Where is the end?


What does a light bike help you when it doesn`t last longer than a week? Not much.
I'm sure there are things and product names which you can trust. Sometimes a certain name makes sense.

I'm talking about a product I most certainly don't want to talk bad about, let alone the company standing behind that product. Here it's the consumer who decides about the durability.

Of course, it was interesting to test a tire weighting 290g and see how good it would hold up riding street because it had already shown that it can handle park riding easily. I'm sure it's nothing new to many not to use the KHE Mac Park beyond park riding, but it looks like many people would still blame KHE for a tire ripping open on a concrete curb. And that tire was only on that bike because of the light weight craze.

I rode the KHE Mac Park 1.5 not very long, when the first damage was visible on the side wall. Of course, the very low weight makes you think twice about not putting it on. Riding was awesome with it and although I rode it with very high pressure, the grip was enormous. A lot of wear was not noticeable.

Although my city is full of pieces of broken glass it didn't get any flat spots.

But there was the issue with the side walls. After 2 days it cracked open which reminded me of hot dogs on a barbecue and a short time after that I was looking at the tube through a little hole in the tire.

Putting in pieces of old tires to fill the holes couldn't stop the tube to push through either, it always found its way through the tire.

With the same amount of money but a theoretical gain of 100g you should take the KHE Mac Street, which is identical to the park version but with a much thicker side wall.

But there is still a way to save weight. The tolerance in production isn't always a bad thing. So you get one of the lighter ones of the evitable heavier street version. In my case I found one which weighted 329g, which now holds up perfectly even after I've been grinding a lot more.

Lightweight bikes is an awesome topic, but there are controversies and it should be clear that there are limits to it. This separates the people who actually ride their bike and the people who just like to work on their bike.

I'm still thinking about the bike without a seat-tube. If it was a joke or not, it still seemed to impress certain people. Lightweight bikes should still be rational. That might be OK with a tire but how many of you would trust alloy bolts in their stem?

Here is the point where the technical know-how should be a big part. Without that you should not be trying to establish a new record. Why I write all of this? After reading about a road bike weighting in just about 3 kilos I feel like the weight weenies might go a little bit to far in the future- of course, everyone can decide on their own, but I want to dissociate clearly from this kind of lightweight craze and make some people think about it a little bit.

So have some common sense because in the end it's not about the lightest bike but about riding a bike. To be honest the people with 15 kg bikes can still ride and many of them even better than some people on 10 kg bikes.