The great bike diet

I've had my Mountain Bike since about mid 2005.  It's not a bad bike and I haven't really spent that much money on it over the years.  It's given me huge enjoyment where ever it's been.  I must have ridden the bike in Spain, France, United Kingdom, Solvenia and the Netherlands and probably more.

So knowing that I have up to 4500 Metres of climbing each day in Portugal loosing weight off anything is important.  I started with me and I'm the lightest I've been in more than 20 years.  So where to go from here?

The bike is a 2004 Specialized Stumpjumper FSR that I put together myself from a collection of parts over the years.  Nothing that special and it weighed in at 13 kilos.  For interests sake a brand new Stumpy weighs in at about 12 kilo for the 2012 26 inch version.  I was expecting things had moved on and they did in a way but not that much.  My bike had 100mm travel back then and this has 140mm and is lighter.

So where could I drop weight.  I'm not a huge fan of bling Carbon scatter gunned on a bike.  It costs a load and you save only a few grams here and there.  Yes it adds up but not the kilo or so I'm looking for.

So the wheels and tyres were the obvious choice.  My wheels and tyres with cassette etc were 4.7 KG !!!  Yes that's a big percentage of the total bike !!!

Well I knew that tubeless tyres were a must and that Stan's Crest rim was highly rated.  I've had Hope hubs for years and just had to go with these again.  New set of  Hope Hoops arrived along with a Stan's kit and some new tyres.  All pumped up and with a new XT cassette on they were massively lighter. 3.5 KG in total.

New and Shiny

Old and heavy

I've got some new front and rear mechs to go on but I'm not holding out much hope for these making any difference.  I'm quite happy with 1.2KG off for the time being.