -- and they have outstanding mechanical properties. At an equal weight, they're much stronger and stif…
It's interesting that trackies in the 70s were trying to reduce weight that much. I don't think it's perceived as especially advantageous these days. The high-ish end track bike I'm assembling now will be a little over 8 kg (almost 18 lb). We also race much bigger gears (typically 95-110 gear inches in mass start racing, bigger for sprinting) than mentioned in the article (72 gear inches). The position that is consid…
Two things jumped out at me: the simple/non-adjustable saddle support, and the absolutely slammed bars affixed just above the fork. Was that normal for track bars at the time?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is cheap these days?
Low quality steel is very cheap but also really heavy. You can get a whole crappy bike for a couple hundred bucks. Higher end steel isn't as cheap but is still relatively heavy (compared to aluminum or carbon). You can get this kind of bike in the $1000-2000 price range (e.g. Surly). Aluminum bikes tend to be inexpensive, but also not the lightest. These can also be priced at $1000-2000 (Specialized, Trek, Giant, ...…
This time it was “Sheldon Brown’s personal bicycles” https://sheldonbrown.com/org/bicycle.html
That’s the essence of a great website.
Two things jumped out at me: the simple/non-adjustable saddle support, and the absolutely slammed bars affixed just above the fork. Was that normal for track bars at the time?
Yeah, both are relatively insane choices by modern lights. You see some other track bikes of that era with fork-mounted handlebars (it's not unique) but I believe conventional stem + bars were more popular.