Banzai

This isn't necessarily yet another "which frame material is better?" thread, per se. Lord knows we have enough of those. This is a comment about my non-scientific perceptions about the bicycle market right now. Though I realize as I write this post that it will devolve into that in roughly 6-9 posts.

Not too long ago, it seemed like Ti was "the" material, right next to CF, for the discerning cyclist with money to spend who was seeking performance. For all the reasons that have been mentioned in all those other threads. In fact, I've been considering trading my steel Ritchey Breakaway Cross for the Titanium version, whilst down-sizing my fleet.

That's when I discovered that Ritchey has discontinued ALL of their Ti models. They've gone steel, save for the new CF Breakaway Road. So in a moment of boredom, I started doing some internet searching for the Breakaway Ti. That's when I found that aside from some custom makers (Seven, etc.) the Ti market seems to have shrunk considerably, and also wandered downstream. The largest purveyors of Ti that I found seem to be BD, and Nashbar, the latter which is hawking a bunch of Lynskey frames.

The most sought after small/boutique frame-makers are dealing in steel, and while there are numerous Lynskeys on Nashbar, and BD Motobecane Ti bikes, there is not a good steel frame to be found any of those places. Some heavy and inferior Al and CF, and...Ti.

Just in conversations here and there, Ti seems to have lost the lofty place of awe and respect it had years ago as a frame material, and I kind of wonder why. It certainly doesn't seem as exotic, or as "cool" anymore. Perhaps, while I wasn't paying attention, Ti went out of style.

Tom Ritchey is my favorite grouch in cycling, so if he quit making Ti versions of the Breakaway - which were extremely well reviewed and loved - then there must be something going on. All while he re-releases the Road Logic, in steel, and everyone I know is drooling over it.

RonH

My 2001 Litespeed hasn't gone out of style or favor. It's still my favorite ride and I see several "old" Litespeeds on the bike trail during the Tuesday and Thursday rides.

PepeM

Old folks seem to love them. Something about comfort. Racer boys don't seem to care for them. Something about stiffness and wattage.

Marcus_Ti

Ti has gotten rarer in part:

A) Ti stock is getting eaten by other industries (aerospace/defense/etc) and tube stock is far more expensive. So much so 6/4 is almost never used anymore. Too expensive and too marginal gains. People see made up stats about this year's CF models from Manufacturer X being 10% more stiff and 125% more compliant-and click buy now.

B) Ti is MUCH harder to work with that steel or Al. The margin isn't there to start with, nor is the sales. Everyone is buying CF framesets, practically as frequently as clothes


Ti is still exotic, you seldom see it on the roads. Tour de Nebraska every year, there's maybe 2-4 bikes out of 300+ that are Ti. My Seven gets compliments as such. I'm building up a disc-brake non-paved-road bike this spring. It is going to be Titanium. I love the stuff. Between ride quality, durability-it is nice stuff.


Racers ride what their sponsor gives them. You can make a Ti bike stiff as hell, it is just harder to do it as light in weight as CF.

indyfabz

Not all of them:

Engin Cycles | Handmade Titanium Bicycles Philadelphia, PA

He's now building only ti frames and is quite busy:

"WAIT TIME
NOTICE: Currently not taking orders. A primary goal has always been to deliver a product in a timely fashion. The wait exceeded what we considered a realistic wait, so until the queue is more managable it is currently closed."

Got mine in May of 2015.

Maelochs

Cliff Notes version: Technology has stripped Ti's cachet, but hasn't lowered its cost or the difficulty of working it.

For the bored:

Ti has a limited appeal. Always has. Now the Ti crowd has the CF option, some good Al options, and even some custom steel ... there just isn't enough of a market to justify the material for most manufacturers.

The "steel is real" crowd is more numerous and therefore a better target market.

Ti used to be the summit, the "best" frame material ... lighter than steel, with a better ride ... but advances in Al have made that advantage meaningless, and CF has become the "Best" frame material for most, because it is what the pros ride.

Ti is heavier than CF and a lot harder to build correctly. Ti is expensive as a raw material. Ti offers only marginal benefits over the competitor materials---more durable than CF (but people buying CF aren't looking for that, primarily; people looking for longevity buy steel) and lighter than steel (but people wanting "light" are buying CF.)

People who want fast bikes buy CF. People who want comfortable bikes buy steel. So ... people who want expensive bikes buy Ti? No .. . they buy custom steel or high-end CF.

Ritchey sells bikes for money. He can make a lot more money selling steel to more people than Ti to fewer ... it has nothing to do with which material is "better" ... except in the limited realm of "commercially better."

I'd love to buy Ti as my "rest of my life comfort ride"---braze-ons for full racks, wide enough to accept touring tires, fender mounts, and extra bottle mount on the downtube, maybe .... endurance geometry .... but the cost for a butted-tubing Ti frame is really hard to justify when I could get the same thing in steel for much less---and likely the two frames would both be exceedingly comfortable anyway.

The number of cyclists with the cash to buy whatever they want, and also the desire to buy Ti, is small and shrinking. The cost of custom steel will always be lower, and as the market shrinks, the price disparity will likely grow. For a small manufacturer, where it is harder to amortize costs over a smaller production run, it only makes sense to drop the narrow-margin items.

fietsbob

Tom Is also a Client of Maxway for the Steel Bikes, and I expect has another company making the Carbon frames,
and assembling the Bikes & shipping them Out.

To His Designs, Perhaps, but opting for the cost-benefit of outside manufacturing.

79pmooney

I love the ride. Loved it from the one mile dirt road ride I did on a Merlin mountain bike in 1989. I now have two ti customs. Probably won't get another as these are for the rest of my life. So the market numbers will show a mild boost from me in the '10s, then the current slump. One problem for ti bike makers - a lot of their frames do not get replaced by a newer ti frame. They simply don't get replaced.

Ben

shelbyfv

I think it's true that ti is more popular with older folks. They tend to have more riding experience and are able to distinguish the ride of one bike from another. Also, they are more likely to buy what they want w/o the constraints of fashion or economics. In my riding group, I've seen a movement from carbon to ti, primarily Lynskey and Moots, some older Serotta and Seven. Most guys have multiple bikes and don't start out with the idea of giving up the carbon, they just find they would rather ride the ti and the carbon sits. These are older people, 40s through 70s, not racers. Some of us went from steel to ti but a significant number tried carbon in between. Seeing the bikes lined up at a rest stop is a little boring, we've only got a couple that are painted.

sumgy

Difference is that you cant punch Ti out of a mould and so the ability to scale production is nowhere near the same.
Ti will never really "compete" in the same space as the racer boy frames as they as you simply could not make sufficient quantity to keep up.
Those manufacturing Ti frames are also not really that interested in trying to compete.
If they were they would not be making bicycles that can last a lifetime.
Moots, BAUM, Engin, Firefly, Blacksheep, Mozaic, IF etc etc etc are all still out there along with a number of newer players like Oddity and Moonmen.
Plenty of steel manufacturers out there, but again a "niche"market. I dont see many steel frames at the local Crit races either.

Some of the ti and steel manufacturers at the higher end are talking 18 month turnaround on their frames, which certainly does not suit the racerboy group who want to look at a pic in a magazine and walk into their LBS to pick up that bike that afternoon.

shelbyfv

Yep, you aren't likely to walk in a shop and have a variety of ti frames to catch your eye. You have to seek them out. That's fine with me. If I see someone I don't know on a ti bike, there's a good chance they put some thought into what they are riding and might be a good prospect for some bike talk.

Marcus_Ti

Yup, A problem for all bikes...Especially anything billing itself as mid/top tier. Which due to low margins and low sales figures hurts Ti more.

All components continue to get more ridiculous in price. Back at the top of the millennium, a pair of Dura Ace STIs were regularly $250 on Performance. The most ginchy and latest Dura Ace STIs are now retailing for 5X that ($650 per shifter for 9170). Wheels are getting more ridiculous too.



Most of the loss in cachet though is simply the wunder-carbon-bike craze. It is all-too-easy to dazzle lay-folk with technobabble acronyms and statistics that don't mean much. Amazing how shallow it can be. A few years back on a Tour a hubby/wife pair showed up on new-for-that-year his/her Trek roadies (probably $3-4K in that year across both bikes). I know this and it stands out for one reason, after 5 days and 300 miles of thunderstorms/rain/mud/use, I saw them at my LBS wanting to return their no-longer brand-new bikes. Both the LBS crew and I agreed...they thought they were getting something pretty and unique snowflake-ish...went on the ride....and saw 200+ other Treks pretty much identical.

sumgy

We had a shop in Brisbane Australia that carried only high end Ti and steel frames along with Chris King, Rapha and high end groupsets that he had had custom painted to match. While cyclists loved to visit it and be seen there, I still never saw many of the frames in use.
He closed a couple of years later and I think it was mainly his attached coffee shop, mechanical services and sales of Rapha that kept it open as long as it was.

Roadrash3

I was recently in the market for a titanium frame I have owned lynskey and was seriously considering a moots. It's the price I have a hard time swallowing I don't feel that it is some super material, because I have seen titanium frames crack just as any other material, and titanium still flexes which they can eliminate with some carbon fiber but the fact that I could buy two top-of-the-line carbon fiber bikes for the price as one titanium since I don't tend to keep bikes for longer than five years I gave up on the idea

coominya

Every second watch you see is titanium now, a lot of medical uses as well. You don't need much Ti to build a watch and you can charge a much higher premium because of it. As for a knee replacement, the sky is the limit to what you can charge. I have a few Ti watches, vastly superior to SS, no reaction whatsoever with by body chemistry.

sumgy

The Moots would likely be cheaper than a comparable CF frame and likely (barring some major incident) last you a lifetime. It even has a Lifetime warranty (unless they have changed that recently).
I cant and wont believe that the latest Trek or Specialized will do that and I doubt that even a CF frame from the likes of Parlee will either.
I have seen riding partners go through 3 Trek frames in the past 12 months. None from crashes. For a manufacturer such as Trek to simply hand the guy a new frame when iit cracked tells me that the mark up on those frames must be Gi-normous.

Out of interest, which "top of the line" carbon frames are you trying to compare to a Moots?

shelbyfv

Resale is certainly a plus for ti. There is virtually no market for a 5 year old carbon frame, but a decent ti frame will rarely depreciate below $500 or $600 in my experience.

Marcus_Ti

Which "top of the line" CF frames did you look at? A Moots frameset is $4000ish ballpark.


An off-the-shelf S-Works Tarmac is $3750 frameset only

Trek's Madone 9 is $5500 for frameset/seatpost

And Emonda SLR is $4000 for frameset/seatpost


Top of the line CF...iof you're actually looking at top of the line....is just as expensive as a Moots. And what is more, those are off-the-shelf OEMd framesets, whereas with the Moots or Indy Fab or Seven or what have you-you can customize it.


This of course ignores brands like Foundry or Dean etc. that are more on a budget.

Roadrash3

I was looking at complete builds, didn't necessarily mean top of the line since a normal Joe like me would not notice the difference in frame from a Sworks frame to the 10R carbon they advertise. My cheap carbon frames had way less flex and more power off the line then my lynskey had. The moots I was looking at for their complete builds was 8-11k, the Robouix I was looking at was 4500-6500. (Pretty comparable components)I like the idea of a lifetime
Bike but never keep it that long. When I was at the shop going to order the dealer was telling me about some of the cracked frames in Ti they had seen, which lead me To believe anything can break. I have only had one carbon frame break and it was A mark on the bike before I got it trek replaced it no questions asked I had got a deal because of the mark on the frame but it ended up cracking. If you compare the frame to a Sworks or madone frame sure they are comparable. But you won't get the stiffness or the lightweight that the carbon offers. All the big companies offer lifetime warranty whether they cover it is a another thing. I want to like titanium I'm just having a hard time this go around

sumgy

And I would not call ANY of those CF frames you listed as being "top of the line".
None of those is anywhere close to a Moots for quality.
$50 moulded frames being sold for $4k+.

Roadrash3

I would have to agree with that statement there's something beautiful about a moots frame, carbon fiber frames all look the same to me

sumgy

The only CF frames I think of that are as "high end" as Moots are Parlee or Calfee.
Wrench Science has the price for the Parlee Z1 listed at $8,300US and the Altum at $4,300.
The Calfee Dragonfly is priced at $4,895 while their cheapest frame, Luna is $2,495.
If a lugged carbon fibre frame, made in the USA by Calfee can be bought at those prices, I guess it goes to show how much the likes of Specialized, Trek etc etc etc are gouging.

Maelochs

@RoadRash:

If you want a stiff, light, and potentially fragile frame, go CF. (As a CF owner, this is just my view---if I had to crash, I would hope I was riding one of my metal bikes.) CF will be the stiffest, lightest frame you can buy (assuming you don't buy something your neighbor's kid made in shop class.)

That's what CF is about--decent ride quality (read: buzz and small bump absorption) and low weight with high stiffness--because the material can be shaped and layered in ways no metal tubes could possibly be (about the best you can do with metal is hydroforming and triple-butting, but nothing like what can be molded with CF.)

If you want Titanium, don't buy it looking for Carbon Fiber's properties. That would be like buying boat when you want a car. (You're right, the boat Does float better.)

If you want to get the max out of your sprints, don't buy an F/S mountain bike, right?

Titanium gives reasonably light weight and a lot of vibration absorption. Titanium gives good performance in a straight line---in that it doesn't weight you down with a lot of material--and gives great compliance. It is reputedly the most comfortable frame material yet discovered (all the crap about tires, wheels, saddles, design, aside---there will always be someone throwing that tedious, trivial crap out there.)

For comparably equipped frames, Ti will be lighter and more compliant than any metal frame, and more compliant than CF by far, and will mute buzz and rattle better than CF.

Basically if you want to go fast and not get beat up, buy Ti.

If you want to go slowly and in max comfort, buy an F/S fat bike--Surly sells some nice ones.

If you want to sprint get CF.

Can Ti break? Everything can break. And one issue with Ti is that it is hard to work, so a cheap Ti frame might be a liability (though I haven't heard anything bad about Bikes Direct Ti ... ) CF can break, Al can break, steel can break. At some point, my question is So What?

I read about people who break three frames a season ... I think they are BSing or are idiots. The strongest track and Tour riders don't break frames ... I guess these rare individuals which break so many frames are just phenomenally super-strong---and choose not to win all the Grands Tours, Classics, or track events because they are so modest?

Or maybe they are riding really badly, or crashing or ... I cannot guess what. Frames don't regularly break under the world's strongest riders, yet I keep seeing these posts about BF posters breaking frames like they are twigs. Whatever. (Maybe along with "BS-ing" we should add the term "BF-ing"?)

I intend to ride my CF frame for the rest of my life. If I get t-boned by a semi ... maybe not. I expect to ride with steel and aluminum frames about the same amount of time.

If I could afford Ti ... I wouldn't buy it for all the wrong reasons. And I certainly wouldn't compare high-end Ti with high-end CF. Different tools for different tasks.

If a Madone and Moots are the same to you ... maybe best off riding BikesDirect for a while until some distinction becomes clear?

Buy the Right bike for Your ride. if it's a Madone, a Moots sin't going to cut it no matter how much it costs.

Roadrash3

Well put, I think that sums it up. I love all bikes from my salsa steel bikes to my carbon fiber road bikes and cutthroat . I have owned two Ti Lynskeys which I sold over the years. A nice Ti bike is like a work of art though. Your right about all the people claiming breaking all the bike frames, I asked my local
Mechanics how many broken frames they see and the answer is always very little if none, so I wonder what about that.

coominya

You always pay a higher price for the latest in fashion. As has been noted on this thread, CF is really designed for pro racers. they can afford to bin them after one race, but that doesn't stop everyone with a pocket full of money wanting one too.