At once austere and utterly indulgent, ultralight bicycle parts are out of reach for most of us, but that doesn’t diminish the window-shopping experience one little bit.
In no particular order, here’s our five-part smorgasbord of the least compromising kit available in 2019.
Saddles have to handle a lot of load, so it stands to reason that there's a limit on how light you could make them.
A 100g sounds reasonable to us, but not to Gelu Carbon Creation, which has managed to get the K.3 saddle down to a scant 38g. Yes: 38g.
The price? At €495 this might be the most expensive ‘gram per euro spent’ cycling product ever created at 13 euros per gram.
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As for comfort, BikeRadar videographer Reuben Bakker-Dyos is currently using a K.3 for UK hill climb season, and early indications are that it’s better than you’d expect.
FSE EVO 23T Super Extralite Wheels
FSE's EVO 23T Super Extralite Wheels weigh 887g
FSE, or if you want to use its full title, Filament Spin Evolution, loves making lightweight wheels, and it's pretty good at it too.
Its lightest wheelset is the EVO 23T Extralite model, which weighs in at 887g on the BikeRadar scales of truth.
That’s insanely light, although they do come with an 81kg weight limit, so you’ll need to be on the light side yourself.
Whilst they’re certainly not cheap, these wheels also represent relative value for money in the stratospherically-priced world of ultra lightweight tech, coming in at just under $1,900 for the pair.
Compared to a set of Enves or Lightweights that actually doesn’t sound too bad.
Bontrager XXX bar/stem combo
The pictured Bontrager XXX bar/stem combo has a 120mm stem length and 42cm wide bars, and weighs 235g
Ultralight tech is often the purveyance of boutique brands, who have the time and small product range to conjure up truly stunning examples of weight weenie-ism.
So, when a mainstream brand has a product that falls into the ultralight category, we think it’s worth shouting about.
Case in point: Bontrager’s XXX bar/stem combo.
The example pictured has a 120mm stem length and 42cm wide bars, yet weighs a combined 235g.
When you consider that’s lighter than many carbon bars on their own you start to realise how special this combo really is.
Extralite makes all its ultralight components in-house at its facilities in Italy.
It has products for both road and MTB, but these Streeters road-specific quick-release skewers really grabbed our attention when it comes to weight weenie chops.
They weigh 29g for the pair. Just think about that for a second: they’ll be just 14.5g of metal preventing each of your wheels falling out of your bike in a blaze of fire and glory.
Jokes aside, each skewer is a beautiful piece of engineering formed of titanium rods and heavily machined aluminum clamping ends.
Ciamillo Lekki8 brakes
Ciamillo's Lekki8 brakes weigh in at 129g for the set, which, as far as we know, makes it the lightest brake caliper in the world
There are plenty of lightweight brake calipers out there, but Ciamillo takes the weight weenie prize for its Lekki8 calipers, which weigh in at 129g for the set.
As far as we know, that’s the lightest brake caliper in the world.
They’re made from carbon fibre, aluminium and titanium, and have been recently updated to work with contemporary wider rims and tyres.
We also happen to think they look damn cool and would make a great addition to a no-holds-barred ultralight build.
Like everything else on this list, at $539 for the pair, they’re not cheap, but if you want the best — or rather the lightest — then this is the one.
Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments.
