You've seen aluminium, steel, carbon and even titanium bikes before... but how about magnesium? Other highlights currently out for review include a tiny little commuting backpack, the latest version of dhb's most renowned bib shorts, a rather inexpensive GPS bike computer and a handy set of tools designed to make recabling a bike involve much less swearing.
Vaast R/1 700C Ultegra
£2,999.99
The R/1 brings Vaast's Magnesium technology to the road. The 1,250g frame is made of 'Allite Super Magnesium' and claims to be part of Vaast's "sustainable bike range". To avoid corrosion the frame is Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation-coated, and in this build it's paired to a carbon fork and bar, aluminium wheels, Shimano's 11-speed mechanical Ultegra R8000 groupset, Praxis cranks and a colour-coded stem.
> Review: Vaast A/1 Allroad review
What do you make of these welds? Vaast says the R/1s geometry suits competitive but comfortable endurance riding, with two fork offsets across its sizing, and the 32mm maximum tyre clearance is in keeping with this. Stu has been out putting the Vaast through its paces to see if it really is as good as its carbon counterparts...
www.vaastbikes.com
Rapha Pro Team Lightweight Backpack
£90.00
This rather tiny backpack has a capacity of just 10 litres, and is designed for riders "committed to training pre- and post-work". Rapha says it's the perfect size for a pair of shoes and clothing and will stay out of the way during hard efforts. It also has a VERY pink interior...
> Best casual cycling commuter wear – check out our buyer’s guide
The lower section of the pack is fully reflective, while the main body is water-resistant with shielded zips to protect the contents from light showers. There's also a zipped 'easy to access' pocket on the left strap and perforated fabric to promote airflow. I've been using this one on my regular commute into road.cc HQ, and you can read my full review in a few weeks' time to see what I've managed to cram in there...
www.rapha.cc
Dhb Aeron Bib Shorts 2.0
£80.00
dhb says its iconic Aeron bib shorts are now "more sustainable, more stylish and better performing." There are certainly a lot more colours to choose from, seven in fact...
The Paris HP Men seat pad has been retained, but the main short is now constructed in a bi-elastic fabric made from 65% 'Econyl' regenerated nylon. Reviewer Tom Price puts in some serious miles, so have these mid-range shorts kept him comfy while he tikcs them off? Tom's full verdict will be dropping soon...
www.dhbsport.com
Van Rysel Cyclometer GPS 100
£44.99
In our buyer's guide to the best cycling computers, the cheapest GPS device to feature is £54.99. Could we be about to knock £10 off that with Van Rysel's GPS 100 device?
The Cyclocomputer with GPS gets all the features you would expect from a more expensive device such as automatic sync over Bluetooth, a 2" display and no setup or pairing needed with a speed sensor. It also boasts an IPX7 waterproof rating and 16-hour run time. We've been testing to see whether that is indeed the case and will be reporting back shortly...
www.decathlon.co.uk
Birzman Internal Cable Routing Kit
£49.99
Internal cabling is the source of many a home and workshop mechanic's headaches, but Birzman's kit aims to solve all that. This tool includes four individual steel adapters, a lead wire and a flexible extension, and Birzman claims it's capable of sorting cables, hoses and wires.
Features include a built-in awl to help restore cut housing ends, and a fabric-covered tip to protect frames from scratches. This certainly looks like a neat bit of kit, but is it any good!? Mike Stead has been using this on a multitude of bikes to see whether it should be every home mechanic's next purchase...
www.birzman.com
For all the latest road.cc test reports, head over to our reviews section. If you want some more advice before splashing the cash, check out our buyer's guides.
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20 comments
This is my 9 litre Ikea PIVRING backpack. I doubt it's as good as the Rapha one, but it only cost £2.
Rapha jumped the shark pricewise some years back, but even for them to make a backpack so overpriced it probably couldn't carry its own price in pound coins is pretty spectacular.
Magnesium always brings back memories of Thunderbirds special effects for me.
Kirk is the name that comes to my mind as soon as I hear of a magnesium frame.
I've magnesium pedals on both my racing BMXs. They are very light. A magnesium frame would be interesting.
A friend of mine had a Pace mountain bike in the early 90's which was magnesium. Not sure they still do magnesium frames but it was a proper lightweight razor of a machine.
Magnesium bike frames were not new in the mid-90s.
we all know magnesium corrodes.
so what happens when you scratch the frame?
Pure magnesium in thin strip form burns at the slightest provocation, as those of us who did school chemistry in the days before H&S well know. Presumbly they're only allowed to see virtual magnesium burning virtually now.
We aleady have essentially 4 excellent cycle frame materials: steel, aluminium, titanium and composite. You wonder at the point of another material.
I remember burning magnesium in hydrochloric acid (for some reason) in school in the mid-2000s.
I watched a GCN
advertvideo on one of Vaast's previous Magnesium models. Apparently, the point is that it's much easier and less energy/resource intensive to recycle than any of the other mainstream materials.Also, magnesium is way lighter than Aluminium. I work as a programmer in the extrusion die industry. 99% of the profiles my company works with are for aluminium, but occasionally we'll get samples back of the magnesium profiles too. It always takes you by surprise how light they are compared to the aluminium ones, you nearly throw them through the ceiling when you go to pick them up.
And yet it is in fact heavier than certain aluminium bikes (e.g. CAAD13 claimed frame weight of 1.182kg).
Could be less dense than aluminum (and therefore your sample profiles are much lighter for a given volume) but also lower strength to weight, and therefore need much thicker tube walls for the bike frame?
Very possibly. I have no idea what it's like to work with in different forms, but magnesium is very difficult to extrude, at least. Magnesium hollow dies look crazy compared to aluminium ones - if an alu die needs a 50mm pad thickness and a larges bearing of 3mm, the magnesium equivalent would have a 120mm pad and a 35mm bearing. They also go through way more revisions until they run properly - it could be that some of the old weight-saving tricks, sch as triple-butting, are harder to do with magesium?
Bamboo.
Fond memories of mid-80s chemistry lessons. Our teacher grew up during the blitz in London and had what today would probably be seen as a dangerous obsession with exothermic reactions. We spent around 18 months exploring ever more reactive reactions (aka blowing stuff up). All the usual fun, sodium in water, hydrogen manufacture, even made a thermic lance (a lot of lads had relatives who worked on the railways). Oh and "played" with phosphorous. Completely insane and remarkable that we escaped with all extremities intact.
Very similar memories from exactly the same period; our chemistry teacher was a former Royal Marine, he wasn't all that as a teacher but by golly he liked blowing things up. Sadly his activities were curtailed somewhat after police and three fire engines called by neighbouring houses turned up after as an end of term treat he took us out onto the playing fields and threw a lump of sodium the size of a cricket ball into a pail of water.
Happy to conclude that we still burn actual magnesium in our school, at least when resources allow or for classes that are sensible enough to watch (or not watch, in this instance).
My magnesium pedals on my racing BMXs have lasted really well. I presume they're magnesium alloy.
Vaast's welding is a bit off putting. Love the colour and well speced thou
Too bad it's actually made of Unobtanium.
Those are some very nice welds I wish my Tig skills were like that