Can We Build A Sub-8KG Mountain Bike?
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- čas přidán 16. 05. 2024
- Can you build a mountain bike that’s lighter than a gravel bike?
We kept hold of the BMC Twostroke from our One Hardtail To Rule Them All video last year to find out.
Tom scoured the land for some of the lightest components he could find to try to get our little hardtail weighing less than 8kg. To put it into perspective, that’s lighter than a carbon gravel bike!
Did he manage it? And what is it like to ride a mountain bike that’s close to half the weight of most people’s regular rides?
What do you think? Have your say on this incredible super-light custom mountain bike build in the comments!
#lightweight #weightweenie #mtb
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:22 The Bike
00:49 Wheels and Tyres
02:47 Cockpit
03:42 Brakes
04:15 Drivetrain
04:58 Weight
05:34 Ride Impressions
08:37 Conclusion
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Those cables can be shortened and cut!! 20 grams or more can easily to be found there, possibly even lighter by using light weight cable housing ;) !!!
I think so too, you can cut the cables and hoses and lose more than 20 g
For sure the cables can be cut, but we needed brakes to go back on another bike so had to leave the hoses long, definitely would save over 20g though.
Could even lose the rebound adjuster and air top cap for the fork to save a bit more!
Also replace all the screws with titanium one's! Could easily get lighter there
Now tell us how much the upgrade cost.
Exactly tree-fiddy, plus tax.
The price of another bike, probably 🤣
at least one, probably two :D @@wedgett1
The total build including orginal bike cost is £8-9K depending on if you can get the components on a deal.
A lot! The bike as stock is $4,699, the Schmolke cockpit around $1,400, Pi Rope Wheels are around $2,700, drivetrain around $1000 and brakes around $500, so roughly $10,299 in total.
That's still less than some off the shelf bikes though and would have been less if we had access to a frame only...
"Time to break out the spanners and get cracking" - please no cracking with spanners around those expensive carbon bits 😁
We can confirm no carbon components were cracked, broken and/or harmed during the making of this video
You can instal the OVR cartrige from the Portuguese company NDTUNED that weights a little less than the raceday cartrige but its full air, full metal and it is a alternative to Brain. No lockouts. I have a 1st gen SC32 with OVR at 1190gr.
Not at all saying it's heavy, but a bike should always be weighed at least ridable (with pedals) or better as ridden (also with bottle cage(s), computer mount, …) in my books.
Very true, but we weigh all of our test bikes without pedals, as different testers use different pedals. Tom Law favours Crank Brothers, Tom Marvin uses Shimano.
why no ESI grips? also maybe get more saving with higher end sid?
I'm not a fan of non-lock on grips, and unfortunately we had to put this video together very quickly as alluded to in the video, so ran out of time to source some lighter lock ons and a lighter fork.
For sure though, ESI grips and a SID SL Ultimate would save a chunk of weight.
Still have more plans for the bike though, so stay tuned!
I would definitely buy a SiD Ultimate SL and safe around 300 grams instead of those Smolke parts. (Crazy sales now for those forks). Nice build nonetheless.
For sure, the fork is an area you could save weight
Love it!
Glad you liked it!
I'd love to know what it weighs with pedals. Or, for that matter, to see you riding it without pedals... 😉
I’d like to see you do the same but with a duel suspension bike 🙂
We'd love to! Watch this space 😉
Pretty cool how light you can build with off the shelf parts
It's pretty wild isn't it! No mods, no dremel-ing, no cutting stuff off and bonding bits together, just stock, off the shelf parts
My friend has a 8.7kg Keith Monster with minimal carbon parts. granted his set up is a 1x 40t front an a stupidly light geared 11-40t cassette. I can't remember the fork but it's a Manitou. The drivetrain and brakes is all deore 11 speed. It's 100g lighter than my Felt F95 on 105 And carbon wheels lol
That's an impressive build! KCNC do some very light aluminium and scandium parts that are not far off Schmolke
Literally the best XC hardtail in the game!🔥
Turner Nitrous would like a word.
The BMC is a great bike to ride!
@mellissanash7517 shame they don't make the DW-link bikes anymore! 😔
Thinking of this frame for special gravel monster. Nice build
Are you planning to put a dropbar or alt bar ? Thanks!
Drop bars
Any reason this over a Salsa Cutthroat with a 100mm Sid Ultimate?
Or you could just get a Crux which would be 8kg out of the box.
@@gravelDavelove crux but few details put me off. Geometry for climbing- ht is better. Clearance for fast mtb tires. Better performance of mtb over gravel forks at the same weight. At the end of the day crux is more cx bike. And the price :) this bmc frame plus proper RS SID is half of crux frameset price - not SWORKS
The rats nest of cables and hoses is well over 20g.
Unfortunately, the brakes need to go back on another bike, so we had to leave them a touch long, but definitely an area where you could chop some weight from
200gr less would be easy to shave, cables and housings, ND tuned in the fork, a Gelu Sadler insteyof the schmolke, foam grips...
Nice
On those trails a gravel bike would be fine. And looking at the XC trends towards more aggressive trails, you probably will never see this bike on the World Cup. 😅
Ohh for sure it's no where near as gnarly as a world cup, but sadly thats as close as we get to world cup XC around Bristol that we can legally film on!
Would like to see how much more weight can you save by going with a rigid carbon fork and a single speed cog.
Maybe sub 7kg??
You can get sub 6kg with 12speed and 100mm travel if you make the right choices. You’d have to use a different frame though.
You could for sure go lighter by doing that, but it wouldn't be as fun to ride!
Were the tires weeping already or just lazy clean up?
Just due to time constraints, we had to film the bike shots very quickly and forgot to wipe the sealant off the tyres from fitting 🫠 The tyres didn't weep at all and held air perfectly
At this point hardtails are clunky gravel bikes - give us a true full-sus mtb.
At this point Gravel bikes are wannabe XC bikes with way less capability off road and On flat and steep terrain a XC hardtail will dust any XC Full suspension bike. Period
All statements here are true 😉yet I love all 3 for different reasons not mentioning aero gravel bikes ❤️
We'd love to do a weight weenie full suspension build, though I think Tom will need to recover from the stresses caused by this one first!
They’re not that similar imo. Gravel bike is still just basically a slack road bike with bigger tyres. The geometry and position of these bikes are for totally different markets
It's impressive considering my 26 wheels pimped up 1996 Mongoose team SX weight a hair under 9kg, I wouldn't ride it now tho 😂
Would make a nice gravel bike though 😉
BMC😍😍😍🤑🤑🤑👍👍👍👍
Could'a cut an inch off the seat tube and a couple cm off the bar and had sub 8 kg
Could have done, but Tom was close to minimum insertion on the post and didn't want to cut the bars down, he wanted the extra control of the wider bar.
Epic hardtail is lighter frame, maybe even go for lauf fork if terrain allows
There’s still a ton of weight to be saved on the wheels, crankset, and misc. parts like the handlebar and seat post+ saddle before I’d consider switching frames or getting rid of most of the travel.
For sure there are lighter frames around, but this was the lightest off the shelf bike we had in for testing and is still damn light as stock! 😉
@oliverjacobs8594, if you can find us a lighter set of wheels than these Pi Rope's we'll be impressed! 951g for the pair is incredibly light without having to customise and hack things apart
@@bikeradar sure thing! I would use extralite hyperboost hubs + aliexpress 1.8gram carbon spokes + aluminum spoke nipples + any 250g mountain bike rim you can find (there’s a few out there). This should come in about 100 grams lighter than the pi rope.
Impressive for a hardtail? Cool, it should be easier build a lighter full suspension bike then😅
Challenge accepted 😉
Could you shave weight with a lighter fork? I wonder. 🤔 That would have been my 1st mod.
I've built and lightened many a weight weenie's bike in my days and have seen the seriously intent individuals spend up to $1000 USD per gram for a lighter bike. I always said just take a good poop before you ride and you can shave pounds for free. 😅
Yep, we could save around 150-200g on the fork, but couldn't source one in time for shooting. That would be our next port of call for saving some weight, after having a 💩 of course!
Hard tail ( high end ) should weigh around a gravel bike.
They're getting close! Even stock, this bike was lighter than some of the gravel bikes we've had, even the "lightweight" carbon ones
My current hardtail is 7.7kg but much much much less expensive than that
Nice work! For sure you can go lighter, for cheaper, especially if you look second hand.
@@bikeradar nah all new.
@@bikeradar around 5k you can build something 7.5kg
Trickstuff Piccola brakes are lighter than Hope’s.
Well yeah, nothing on this bike is close to minimum weight.
We had a set of Piccola's on the way for filming, but they got stuck in UK customs. Insert your opinion on Brexit here...
Slamming the stem would help.
Lighter doesn't mean stronger especially for a mountain bike. Try doing big jumps or high stress on the frame and it's bound to break...which means throw the frame away as it can't be repaired like a metal frame bike.
The bike is still 2kg heavier than it a proper weight weenie mtb, it’ll be fine.
@stevemullin1195 carbon is actually easier to repair than aluminium, as aluminium requires heat treating, which can distort the frame after the repair.
Carbon frames are quite easily repaired if you have the know how, we did just that in a recent video, check it out!
czcams.com/video/7iXPc4nWOvc/video.html
1st!!
1,000,000 BikeRadar points heading your way!
This frame is very heavy
There are lighter frames around, but this is far from heavy!
Guys who weigh their bikes without pedals 👎🏻
As mentioned in another comment, it's how we weigh all of our test bikes, as different riders will use different pedals
@@bikeradar But can't that be said of ALL the components then, especially when it comes down to a custom build? Then ALL components would differ in weight...
Unless you win a race on it now it was all in vain. Go prove its worth
Tom will need more than a light bike to win ANY races 😂 The only race he'll be winning is the one to Donut Tuesdays in the BikeRadar office!
As well as any little cutting and trimming down the new superlight parts, could maybe go with a rigid carbon fork.
Most definitely sub-8kg then.
My hardtail is under 8kg with my Lauf fork
Yep, a rigid fork would take us very close to 7KG, but it would be substantially less capable and comfortable!