look566 rider

Finally able to post a picture! This is post resto-mod. 11 speed Campy, Velo Orange crank set, titanium seat post. Since this pic was taken have added Easton carbon fork. Decals are NOS from Mr. Kellogg himself.
Picked up 1991 Merlin Titanium. Frame & fork. Will have pics as soon as I can. Good shape. Plan to build up with contemporary drive train etc.

look566 rider

https://photos.google.com/search/_tr...pc-B7ldNSKxNEf

Spoke with Tom Kellogg at Spectrum Cycles. Says he has original decal set to replace mine. Frame 6333 palces build in 1991.

Wildwood 

google acct required???

look566 rider

calstar 

Pics aren't showing.

stardognine

Congrats! I've always wanted to at least try a titanium frame. They tend to be a bit pricy though. 😉

look566 rider

I am not smarter than the web site. Have tried couple different methods and still can't post pics.

look566 rider

Was fortunate to land this frame for 480.00. Will be building with polished Campy Athena 11 speed.

stardognine

I use a free app on my phone, called Easy Image Editor, to resize pics. I'm still confused when I use it, lol, but it works great, eventually. With smaller pics, I can even post 2 or 3 pics in the same post. 🙂

Kobe 

I have been thinking of trying a titanium bike. I like that there a lot of American builders that have been working with it for a relatively long time. Plus you don't have to worry about the paint being buggered up.

The Golden Boy 

As I recall... don’t you ride a generally “larger than the average bear” sized frame? How does that play with Ti?

Kobe 

That's correct, I usually ride a 66-68cm frame. I did have a 68cm Seven that I probably should have kept longer but the largest wheel it took was a 25. Outside of that it was easily the lightest and fastest bike I have ever owned. It was a little stiffer than my steel bikes, but nowhere near aluminum.

79pmooney

You scored! I had the chance opportunity to ride Gwendolf Jones' (Merlin founder) personal mountain bike in 1989. Family reunion in New Hampshire. I have a million 2nd cousins and don't know half. Got there and as soon as I arrived, another cousin said that Gwendolf wanted to see me. (Who?) So I stayed put. This cousin exactly my size comes up, wheeling a titanium mountain bike and insists I take to for a spin. (A little background. I had raced out of Boston 12 years before. Had the head injury wearing an early Bell that made me famous in the Boston cycling community. I went on to work on the west coast but family ties brought me back regularly. I'm not exagerating the famous part. For fun when I came home, I used to go to bike shops I had never been in, go to the helmet stand and listen to the salesman tell me about my accident.)

So I jumped on this incredibly light MTB, rode 1/2 mile down the dirt driveway to the main road, turned around and sprinted back. First thought - this is it! Make it a road bike and this is a perfect match for me.

That thought stayed with me for the next two decades. But a $4000 bike just wasn't in my budget. Around 2005, ti bikes were getting a little cheaper so I wrote a computer program to analyze the bikes that were out there to see what stem would be required for a good fit and how good would the weight balance be between the wheels. Best I could do was a B+ fit. 2006 I landed the "job". By this time I had been working with TiCycles to have custom stems for my existing bikes, so I was very familiar with their work and reputation. As soon as I was sure that job was going to pan out, I ordered "the bike". It's a keeper. I knew from the firsrt ride that the feeling I had years before on that MTB was real. 5 years later I ordered another very different ti bike; a do-it-all (road grade percentage-wise) road fix gear. Another keeper.

Gwendolf Jones, Tom Kellogg, Dave Levy (TiCycles). Three of the very early modern titanium builders. A very select group. 1991? Very early. I love the clean look of those bikes.

Ben

noglider 

Aluminum and titanium are less stiff than steel, if dimensions remain the same. But dimensions don't remain the same. I say this because people believe aluminum is inherently stiff, and it's actually inherently floppy, compared with steel.

Myth 2: Titanium is Lighter than Steel

palincss

"Contemporary drive train" - if your 1991 Merlin is like my 1991 Ti Spectrum (and it should be, because Merlin made the Spectrum frames at that time) you've got a press-in bottom bracket that can only use square taper cranks. I had my bearings replaced a few years ago, and that wasn't a problem because they're a standard commercial size, but I have no idea where one would get spindles.

Kontact 

I like Jan, but that article is stupid. Titanium bikes do have larger chainstays than steel bikes. You can build a Ti bike that is both lighter than steel and stiffer than steel. Same with aluminum. The thing steel does better is strength per volume, and that isn't much of an issue with bicycles.

He also seems to be using numbers for CP titanium, not the alloys like 3-2.5 used in bicycles that are considerably stronger.

Jan would point out that a pound of feathers is the same weight as a pound of steel if it suited his argument.

You can get spindles from Phil Wood. Email Tom Kellogg if you need instructions on the overhaul and can't find them online.

Tom certainly helped Merlin develop their bikes, but Tom has never built a Ti bike himself.

Who is Gwendolf Jones? Not a name I've heard before and google turns up nothing.