Weight Weenie Core Principles

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Weight Weenie Core Principles

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djconnel

Post subject: Weight Weenie Core Principles

Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2009 4:51 pm

Joined: Wed Sep 26, 2007 1:57 pm
Posts: 6899
Location: San Francisco, CA

I decided to write down some core principles which define weight-weenieism to me. Essentially all opinions about bicycles and weight can be traced to one or more of these essential core principles.

Core principles:

No weight reduction is too small to be important at an acceptable marginal cost.
Reliability, strength, and stiffness have diminishing returns, but weight reduction does not.
Function implies form.
Weight reduction has intrinsic value beyond the extent to which it rewards speed (light weight components are cool).

Examples:

If it's worth spending $3k to save a kilogram, it's worth spending $3 to save 1 gram, neglecting labor cost.
There's a "good enough" level of stiffness, strength, and reliability, but since the bike mass is much smaller than the body mass, each additional gram saved has essentially the same benefit within the constraints of silly UCI rules. There's no "light enough".
If something works well, that's intrinsically beautiful (not that this beauty can't be offset by wretched color choices). This motivates, for example, an attraction to naked carbon frames.
There exists a minimum threshold greater than zero for a heavier bike to be faster than a lighter bike for the heavier bike to be preferred.

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DC41

Post subject: Re: Weight Weenie Core Principles

Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2009 4:05 pm

Joined: Fri Apr 28, 2006 11:36 pm
Posts: 909

How about:

* The pursuit of light-weight, but functional bicycles can be an exercise in aesthetics (form following function, engineering as art, etc.) that's independent of performance gains.

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TheBugMan

Post subject: Re: Weight Weenie Core Principles

Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 4:20 pm

Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2008 7:08 am
Posts: 2218
Location: Seattle ZOO - AfterReceivingComplaints, MyAvatarIsNowChanged. IGiveYouMySexyMug.

I feel like part of some religious cult group (^_^).

I'm gonna go sacrifice my 23lb road bike now.

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