Making Mountain Bikes Lightweight
Singletracks Mountain Bike Podcast
Singletracks.com
4.7 • 574 Ratings
🗓️ 28 August 2017
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode of the Singletracks podcast, Greg and Jeff discuss mountain bikers’ obsession with lightweight bike frames and components. We’ll talk about how companies save weight on bikes, the advantages and disadvantages of lightweight bike parts, and how to save easy weight on your mountain bike.
--Keep up with the latest in mountain biking at Singletracks.com and on Instagram @singletracks
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Something unexpected has arrived in Happy Meal. |
| 0:03.0 | Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Hello Kitty and friends are teaming up for the Ultimate Collab. |
| 0:08.0 | Joining your little ones on a fun-fueled adventure. |
| 0:11.0 | Some fun, some food, it's all inside this Happy Meal. |
| 0:16.0 | Until the 2nd of February, from 11am includes one pre-selected book or toy whilst it's last. |
| 0:20.0 | Hey everybody, welcome to the single tracks podcast. Today it's Greg and I have Jeff here with me and we are |
| 0:26.9 | going to discuss how to save weight on your mountain bike. These days it seems like mountain bikers are |
| 0:32.2 | cutting back on their obsession with saving bike weight in favor of heavier upgrades like dropper posts, |
| 0:38.6 | larger tires, and other things that make the ride a bit more comfortable and fun. |
| 0:42.9 | But that doesn't mean that riders and manufacturers alike aren't continuing to seek |
| 0:47.6 | ways to cut frame and component weights. So Jeff, what are the advantages of a lighter bike? |
| 0:57.0 | So the advantages of a lighter bike are probably pretty obvious to most people, but basically it's going to be easier to pedal. You're going to |
| 1:02.1 | be able to climb better on a lighter bike. And it's also going to handle a little bit better. So |
| 1:07.1 | it's going to make it easier to get the bike up in the air and to, you know, corner and handle and do all the things you want to do on the bike. Basically, the bike's not going to be fighting you as much. So that's really the main advantage of a light bike. So I've heard that a heavy downhill bike offers an advantage over one that is too light because you're solely going downhill |
| 1:29.1 | and you're not worried about pedaling it uphill. Do you think that's true or false? |
| 1:33.1 | I don't know. I mean, this is something that I've heard as well, especially several years ago |
| 1:38.8 | when people were starting to think about carbon fiber downhill bikes. Some people, some of the old school people thought |
| 1:45.6 | you needed a bigger bike that it, you know, stayed. It was more stable, I think is one of the |
| 1:51.3 | things that people tend to think about a heavier downhill bike. And like you said, you don't |
| 1:56.3 | have to pedal it uphill, so there isn't a lot of advantage. But if we just look at the World Cup circuit |
| 2:02.3 | and race results and things, I mean, we'll see that the lighter bikes are the faster bikes. |
| 2:07.9 | And, you know, I think that's been pretty well proven at this point. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Singletracks.com, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Singletracks.com and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

