My road frame has an aluminum rear end, and until I actually started riding it longer than two hours (due to heavy forced labor), I thought it would of been just as comfortable as a full carbon frame if my “fit” was right. Recently now putting in more and more mileage, am noticing lower back pain. It is not the typical hamstring pulling on my glutes and then pulling on my back pain, which I now stretch religiously after a ride. It feels like I can actually feel the road beneath me slowly tapping on my lower back and chipping away at my comfort. I then rode my friends twelve year old Colnago Tecnos and went out for three hours with no problem and his bike has a harder riding wheel set up than mine. I have recently changed my opinion on bicycles with rear aluminum stays and think that now with the major manufacturers all of which produce sexy looking carbon frames for as cheap as they do, would rather get a full carbon frame instead of buying a nineties style alloy rear end. I am interested in anyone’s opinion who believes that an alloy rear end is better than a carbon or a steel rear end frame. Or vice-versa.
Ive done 3+ hours on my bmc streetfire and it doesnt feel any different that my old 99 blade. did you ride your own bike after you rode on your friends bike? you felt better when you rode the other bike because you just became stronger already. what tires do you run? pressure? its not really the material that makes the difference is most cases but how the frame is designed which i`ve noticed on my BMC which is oddly shaped.
Lower back pain is NOT caused by aluminum seat and chain stays.
…rock!
Aluminum, steel, ti, or carbon should not matter, but when I ride another frame it just feels more comfortable. I run 110 P.S.I. usually with 28 spoked wheels and tubular 404s. The rear end is straight not curved stays and I do ride a small frame. I still feel a difference in comfort, whether that is psychological or not is a debate that I feel can not be answered. What I do know is how my back feels from the one bike to the next and to the next. Maybe I am not stretching long enough, but I do go to town on my hamstrings, glutes and lower back as well as my lats. I know all of which if one of them are tight then it would eventually pull on the lower back. If it is not the frame and or just the stays then what has been said is mental? Could it be that I am too high in the bars? Should I go even lower in pressure? Anything under 110 and I do not feel the bike tracks the way I want it to. Should I just stick to mountain biking where I can ride three hours with only muscle soreness and no lower back aches?
Aluminum rear ends
This should be the only Aluminum rear end you concern yourself with:
(it’s from the computrainer if you’re not familiar with that sort of thing 
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tire width? i use size 23 tires with 100 psi and i dont feel any jarring, do you ride road or tri? i used to have loer back pain when i shifted to a road bike because i was not used to the position but now i even pushed the saddle further back.
Unfortunately they are Sprinter 22s which I love. The frame does not allow 25s, and I never had a TT bike. Been on alot of road bikes in the years and never had a problem, maybe I am getting older. Like I said I have recently been putting more miles in now that I have the time to actually enjoy riding again. Could it be that some of my muscles are a little under-devloped for the miles that I have recently been adding on wihtout too much base mileage being built up? Maybe I should stick with simple 30-40 mile rides and keep it under two hours for at least another month.
I ride an all Al frame with carbon fork (curved seatstays). The lower back pain can come from several sources. I had a pretty significant amount of pain in the lower back when I started hitting longer off-season rides (70-80 miles). Most of this disappeared immediately after I got a professional fit done (turns out I had a lot of hip rocking that the fitter was able to correct most of). However, the pain has started to creep back a bit as I’m working on getting a lower/more aggressive position. Flexibility is a challenge for me… something I’m still working on.
I don’t find the ride quality to be terrible, but in interest of full disclosure, I haven’t ridden anything else (yet). My R3 frameset is sitting in the closet waiting to get built… I expect a fairly substantial difference from that. Carbon frames may be better, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a properly constructed Al frame (or rear end, as the case may be).
In any case, things that can be done to help out are 1.) proper fit, 2.) quality shorts, saddle, etc. If you haven’t had your cleats and shoes professionally setup, that can help a lot as well. Bad foot ergonomics work their way up the leg, into the hips, lower back, etc.
I’m gonna ask the obvious question: was the bike you liked better set up exactly the same: same saddle height (and saddle), bar reach and height? I’d start there.
I have worked for a “guru” in fitting and understand the stretches and positioning very well. My shorts I know are a little old (very). And when I measured the bikes I even measured BB. drop so that the bar height and the hood heights were just so. The measurement from center of saddle not nose to bars was a 5 mm. short of what I usually have which I did account for by trying to ride more on the bars and not the hoods, maybe that is it but feel like the pain does not justify a 5 mm. difference. A diffference in saddle height of 5 mm. is a big difference, but on a road bike in the bars where you are prone to being out of the saddle, in the drops, on the hoods, on the tops, on the rivet, climbing and being pushed back in the saddle gives a wide variance to move around in the saddle and change in position on the bike to compliment terrain. I do believe fit is good and that the body will sometimes even have twinges to new fits as the body has memory, even if the initial fit is wrong and the new one is right as far as “numbers” go. I know that the way to measure a bike; especially saddles where the Adamo has no nose and a higher rail to saddle top is differnt than a Aliante is to an Arione. I have done the work and will keep trying to find the cause. I also do plank and side plank and can not after a long ride perform the core excercise because of lower back pain. And it is not 6 or 7 hours in the saddle where I can understand, it is 2 1/2 and over is where the problems start to reveal and it comes in slowly and by the time I am done feel like an old man getting off the bike. I dunno.