Road Bike Upgrades You DON’T Need

Top 5 | Road Bike Upgrades You DON’T Need

Spending money on your bike can be great fun, but there are some upgrades that just aren’t worth it.

Here are the top five upgrades we think you should avoid. We’ve laid bare our reasons, but do you agree? Let us know in the comments.

#cycling #bike #roadbike #upgrade

Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:20 A Flagship Carbon Frame or Groupset
01:15 Tubeless
02:41 Carbon Handlebars
03:50 Expensive Parts
05:04 Power Meter
06:17 Outro

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Upgrading your road bike is brilliant fun whether you want to go further faster or do both in more Comfort but if you fancy splashing some cash then we’d avoid these upgrades because they will barely make you ride any faster and they cost loads too I’ll start with the biggest mistake to

Avoid Flagship carbon frames and top end group sets we’d argue that unless you’re a pro Road racer they’ll make little to no actual difference over second tier versions the issue really isn’t the tiny performance benefit that they provide it’s the huge high up in price that you

Pay to get it for example let’s look at the difference between shimano’s much Lov altegra group set and the flagship Dura Ace go for the latest electronic versions of either group set and you’ll be getting exactly the same Motors battery and features but these slightly lighter materials used in jur Ace group

Sets save just under 300 G and that will cost you an extra 1,100 quid or $1,500 that I have to say is just Silly tubless tires are brilliant these days but we’d argue that if you can’t be bothered with the associated maintenance or you don’t already own tubeless ready Wheels the upgrade from inner tubes isn’t worth the money we’re not just being difficult for the sake of it I promise in terms of performance we have

The data to prove that the tires setup tubless aren’t actually a huge amount faster than with latex or TPU tubes bicycle rolling resistance.com found that putting a latex inner tube into a tubless tire was just .4 Watts slower at 60 PSI than the tubeless tire with 20 ml

Of sealant it isn’t just the case of performance though tub systems also require different amounts of Maintenance depending on the conditions that you ride in and your setup if you live somewhere Hot For example or you commute on debris strewn city streets you might find that you need to top up your

Sealant quite frequently to go tubless you’ll also need specific Wheels which will set you back hundreds if not thousands should you need to upgrade if you’re not a fan of bike maintenance then you could just be buying into work that you don’t want to do on the other

Hand if you already have tubless ready Wheels then an upgrade that can help produce punctures could be an economical one for you we’ll let you decide so you’ve got the bike of your dreams and it is working beautifully but after a year or two the upgrade itch

Comes and it’s a scratching and you get tempted by fancy looking carbon bars proceed with caution here because they might cost you a lot and they might not actually do much carbon bars are often purchased for one of three reasons firstly they can be a little bit lighter

Secondly there are often some comfort gains associated with carbon from a reduction in Road Buzz reaching your hands that is quite nice and thirdly carbon’s ability to be molded into funny shapes allows the manufacturers to make them Arrow heed Our advice though the games may be small even the best carbon

Handlebars will likely only save you a few precious grams or Watts but the cost difference compared to alloy bars can be substantial and then should you have an oopsy and drop or crash your bike many Brands will advise that you replace that lovely Carbon Bar just in case it has been

Damaged we are absolute suckers for expensive lightweight and arrow upgrades here at bike crater myself as especially so we often have to remind ourselves of the cost to benefit ratio that topend kit can come with spending huge amounts of money on something like aerodynamically optimized oversized pully Wheel Systems or some super

Expensive socks certainly isn’t the best way to get faster average speeds as with tubless tires we have data to back this up we headed to the Silverstone Sports engineering Hub to measure the cost per watt of several popular Aero upgrades the best value change was a free one

Simply riding in a more aerodynamically efficient position costs nothing and it saved us over 30 wats compared to our Baseline position you will have to invest time into training your body to hold such a position but the numbers don’t lie this is worth it and this doesn’t just apply to aerodynamics

Whenever we go to the National Hill Climb championships we see a host of lightweight bikes that are formed from from well-priced parts so you don’t need to spend massive cash to go Faster power meters are becoming ever more common on new bikes but if you’re not following a training plan or using the numbers to chart your improvements do you really need one we would say no a power meter is quite simply a tool that you can use to get fitter and faster on

The bike they come in many forms with different brands placing them in pedals CR CS crank spiders and even wheel hubs each has positives and negatives but the basic fact is that if you don’t use the data to influence your training they’re just adding weight to your bike or

Taking money from your pocket some power meters can spit out data on your pedal balance letting you know if you favor one leg over the other that can be very useful information for preventing or healing injuries okay I will admit analyzing your power numbers comparing the data against your riding friends and

Having a measure of just how good the pros are is quite a lot of fun but a power meter will cost you at least a few hundred with the best ones costing quite a bit more and that is quite a lot of money to spend if you’re not doing anything with the Data so those are our top five road bike upgrades that you probably don’t need we’re fully ready to get shot down in the comment section on a few of these so if you want to let us know how wrong we are then get down there and start typing

In 2024 we’d love you to subscribe to the channel it won’t cost you a thing but it means a lot to us thanks for watching and if you want to see what upgrades you should be making to go faster and check out this video