donderdag 30 juli 2015

I 'm no weight weenie, yet weight is important.

A year has passed since my last post. But I haven 't been sitting down, on the contrary. Besides the construction works at home, I restaured a couple of bicycles, bought some and sold some.

Recently I purchased an Aviac, badged Peugeot. It 's a wonderful bicycle, fully made of aluminum. After rebuilding it, I put it on the scale: only 11.2kg for a fully equipped randonneur. Hard to believe... 

My Liberia weighs about 14kg, including the large front rack. 

I wanted to calculate how much weight I would be able to save by replacing some of the Liberia parts.

For instance, the wheels. 

The Liberia front wheel is built using VO Diagonale rims, Normandy hubs and stainless steel spokes. The front wheel weighs 1.715kg.


The Aviac front wheel I bought on the internet. It has Super Champion rims, Normandy hubs and thinner galvanised spokes. It only weighs 1,573kg! 

That makes a difference of 142grams only for the front wheel!


Than the wingnuts: the steel Huret wingnuts weigh more than double the aluminum wingnuts!


Now that I have both wheels off the bikes, I could just as well switch them. Quite a difference, I must say...



What do you think about it? Should I keep the orange tires on the Liberia, and the white ones on the Aviac?



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