Titanium fastners

[Herman Toothrot]

So how much weight do you think you'd save replacing all steel ones with titanium on the average road bike, obviously very little but in the cost scale would the saving be reasonable? I just changed the 6 bolts on my stem as some were going rusty (sweaty turbo trainer use) and weighed before and after and it dropped 152g to 132g struck me as a good saving for cost of £9.99 when thinking the difference in quoted weights between uber expensive stems and cheap ones is often similar. Also of course the rust free benefit.

[gazza285]

Make sure that you use a thread grease that will isolate the bolts from the alloy stem as much as is possible, titanium will react with the alloy otherwise, more so than steel or stainless would.

[Herman Toothrot]

Yeah used assembly paste, have a titanium framed MTB.

[agentnomad]

There are not enough steel bolts to make any real difference

There are loads of steel fasteners in a group set and finishing kit but a lot of them are non standard.

I have heard that a pro team or two use Hope to make replacement fixings in Ti and then lead load the bike to get over 6.8Kg's

The old jock about going to the bathroom is true and is around 400 grammes

My road bike is probably around 7kg

My track bike is over weight even with my lightest track wheels in at around 7.5k's

[bakerstreet]

Herman Toothrot said:

So how much weight do you think you'd save replacing all steel ones with titanium on the average road bike, obviously very little but in the cost scale would the saving be reasonable? I just changed the 6 bolts on my stem as some were going rusty (sweaty turbo trainer use) and weighed before and after and it dropped 152g to 132g struck me as a good saving for cost of £9.99 when thinking the difference in quoted weights between uber expensive stems and cheap ones is often similar. Also of course the rust free benefit.

I have added a few titanium fasters to my bike and I have a few more to add. Below are my findings including costs per gram saved. The skewers were excellent value for money as far as weight saved, but the paint is all ready flaking off, so I may try the more expensive £15 ones from Planet X next time.


This is really a topic for the weight weenies forum. They have pages and pages of this kind of stuff and there are pages on there which tell you exactly how much you can expect to save


Long term plan is to replace all the bolts with titanium versions. The seat post is next on my list to order as the Planet X one is looking crap all ready and its not even a year old. Should save a good 150g with that one for only £45

Edit: I should add I'm not expecting any performance gain. Also, I don't think the pro teams spend time to get the bike over 6.8Kg ;o) Hopefully that rule will be changed soon as Trek launched a bike recently that was 5.5Kg!

Edited by bakerstreet on Wednesday 11th February 21:01

[anonymous-user]

I bet all the savings would weigh less than half a bottle of water...

[bakerstreet]

Jimboka said:

I bet all the savings would weigh less than half a bottle of water...

They do. The current total is 414g and that included new tyres. I didn't start off with weight in mind. I bought new bars as I didn't like the Planet X ones and I bought new tyres as the ones that came with the bike weren't proper knobbly CX tyres. My skewers got damaged, so I replaced with a £7 titanium skewers instead. I just decided to start a spreadsheet for comparison purposes.

I'm doing it to see how far you can go and what it costs. I will change the wheels eventually and that should take off about 1.5kg as the Planet X standard wheels are pretty heavy.

[ecsrobin]

Where did you get your bolts from? I'm sick to death of looking at rusty bolts on my bike so it's either anodised or titanium that I epneed to replace them.

[anonymous-user]

Jimboka said:

I bet all the savings would weigh less than half a bottle of water...

My mistake, the savings are just under the weight of a full water bottle . Just to put into context..

[bakerstreet]

Jimboka said:

My mistake, the savings are just under the weight of a full water bottle . Just to put into context..

I know. I'm not arguing the point However, my bottles are 750ml, so technically I am saving over half a water bottle's worth

I got all my titanium and carbon stuff on Ebay. There is a large supplier of titanium fastners base in york. They always come up of you search for something like 'titanium bottle cage bolts'.

I got the disc bolts from a supplier in china. Not much cheaper than the UK suppliers if I'm honest. You can also get titanium bolt kits for the stem