Saving weight from your road bike will always make it feel more lively and will make riding up those hills much easier. However, rather than spending loads of money to go and buy yourself a brand new carbon road bike, instead you should consider some of these upgrades as a slightly more cost efficient way to drop some weight and some of them are completely free! Cycling Weekly's Sam Gupta has pulled together a bunch of tips for you all to explore as a way to drop some weight from your bikes. Which are you going to try?
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00:00We all want to save more weight from our bikes, right? Well, after building up my new Armanda,
00:04I thought I would share five ways that I'm planning on shedding a few grams, but
00:09they might not be in the way that you would expect. First off, I'm going to start at the
00:15seat post. The first thing that we can all do is mark where our seat post height is,
00:20pull out the seat post from the frame, measure the minimum insertion, and then add that to the
00:25bottom of your marked seat post height because what you may end up with is a section of seat
00:31post that can be cut off. I've already done this myself and I ended up being able to take off about
00:3610 centimetres worth of seat post, which saved me a fairly decent 30 grams. For what is essentially
00:44a free win, I don't think that's bad at all. But it doesn't just stop there because I have found a
00:51solution to my fairly unattractive seat clamp collar. Instead of the original unit, I found this
00:56pro performance seat clamp, which isn't actually going to provide any sort of weight saving, but it
01:03does just look a whole lot better. And if you want one for yourself, then I have left a link down in
01:07the description below. Before we move on to a different area of the bike, I do want to share
01:12one more recommendation, which I myself won't be doing, but it could be ideal for one of you
01:17lovely viewers. And that is to look at a specialist seat post manufacturer like Doremo. Now, Doremo is
01:25a Spanish brand and they make some incredibly lightweight components. For example, they make
01:31a 350 mil 27.2 post, which comes in at a claimed 80 grams, which is seriously light. They also make
01:40though proprietary posts for the likes of the Tarmac SLA. So this gain isn't just reserved for those
01:46with standard components. Wheels are often seen as the place to drop weight. But what if you already
01:53have a set of swanky lightweight wheels? Well, you can't forget all of the things that are attached to
01:59your wheels. Firstly, the tires are a pretty large component and they obviously sit right at the very
02:05edge of the rotational mass. So weight saved here can return much larger gains in ride and
02:12acceleration feel. So if you're running some all season tires like I am in the form of the
02:17specialized S-Works Mondos, then consider opting for some summer specific jobbies like these GP5000
02:24TTTRs. These are going to save me about 200 grams compared to the Mondos, which is great.
02:32Of course, this is a change that I'll be making when the roads get a little bit drier,
02:36but the savings don't stop there. Cassettes actually carry a fair bit of mass to them since
02:43there is a lot of metal work going on there. So if you do have the funds, it could be worth looking
02:48further up the range and getting a cassette which adopts a more advanced construction method
02:53and makes use of fancier materials. For example, the difference between this Ultegra cassette and this
02:59Dura-Ace cassette is 62 grams. Yes, it's not cheap, but as a way to drop a fair bit of weight without
03:06needing to adopt a whole Dura-Ace groupset, this in my eyes is money well spent. I have also done
03:12some digging and found a pretty decent price on a Dura-Ace cassette, which I've linked down in the
03:17description. The other component to consider on the wheels are your rotors, and this is where you
03:22could end up spending a lot of money, but for a much smaller gain. Again, I won't be doing this one
03:29myself, but if you do want to be as cool as Tali Pagaccia, then you could opt for some carbon tie
03:34rotors. Compared to Ultegra spec rotors, they'll save you about 16 grams per wheel for a total saving
03:41of just over 30 grams, which is obviously very small, but maybe this one is more about the bling
03:49factor. Saving money and weight don't always go hand in hand, but when we look at the cockpit of the
03:55bike, there is an opportunity to do just that. I've been running the Garmin Edge 1040 Solar for nearly a
04:02year and a half now, but despite the vast amount of functionality that this thing provides, you just
04:08cannot escape the size of it. So, downsizing to a 540 or an 840 will not only be a cheaper option,
04:16but it reduces the weight by nearly 46 grams, and that's not bad at all. If you shop around,
04:23then you can often find really good deals on hedge units, and I've linked a really good one down in the
04:29description. That's not the only thing that can be done in the cockpit area, because much like how I
04:35was able to save weight by removing excess seatpost length, I can also do the same at my head tube by
04:41removing excess steerer tube length. I can also replace these alloy spacers with carbon ones for
04:47an albeit very small saving, but these carbon spacers only cost a few pounds. For those of you running
04:54integrated computer mounts like the one that comes with the Roval handlebars, it could be worth investing
05:00in a 3D printed option instead. For the real weight weenies out there, some aluminium mounts can
05:06actually weigh significantly more than a 3D printed equivalent. If we take the Roval one as an example,
05:12the standard unit weighs 53.3 grams, while a 3D printed alternative comes in at 26.1 grams. That is
05:21certainly an easy win, and again, can often be cheaper. There are other things that most of us
05:26can do to help shave weight off our bikes, like adopting a carbon bottle cage. Thankfully, these
05:32no longer have to be super expensive. For example, if we compare a fairly standard bottle cage with a
05:38carbon one, there's a potential saving of about 20 grams per cage. Now, for an upgrade that doesn't
05:44need to cost the earth anymore, I think this is one well worth going for. One which certainly is not for
05:50the masses and is reserved for those true weight weenies with money to burn a carbon tie chain
05:57rings. They are eye-wateringly expensive, but after seeing them on Tani Pogaccia's bike, I really can't
06:04stop thinking about them. However, these rings will never be going anywhere near my bike. For me,
06:10they just cost too much money to justify putting them on an aluminium bike, but I think we can all
06:15take a second to just admire quite how pretty they are. In total, then, across all these little
06:22changes, I think I'm going to be able to save a not insignificant 300 to 400 grams. Most of these
06:29savings have either been free or only cost sub 50 quid. It's the big ticket items like the cassette,
06:35head unit and tyres which will up the price. But as mentioned, deals can always be found on these
06:41things and I've done my best to link all of those down below.