Your Bike is Too Light 1

Looking back at downhill bikes when I first started riding really
puts into perspective just how far they have come in recent years. It’s
not quite as bad as looking back on those imitation bird winged
contraptions that man was building to try and take flight, but it’s
clear that most downhill bikes back in the day were heavy, fragile, and
barely worked for their intended purpose. It’s amazing to me that
racers still shredded so hard on those rigs.

But have we really made that much progress?

There’s an awful lot of hype and banter regarding bike weight on
forums these days and it really makes me questions riders’ priorities.
Bikes used to weigh in around 45 pounds on average and these days that
is considered morbidly obese by anyone with a 1000+ post count. Some
people’s builds are taunting the 32-34 pound range and some are
bragging about that target being hit with “realistic parts” but
realistic compared to what? Thirteen hundred dollar carbon
road brake calipers? Just because something is a production part
doesn’t make it realistic. Realistic means more than just being able to
buy it from a local bike shop online mega-store so long as you have the credit card to swing it.

Realistic parts are bits that should be able to take the abuse of
downhill without immediately cowering in the warranty bin. Realistic
means that it works, regardless of price.

We certainly have made progress though. There is no denying that. We
no longer run the sad, heavy excuse for a bottom bracket, inherited
from ancient road biking catalogs, that blew up bearings and sheared
axles on a near weekly basis:

no thanks.

We no longer really bother to ask frame manufacturers if their rear
triangles will clear 3.0 inch tires thanks to advances in tread design,
casing reliability, and better rubber compounds:

Gazzarhea

We no longer run gigantic wide spread rims that give our tires flat
profiles and end up denting in on the sides of the stupid things anyway:

Double the weight, half the strength.

We no longer feel the need to chafe our assholes on over sized and
repackaged fat-grandpa saddles that got in the way more so than doing
anything to aid in controlling the bike:

Love seat... prison love?

Aside from a rare few courses where the rocks are as mean as a woman
scorned, we no longer have to run repackaged scooter tubes and have
even gone so far as to swing the pendulum completely opposite and can
most often get away with running no tubes at all:

Pinch-Proof (except installation)

And we no longer feel the need to run a modified moto-trials fork that weighed more than most modern race frames:

Monstrous indeed

Hold on though.

The Monster T was actually a really good fork if my fuzzy memory
serves me correctly. Sure it was heavy but you never heard of them
breaking, they rarely needed service, and they did their job of eating
up hits. Dare I open myself up to the attacks of the vicious
e-community by uttering the shear heresy of saying lighter is not always better…

Modern downhill bikes have spent several years cutting the fat from
the ride but I’d say that in retrospect, they cut all the fat a while
ago and have since dipped into cutting away the muscle of a downhill
bike.

A modern cross country race bike is somewhere around the 20 pound
mark and is ridden in a fashion often similar to cyclocross- barely
more than road biking on a dirt surface with dismounts substituted for
actual riding over technical terrain. To be trying to cut downhill
bikes to be in the low 30-something pound range and expect it to work
over the terrain that is often found on modern World Cup (or even
local, regional) race tracks is absurd. I suspect the driving force
behind this bike anorexia is a general lack of skills and the attempt
to foolishly compensate for that by lightening up the bikes.

Downhill bikes could just as easily be back up to 45 pounds using
today’s technology, and they would be nothing short of amazing. We’ve
cut the weight of shitty saddles, rims, drive trains, and so forth but
shouldn’t we reinvest some of that weight back into places where it
would do us all (from beginner to professional) some good?

I’m not advocating a return to Monster T’s but it would be sweet if
the Fox 40 damper cartridge didn’t look like an insulin needle inside
of am empty 2 Liter. Imagine how well your suspension would work if the
oil volume and flow were increased by a couple hundred percent. Your
already good fork would be amazing if your damping circuits were beefed
up and were granted the oil budget to get their job done. Imagine if
your shock felt the same on the first three hits out the gate as it did
crossing the finish line of a 6 minute track. Imagine if your tires had
casings that didn’t pinch-flat at the drop of a feather and had big
nasty dirt destroying claws for cornering and braking knobs so that you
could brake harder and later and hold your line through every corner.
Now imagine that your downhill bike lasted an average of two full
seasons of abuse without feeling like a tin can full of nickels.

Your bike should be heavier. It would be better.

The trend has already started in this direction with shocks getting
bigger bodies and larger piggy back reservoirs (and god forbid, moar
shimmz). Forks are getting more reliable and more realistic damper
adjustments. Cranks are heavier now than they used to be a few years
ago but you never see some one coasting down the hill with a crank in
their hand any more. Frames are built with gussets in the places they
are needed and not just splattered on every junction. Things are
getting better but until the marketplace starts to accept a few extra
ounces here and there for an overall better functioning package and
starts demanding performance over weight savings as the primary
priority, companies will just continue to offer stuff that is just too
light.

Stop being such a coward. Your 32-34 pound “downhill bike”
is little more than an impractical trail bike. A scrawny wolf in
sheep’s clothing, unable to really do the job it was built for.