hen we think of ways to upgrade our bikes we often look to the components that are in plain sight such as our wheels, handlebars, pedals, or maybe even our entire groupset. We interact with these components all the time so it’s easy to see why they would be top of mind when we think about swapping out parts for something better and lighter.
Inner Tubes as an Affordable Upgrade
However, one of the most budget friendly upgrades we can make is simply replacing the standard butyl tubes in our tires to a lighter equivalent such as this Specialized Road Turbo Tube.
If we were to compare this Specialized Road Turbo Tube to their Road Standard Tube we could save 40g per tube. This would only cost us about $11 per tube, which is just $3 more than the standard tubes as you can see in the below image which uses our Comparison tool. This is a pretty great weight savings for the money.
With two tubes this would drop your bike weight a total of 80g.
Taking Inner Tube Weight Savings Further
However you can see even more weight savings with inner tubes if you went with lighter tubes made out of different materials such as Latex or TPU. For example, this one from Tubolito which is only 23g per tube!
Comparing these agains the Specialized Road Standard tube before, you would save 73g per tube.
However, as you probably noticed from the above image, the Tubolito road tubes are significantly more expensive at about $30 more than then Specialized Road Standard tubes. Putting the price difference aside for now, if you were to use two of these you’d save about 146 grams.
As most of us riding are also carrying a spare tube (or at least should be), you could even replace your spare with a Tubolito which would further drop your bike’s weight by another 73 grams, totaling a weight savings of about 220 grams.
Comparing Inner Tubes to Other Component Upgrades
Achieving this type of weight loss for the money is hard to achieve elsewhere on your bike.
For example, let's say you wanted to switch out your current road pedals for a lighter version. Using the Wahoo Speedplays as an example, if you were running the base Wahoo Speedplay Comp Pedals made out of steel for the Wahoo Speedplay Nano Pedals made out of titanium, you would see a drop of 64g per pedal as you can see in the image below.
Now that’s close to what we saw when swapping out our tubes, however for this upgrade you would have to spend $449.
Therefore to get close to the same weight savings as the Tubolito tubes, you would end up spending roughly $370 more!
This is of course looking at price and weight alone and putting aside any other cost/benefits of swapping out these components.
Additional Pros and Cons of Upgrading Your Inner Tubes
To provide some additional insight into inner tube upgrades, David Arthur from Just Ride Bikes has a great video on this topic. In the video he touches on the weight savings and pros and cons of swapping out your standard butyl tubes for another type like latex or TPU which I think is worth watching.
In short the TPU tubes like Tubolito, appear to offer a nice drop in weight and a similar level of protection as butyl tubes but at a higher cost. The latex tubes offer increased comfort, some weight savings, but are not as robust as a butyl tube.
Hopefully this comparison provides you with some interesting insight when you think about ways you can upgrade your bike and reduce it's weight. As we all ride in slightly different conditions you should go with what works best for your area, but the great thing is we have options when it comes to inner tube choice and depending on what you go with it could lead to some decent weight savings.
Leveraging our Comparison Tool
As you've seen in this article our Comparison tool was designed to allow you to easily compare some of the most common bike components and understand what weight savings you may find between switching components in the same category or across different categories. In order to accomplish this, we've standardize our components as much as possible to give you as even a comparison as possible. So even if you don't see the exact size, gearing range, etc the components should give you a good relative understanding of what savings you may see between two similar parts by different brands.
With this tool we’d like to empower you to come to your own conclusions of how you’d like to upgrade your bike, however tubes are one of those values that are hard to beat when it comes to cost effective weight savings.
Our 3rd Post!
Thanks for reading our third blogpost! We plan to provide more comparisons in the future. If you have any feedback you'd like to share feel free to reach out here.
