Originally Posted by
velofinds
Can you explain? (E.g., how exactly do they fail, and is the failure gradual or sudden?) I'm constantly tempted by Ti bikes but don't have any experience with one, so this comment piques my interest for sure.
For what it's worth, I thought (perhaps mistakenly) that Ti was supposed to be bulletproof, or close to.
Also curious about this (in particular, how it compares to a good steel bike).
I can't speak to Merlin in particular, but I have a Lightspeed of similar vintage, and it's exceptional. I have 3 steel Italian road bikes, and they are all wonderful, but the Lightspeed has really stiff transfer from the bb to the rear wheel.
As for failure, there was a fellow a month or two ago on The Paceline who had a Lynskey frame fail from fatigue. Apparently, there was a nick in the weld or thereabouts, and it grew over 10's of thousands of miles. It broke clean one day, and Lynskey wouldn't provide a new frame, arguing that it was beyond it's lifetime.