Holding a smexy ass 6.5kg bike this week made me wonder where and how I could cut the weight down on my road bike.

So this week I went to a shop and they had there in house brand (basically carbon fibre bikes from Hong Fu china) and the weight of the frame was around 1kg apparently (we will say nothing of the quality of the carbon etc) , the bike built up felt significantly lighter than my (hardly portly) road bike weighing in at a touch over 8kg. Now I’m no weight weenie, and I cringe at people who say “I could save 30g by spending £400” but it did make me wonder how and where I could save weight on my bike.

I should note that I KNOW the weight saving of say 20g is the equivalent of a swig on a bidon, and that unless I’m a race whippet, that the body is the engine etc then it is all negligible (I’m 10stone/5ft 7′, which isn’t too bad unless I’m inspired by froome/wiggo esque anorexia-figure so potentially could loose another half a stone over the winter safely – which I won’t bother too) but thats not what this is about.

Now I don’t know the frame weight exactly, its a Mekk Poggio 2g but bikeradar had one in and said 1,125g – the fork weighing in at 600g supposedly. So my question is, how light could the bike potentially be? I made up a list of parts at a cost that is realistic in terms of £ and value. I’m sure we could start talking astronomical costs as far as wheels and what not are concerned, but if I was going to start splashing out my pretend money I’d probably be looking at a Cervelo for a lighter frame.

So heres my parts to be replaced listed as ‘Part description – Weight saved over current part – cost’

Hong Fu Carbon bar w/ integrated stem – 200g – £100
Hong Fu Carbon seatpost – 100g – £38.26
Carbon saddle – 158g – £70
ITM Aero 3.0 wheelset – 327g (est due to skewers not being part of the listed weight, I added 50g per wheel on my set and the ITM’s) £319.20
Ultegra SL 6601 chainset 52/39t – 106g – £160
Ultegra Cassette – 24g – £37.99
Ultegra derailleur – 32g – £60
Look Keo pedals 60g – £38

So thats 1007g saved for the cost of £823.25 (a little less than I bought the bike for) so roughly 1.2g per £ spent I think? Though my maths is bad/awful.

So how much more can we get the poggio down to

6.5 could be done I reckon
6 may be pushing it.
5.5 I doubt.

Have fun!