What makes a road bike

[trainingpartner]

Just browsing over some bike builds like Berks light bike, or the Tririg bike, or the bike fairwheels built (Gunter's old bike)

What's the criteria that makes them road bikes and, what if Berk changed his bike to a 1x, is that still a road bike? Like say he changed it to fixie and it weighed 2.3, is that a road bike. Could we call that the lightest bike in the world? Does it need drop bars? Can they be cut off drops?

Weighing protocols, do we include pedals, do we not, what about Garmin, what if we don't use a garmin, is that gaining an advantage on the scales...
Is the form of a socially acceptable "bike" with 2 brakes, 2 mechs etc required when these guys say it's lightest bike in the world... I'm sure there is a correct way and criteria, it just maybe different from person to person? I liked the way Cade media was weighing bikes at the top of the hill climb last week. That was pretty cool to see, actual ridden weight of a bike.

Who makes the rules? Interested to hear your views

[HammerTime2]

If you ride the bike without pedals, don't include them in the weight. Otherwise, do.

[trainingpartner]

That's fair! New bike weights are specified without pedals though right...

[HammerTime2]

In the pre-clipless days, new road bikes generally included pedals (with toe clips), and listed bike weights included pedals.

When multiple incompatible clipless pedals became popular in the '90s, manufacturers of road bikes generally stopped including pedals with the bike because they didn't know which cleat type the buyer would want, and manufacturers did not include the weight of pedals, which were not included with the bike.

I'd say for purposes of WW, bikes should include pedals and their weight.

[Emerald102]

Generally road bikes have drop handlebars, multiple gears, and two brakes. Changing a road bike to a 1x setup or a fixie can make it more specialized. Weight is usually measured without pedals and accessories. The form of a bike can vary depending on context. Different organizations may have their own rules.

[poulhansen]

I guess you just make your own rules. I find that many bikes nowadays run x1 gears also a lot of non WW bikes, so I find that acceptable.

I did not include bottle cage as I find a WW bike is a hillclimb bike where no water is necessary but I did include pedals as I think it should be a ridable bike. Otherwise you can leave out the tires and all sorts of things

BUT there are people that find the WW idea itself deplorable and think that these bikes are unsafe, which they don't have to be.

[usr]

UCI rules, or UCI rules except for 6.8 if that's what you want.

Once you go beyond taking those as at least a baseline ("except 6.8"), you enter the realm of Boardman experiments, recumbents, and velomobiles showing the open recumbent how it's really done. And weightweenieism disappears in a puff of carbon unicycles.