Author Topic: Final weight on Nomad  (Read 6012 times)

jul

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Final weight on Nomad
« on: March 07, 2018, 10:42:31 pm »
Hi,

I weighed all my stuff. (without food and water)

Total front    : 13    kg  (one spare tire included 800gr)
Total rear     : 17 kg  ( "        "             "        )
Total central : 1 kg

TOTAL  STUFF  : 31  kg (all bags included)

Weight bike : 20 kg

My weight : 70 kg



Some remarks ?

« Last Edit: March 25, 2018, 02:59:35 pm by julio »

Danneaux

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Re: Final weight on Nomad
« Reply #1 on: March 07, 2018, 10:54:02 pm »
Quote
Some remarks ?
Well, Julien, so much depends on personal preference, season, and where and how long you will be traveling. Food and water will make a big difference; if you're near stores, you can resupply often, but if you are in the back of beyond, you would need to add plenty of both.

Even after some 41 years of touring, I still find myself revising and refining my load after every trip. My loads vary from an "ultralight (for me) dry load of  6.35kg/14lb to 45.35kg/100lb+ when fully provisioned with water and food for extended solo self-supported desert touring (26.5kg/l/58.4lb in water alone). It just depends on need, and on the bicycle used. My Nomad weighs 20kg dry, while some of my other bikes come in at about 14.5kg.

I'd say give this load a try and refine afterwards. It seems a reasonable starter touring load. I usually find at any given time, I only use about 5% of what I am carrying but what constitutes the 5% varies widely almost from moment to moment -- rain clothing, for example. Some things get added according to need. For example, when the temperatures are high in the desert, I cannot sit on the pavement lest I burn my legs. For those times, a folding camp chair is worth its weight to me.

All the best,

Dan.

mickeg

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Re: Final weight on Nomad
« Reply #2 on: March 07, 2018, 11:33:36 pm »
Total "stuff" of 28.5 kg, I assume that is without bike?  Thus the loaded bike is 48.5 kg?

Your Nomad at 20 kg is pretty close to mine too.  I think mine is about 20.6 with racks but excluding panniers, handlebar bag and water.

I decided that I did not want to know what the bike weighed in the photo, thus did not measure it.  But I probably had 40 to 45 kg on it, not counting 3 kg of water or 20.6 kg weight of bike.  Photo is from my Iceland trip.  At the time I took the photo, I probably had almost two weeks of food on the bike.

I weigh about 80 kg plus or minus 2 kg, plus a few more kg for clothes, helmet, bike shoes, etc., that I wore on the bike.

Before that trip, I complained about the Nomad weight, but the bike handled the trip so well that now I no longer complain about it.  I say it is heavy, but I do not say it is too heavy.

Danneaux

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Re: Final weight on Nomad
« Reply #3 on: March 08, 2018, 01:22:28 am »
Quote
I say it [Nomad] is heavy, but I do not say it is too heavy.
Completely agreed, George! It weighs what it needs to for superb handling with enormous loads.

All the best,

Dan.

PH

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Re: Final weight on Nomad
« Reply #4 on: March 09, 2018, 11:35:01 am »
I like to have the lightest practical kit (And good value and longevity come into me definition of practical), I don't like to take anything I don't need, I don't like to be without anything I do, then it weighs what it weighs, not unimportant but not top of the list either.
Quote
Some remarks ?
Enjoy the trip

mickeg

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Re: Final weight on Nomad
« Reply #5 on: March 09, 2018, 05:11:17 pm »
When the sign on the road says the next place to buy motor fuel is 205 km, my first thought is that it is a good thing I do not need any fuel.  But the second thought is that I won't be able to get anything at all for quite a while.  So, I better have everything that I could possibly need.

A lot of the extreme light weight cyclists that I see are carrying so little water that I consider it to be unsafe, except I have met quite a few that had already consumed all of their water and were suffering dehydration.

Nobody has ever accused me of being an ultra light cyclist, but at the end of the day if I am down to less than one liter of water remaining, I considered that to be running precariously low because if I had had a mechanical, less than a liter is not much of a contingency.

jul

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Re: Final weight on Nomad
« Reply #6 on: March 23, 2018, 09:37:22 am »
And about tires pressure..  bike loaded around 35Kg..

 Do you have an idea ? mini / max

PH

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Re: Final weight on Nomad
« Reply #7 on: March 23, 2018, 09:53:39 am »
Optimal tyre pressure (In theory) is that which produces a drop of 15%.  Here is an explanation, with the reasoning
http://www.adventurecycling.org/default/assets/resources/200903_PSIRX_Heine.pdf

There are some experts who disregard this and claim that differences in tyre construction makes such formulas flawed.  I've always used it as a starting point and adjusted if I thought it felt wrong.  It is based on road or hard surfaces, and optimised for the best compromise between grip, comfort and speed, at times you may give one of those a higher priority.

jul

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Re: Final weight on Nomad
« Reply #8 on: March 23, 2018, 10:13:18 am »
Thanks PH..

But there isn't comparison about the large tires. Mine are in 2" ..

PH

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Re: Final weight on Nomad
« Reply #9 on: March 23, 2018, 10:55:00 am »
Ooops, you're right.
I have the formula on a spreadsheet but can't extract the data.
I've just put it in as 50mm tyres, 260 lbs overall weight and it's giving 32 psi front and 45 psi rear.
I've never run tyres that wide, maybe someone who has would comment on whether that sounds about right.

martinf

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Re: Final weight on Nomad
« Reply #10 on: March 23, 2018, 01:52:55 pm »
I currently run my bikes that have 26" x 2" tyres using 30 psi front and 35 psi rear if riding lightly loaded (luggage for day rides).

If carrying a full load, I increase the pressure, up to a maxmum of 40 psi front and 45 psi rear.

40 front and 45 rear was sufficient for me with an all up weight of 123 kg and occasional use of moderately rough stony tracks. This was using Marathon Supreme tyres in the 2" (50 mm) width.

The Thorn mega brochure warns against increasing pressures too much with fat tyres, as it can cause rim failure.

For 2" width tyres the Thorn brochure recommends 40 psi front, 45 psi rear, with a minimum pressure of 30 psi and an absolute maximum pressure of 58 psi.

I don't like to go much below 30 psi in 50 mm size, as I reckon lower pressures might allow tyre damage when riding on rocky paths. I've experimented with using higher than 45 psi, but not noticed any advantage, even when heavily loaded.


 

Danneaux

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Re: Final weight on Nomad
« Reply #11 on: March 23, 2018, 04:33:59 pm »
The original research that established the 15% rim drop/tire inflation pressure formula was done by Chevron petroleum engineer Frank Berto when he was technical editor for _Bicycling_ magazine in the 1980s. His published article changed my cycling in a positive way ever since. The original article was largely republished in the Spring 2007 issue of Jan Heine's _Bicycle Quarterly_ magazine

His work was based on a wide survey of tire engineers' test methodologies and design/construction parameters and in some ways Berto's work served to standardize the industry as well as help end users. His work has been adopted widely and adapted to the point where his original contribution is in danger of being forgotten, which is a pity. Berto did briefly extend his charts to accommodate low-pressure MTB/knobby/off-road tires for a cycling club, but did not extrapolate it fully for wider trekking/touring tires.

That effort has been taken up by Edison Gauss Publishing, which includes an avid group of Portland area cyclists. They have developed an Android app I have found helpful in duplicating the 15% rim drop across a variety or tire widths/volumes and allows for adjustments in rider position, rider weight, bicycle weight, and cargo weight and placement. I use it as a baseline and make fine adjustments from there. Martin and I are closely attuned enough we use almost identical tire pressures under similar conditions -- which correlate for me in the App. I found the rider positioning option to be critical. For my style of riding with drop handlebars and preferred 45° back angle while on the brake hoods, the "French Randonneur" option was the one that worked out well; other options were "off" for me. I have been using it successfully for four years now: http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=3798.msg58369#msg58369

The basic app -- called Berto Tire Pressure when installed, Bicycle Tire Pressure Calculator on the GooglePlay appstore -- is free and is limited only by the number of bicycles. If you only have need for one, that's the one to go for. For those with multiple bicycles or who don't want to manually re-enter the basic parameters, the paid app is USD$2.50. It can be found here:
Free Android demo version with in-app upgrade available: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.edisongauss.bertotirepressure&hl=en
Publisher page: http://www.edisongauss.com/index.php/berto-tire-pressure-app/

This topic should prove helpful to those with questions about tire pressures: http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=3798.0

I have no connection to the app or the publisher.

Best,

Dan.

mickeg

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Re: Final weight on Nomad
« Reply #12 on: March 23, 2018, 04:42:55 pm »
I usually find that the 15 percent drop calls for an absurdly low pressure in my front tire.  Instead I usually run the front tire roughly 20 percent lower than the back, rounded off to the nearest 5 psi.

I often use the 15 percent drop on my 37mm rear tire when touring.  But I had to extend the lines to the right off the chart to get the pressure and weight I needed.  I pretend that my 40mm wide Schwalbe Marathons are 37 for purposes of his graph.

But riding around home for exercise I usually run higher pressure than the 15 percent.



Andre Jute

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Re: Final weight on Nomad
« Reply #13 on: March 24, 2018, 10:35:02 am »
Mmm. The 15% is a bit fiddly for my taste and, I think, very likely to be influenced by ambient and operational parameters, particularly air and road, especially tarmac, temperature, wind (direction for cooling and effect on temperatures), load absolute and distribution over time-- just the consumption of water, a very heavy element indeed, can be important, etc.

I don't want to sound like a hypocrite before people who may have read the section of my automobile design book where I talk about tyres and their care and feeding, but it seems to me that while the absolute forces on a car tyre are greater, once the thing is up to heat it leads at least a more constant life than a bicycle tyre.

It follows that the beneficial pressure regime for bicycle tyres is the determination of a minimum inflation that will not cause fishbites in your tubes (or wreck the tyre itself, but with modern construction methods that's a much more distant prospect), and another minimum for the bike with its heaviest likely load. After that the correct inflation for any load can be guesstimated without doing any great harm.

For ten years I operated Big Apples 60mm wide, admittedly on rims internally 24mm wide (it makes a difference to the control the rim exerts over the tyre, and in turn to how the tyres heat up), at the 2 bar/29psi (very easy to remember on a 29er) that Chalo Colina, who has much experience of these tyres, advised. So towards the end of the month, when I would check the tyre pressures, they were often down to 1.6bar. I'm a pretty hard rider, especially on the downhills, and at speed I don't swerve off line for anything, I just ride through it. In those ten years I had two flats, both towards the end after my weight had increased by 7kg, one by fishbites, one possibly by a nail-puncture when I rode across an industrial estate. BTW, these punctures were in the ultralight "racing" Schwalbe tubes, typer 19A, not the hefty standard type 19. One caused what could have been a serious accident but fortunutely ended in scrapes and bruises and some shellshocked motorists. When I took these tyres off, with some of the originally anyway minuscule tread still remaining (say half-worn), at over 8000, there were absolutely no signs of abuse on those tyres, even though for all their life under an abusive rider they had been inflated at pressures that offhand, before I had this experience, I would have condemned out of hand as stupidly low.

It may just be that for twenty years I've ridden on Schwalbe and top-end Bontrager workalike tyres, but it seems to me there's a huge safety margin in at least the Schwalbe inflation recommendations. Whatever the reason, I'd already been riding on very low pressures for many years when the word came down from SJS not to overinflate, so that I was instantly onside.

bikerwaser

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Re: Final weight on Nomad
« Reply #14 on: April 08, 2018, 06:51:52 pm »
"
I weighed all my stuff. (without food and water)

Total front    : 13    kg  (one spare tire included 800gr)
Total rear     : 17 kg  ( "        "             "        )
Total central : 1 kg

TOTAL  STUFF  : 31  kg (all bags included)

Weight bike : 20 kg

My weight : 70 kg



Some remarks ?
"





Doesn't sound bad for a Bombproof bike like that.

I tour with a Sherpa and, despite my weight saving attempts, always end up with a total bike weight of 45kgs.
This included everything, including food and water. When i stop along the way, i will add the weight of more food, a couple of beers and a bottle of wine.
My body weight is 80kgs . Well, it is to start with but by the end it's nearer to 70 kgs , despite eating like a madman.

Following the tyre pressure theme, I used to roll around town at about 40 PSI but got pinch flats as i was using Panaracer tyres that needed more. SJS were kind enough to replace them F.O.C. I then made sure I stayed within PSI guidelines of the tyre and increased my PSI to 60 PSI (while Touring) on the Schwalbes I was using at the time. I never had a problem with rims splitting on the first and original set of Rigida Grizzly's I bought with the bike, from Thorn, but when I went back to SJS for a new set of wheels, I saw that Rigida had changed to Ryde. On arrival, the wheels were different and of a lower quality. a few hundred miles later and, while on a tour around Brittany in France, my rear wheel split. It wasn't totally bad as I could still roll but I contacted SJS and they sent out a new wheel and informed me of their recommendation for lower PSI.
I find it a bit of a minefield when combining wheels and tyres.
A lot of rims have low PSI levels and the tyres have higher PSI levels, leaving a narrow window for usablitly/reliability.
The ETRTO doesn't seem to have this incorperated in their stats, unless i'm missing something?
Surely the average bike rider doesn't even look at this stuff. It's only us nerdy bike enthusiasts that take the time to dot the I's and cross the T's.
« Last Edit: April 08, 2018, 07:09:01 pm by bikerwaser »