Pinkbike Poll: If Cost Were No Object...

Legends abound among cyclists about the advantages of one material over the next. Hyperbole passed from one generation to the next about the magic feel of steel, the superiority of titanium, the rigidity of aluminum and the lightness of carbon persists in the minds of rank and file riders as hard fact. The reality, if there is a way to establish a point from which "reality" can be judged in the bicycle industry, is that materials and the methods used to manufacture things from them are constantly evolving. What was bad yesterday may very well be good today.



The structural use of titanium, for instance, was banned from motorcycle racing in the early 1980s because parts were breaking left and right. Today, that ban still holds, but it shouldn't. Titanium is well understood now, and is used where only metal will do and where reliability is an absolute. The compressor fans in commercial jet engines come to mind, but a 29er hardtail frame could make that argument as well.



About the same time that titanium was banned from moto racing, aluminum, the most ubiquitous material in the modern bicycle, was being soundly trounced by both bike makers and the press as unfit for making bicycle frames and forks because of its lack of stiffness and short fatigue life. Today it is considered the safest material from which to construct its most critical components: the fork steerer, crown and stanchions; its bottom bracket axle, the hub axles, and the handlebar and frame. Magnesium, the metal used to make most fork sliders, survived a similar beating from naysayers.



And now carbon has evolved beyond the angry mob's doomsday predictions. Case by case, the stuff has overturned popular conventions of strength vs. weight, reliability and stiffness. Carbon is rapidly replacing critical aluminum components almost everywhere on the bike. How often have we heard a component maker swear off carbon, saying that aluminum is the better and safer choice for a frame, bar, stem or whatever - and then announce later, as Renthal most recently did, that they had discovered a method to make a superior carbon replacement?



More often than not, now-a-days it is the part's MSRP, not the optimum material for the job that influences our choices. Sound engineering dictates that the best materials and construction techniques be used for each application on the bicycle. Sound business practice says that the most economical materials and manufacturing methods be used to make all those parts affordable. Producing a performance bicycle, even a $10,000 model, is constrained equally by both rules. If a bike maker says that their model X was a cost-is-no-object design, it's bullsh*t. But, what if the retail price actually was taken out of the equation?

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So, the question for today's Pinkbike poll is: If the price was equal, and the best methods and materials were used to produce the part, which material would you choose? We limited your choices to major components and the materials which are widely available for each option.

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