Originally Posted by
repechage
owner of the shop I worked for had one, via Bertin. Seat lug ear tore out. Finding a repair facility back then was slim and none. Bike was a flexible flyer. Lots of work to make that fork!
Teledyne for its part, added an external sleeve to the upper 3" of the seat tube- the seat stays were welded to that, a bit cleaner welds than the Speedwell. There was a German builder, speedbicycles.ch has an image set, that one had wild webs at the bottom bracket to help control flex.
I didn't realize that any Speedwell frames made it to the US. A shame that the seat lug ear failed... did someone just throw a hose clamp over the top of the seat tube as a fix? Titanium forks are hard enough to make suitable stiff, especially when having to deal with dimensions that were developed for steel tubing. I can see the desire to market a fully ti frame and fork, though.
The Teledyne Titan was moderately successful, and as noted, did try to compensate for having to stick with standard dimensions. Bicycle Guide did a nice article on the development of the Teledyne frame. I'll post the first two pages. If there is interest, I'll post the remaining four pages.
Steve in Peoria
