So what's the deal with oversized tubes on road bikes? I'm looking into getting a used frame but it saz it's a 1" headtube. I know almost all XC bikes are now 1 1/8" headtubes for rigidity. Are road bikes made that way for the same reason? Or like drop bars, some of them need larger stem sizes. Why?
A 1" head tube on a road bike tells me you're looking at an OLDER used frame.
Larger frame tubes can be made thinner, and thereby lighter, without sacrificing strength. Lighter frames/bikes, when all else is equal, are faster. That's important to a couple of folks.
If you took all the metal (or carbon fiber) that is in the tubing of any given member of your bike and instead of a tube made a rod out of it, same amount of material, you can imaginge that it would be much more prone to bending... right? So the principle is, get the material as far away from the central axis of the member to obtain the maximum stiffness... hense OS tubing. The limiting factor is when the tube wall thickness gets so thin that buckling becomes a problem.
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