10 Reasons To Consider Aluminium Over Carbon For Your Next Bike

Aluminum

bike

s are brilliant and in this video I'll tell you all the

reasons

why if you're not sure whether you should buy an aluminum or

carbon

frame for

your

next

bike

, this is the video for you right before. Let's go further, I need to address a quick elephant in the room, as I'm aware that some of you will already be hiding in the comments section below saying it's aluminum and not aluminum. Well, as a chemist, I can confirm that it is. aluminum like the suffix iron means earth and that's what the Danish chemist who discovered it called it, I mean do you call magnesium and sodium? magnesium and sodium didn't think so and in 1990 the international union of pure and applied chemistry decreed that the internationally recognized name for that element is aluminum, so if you want to call it aluminum, you can, that's one of the freedoms you have, but keep in mind that the international scientific community will not take you seriously, however, we live in a free world. a democracy in the interest of justice, we can take a poll if you want, if you don't agree with me you can vote below by clicking and going to the gcn app.

Is it aluminum or is it aluminum? Vote now for the first advantage of aluminum. It's cheaper now, I know before you accuse me of being captain obvious and everything else isn't obvious to everyone, but it does mean you can get almost all the performance of a high-end

carbon

frame, but for a lot less money. and yes the best carbon frames in the world available to humanity are better than the best high end aluminum frames, they are lighter, they are stiffer, they are more aerodynamic, but they can cost as much as a car, plus carbon frames high-end aluminum often are. as good and in some cases better than entry level carbon and if you compare a high end aluminum frame to a high end carbon frame you are realistically looking at 90% performance for sometimes like 20 of the El Price is huge and with that money well saved you can spend it on whatever you personally want and probably opt for some nice, stylish wheels and maybe a slightly nicer group set.

The

next

reason is I mentioned it briefly before but high end aluminum frames can be better than basic carbon people love carbon everything is easy to sell because it is associated with a lot of cool things like world cup winning bikes tour de france formula one fighter jets space I mean they are all really interesting things and when combined in people's imagination, they can make a basic carbon fiber bike look like the cat's pajamas, but not all fiber carbon is the same. Carbon fiber on an entry-level bike is drastically different than that used on a fancy, high-end bike. tour de france winning steed pants what you do with them is what counts at least well that's what I read on the internet cheap carbon fiber will generally have a greater wall thickness in the tubes lower quality resins used inside less less compliance strength to weight ratio and even for non-sprinters like me, it feels noticeably less stiff in terms of ride quality when you use it next.

It's durability. Now carbon has a much higher tensile strength than aluminum, typically in the region of 3.8 times higher, but aluminum is much stronger. Impact When carbon is impacted it is more brittle and can often crack. Aluminum is much less likely to do this and is typically dense, of course unless you are riding in cryogenic temperatures or on the Russian front this durability means that if you have an aluminum frame. It's much more likely to get dents, scratches, and battle scars along the way, but the most important thing is that it can still be ridden now. Well, scuttles are cool anyway, but if you're someone who likes the idea of ​​riding a lot of the small circuit critters you know, then an aluminum frame can be a good way to tackle events where you potentially There are quite a few crashes.

It is for this reason that we often see most racers and events like the Red Hook Crit using aluminum frames. The next step is precision engineering with an aluminum frame. framework, it is much easier to achieve higher levels of precision engineering at a lower cost. This is because, for example, with the bottom bracket you can have a single piece of aluminum that is then machined from both sides to create perfect alignment. You can even place the threads. directly to the bottom bracket section and therefore having a perfectly aligned bottom bracket where the bearings match up perfectly and the chainring will spin beautifully and freely.

Achieving this level of precision in carbon is much more time-consuming and challenging. There is one caveat though, this depends on the type of bottom bracket standard that applies to

your

aluminum frame and not all bottom bracket standards are created equal. Personally, I'm a big fan of threading and, in theory, threading in aluminum should be much more. easier to make than carbon. Next is the environmental impact because aluminum is one of the most common metals in the Earth's crust, but extracting aluminum from its ore, bauxite or aluminum oxides, is an incredibly energy-expensive process. It uses approximately three percent of the world's total electricity consumption. extract aluminum from your oil, which is absolutely huge, and well, the benefit is that aluminum is recyclable and carbon fiber frames, well, they are not recycling aluminum, it saves 95% of the energy that is normally used to extract it from its raw material.

It also saves 97 of the greenhouse gas emissions normally used in its production and for every tonne of aluminum we recycle, nine tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions are saved, so it's absolutely huge; It also saves four tons of the raw bauxite ore used to mine it. Basically if you want to save the polar bears, get an aluminum bike, but wait, what about the weight? Well, yes, aluminum frames are heavier, but not by much, and the weight is very overrated, I mean, normally, as a kind of rule of thumb, aluminum frames are going to weigh between 200 and 300 grams more than the equivalent carbon bike, but these days often with an aluminum frame you also get a carbon fork and seatpost if we put this into context and take the 300 gram difference between an aluminum bike and an equivalent. carbon bike with the same components then that weight difference will be negligible on the flat and will make very little difference on the climbs and to explain why here is an example using some math if we take a 75 kilogram rider and a 7, 5 kilograms and we put them on a 10 kilometer alpine climb with 600 meters of elevation gain, then to complete that climb in 33 minutes, the cyclist will need to ride at 304 watts if we then add 300 grams of additional mass to the system for that cyclist then complete the same climb at the same time, they will have to produce more power, but only 1 to 1.5 watts more, which is actually not much, basically weight is overrated and is much less important than raw watts if He doesn't believe it.

I, well, I weigh 68 kilograms, Philippo Gana weighs 85 kilograms and well, I mean, if we had a race, I think we know how the best components would be reduced, I mean, if you look at two bikes side by side in a shop of bicycles, they If the aluminum frame is the same price as the carbon frame, then you should expect the aluminum frame to have higher quality components, sometimes one maybe even two times a level higher than the carbon one, so usually something like shimano ultegra on the aluminum maybe something high. spec wheels versus shimano 105 or maybe even shimano tiagra on the carbon ones and although you have that kind of 300 gram weight difference between the frames you're already starting to make up for that with better quality lighter components but you said that weight doesn't Weight does matter a little and is important to some people, but what about stiffness and comfort?

Aluminum has a bad reputation. Many people complain that it results in a harsher and less comfortable ride than carbon fiber and furthermore they say that it is not as stiff and is heavier, although this may be true, aluminum's bad reputation is kind of of myth, it is largely due to the fact that many low-end bikes are made of aluminum, but like carbon, the technology has advanced. significantly and this is for good reason aluminum is the most common material in the world for making bicycles, the majority of the world's bicycles are made of aluminum, moving away from simply knowing that round cylindrical tubes, engineers have become much better at the shape and transformation of aluminum in cross sections. and shapes that offer much greater comfort and rigidity in a bicycle frame and, in addition, materials scientists have improved aluminum alloys to be able to optimize the material properties of these alloys to make them optimal for bicycle frame manufacturing processes. a bicycle, such as hydroforming and splicing.

It means that you can now have tube shapes that vary with respect to their shape along their length and also the thickness of the wall and this means that you can have a more efficient use of the material giving greater strength to the weight of the final frame to despite these advances. It can still be created and positioned in a way that offers greater compliance, but not by much and in our experience what makes the biggest difference to comfort on a road bike is tire volume and pressure, so So when you're looking for your next bike, one of the things we recommend is choosing one that has a lot of tire clearance so you can fit larger tires if that's important to you and the next thing is to pack the bike.

Now you want to pack the bike, of course, do it. All the cool kids go. bike packing and it's true that some of the less cool kids, but anyway, if you're going to bike pack on your fancy new carbon bike, one of the things that people unfortunately find is that if you ride in dirty conditions and damp, once there is a little dirt and moisture. gets between the frame and the straps of the bike packing bag, it can rub against the frame on a very long adventure when packing the bike and sometimes this can rub off the paint and in some cases even the carbon if this happens. your aluminum frame and it gets scratched a little, it's not the end of the world, it's not likely to significantly affect the structural integrity of the frame and if it gets scratched well, I think it looks good, it's easier to repair and good.

First of all, it cost you less, so wait a minute. You're telling me that aluminum is better than carbon, well in some ways yes it is, but of course if you're looking at the absolute pinnacle of bicycle engineering, carbon is superior. material, but if you have a smaller budget or maybe feel like you don't need a bike that's a little lighter, a little stiffer, a little more aerodynamic, then aluminum is worth

consider

ing. Additionally, I know from experience that it is possible to build a rim brake to the highest specifications. aluminum bike that's lighter than some of the disc brake carbon bikes the pros are using in the Tour de France right now, so now there's something to think about.

I hope you enjoyed this video and found it informative, and if you have and would like to continue supporting what we do well, you know the drill, please give us a like and subscribe and I'll see you in the next one. I'm leaving, Tara.