Titanium “super bikes”
#151
Newbie
Three broken ti frames for one person is beyond rare. I'd suggest there's a common denominator for these three bikes which was a contributory factor.
#152
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Jeez, me too. Never owned a ti superbike, but I always imagined they were indestructible as an SR-71. I've chipped a lot of paint off a steel Schwinn Peloton in Cat4 criteriums, and bent the bejeezus out of my Masi Gran Criterium on a guard rail, and snapped a carbon Felt frame while sprinting (and not even crashing). I just assumed Ti and the complex process needed to weld those tubes together meant it was impossible to break them.
My take (considering metal frames only, since carbon can be manipulated to achieve wildly disparate design goals):
For strength, steel > titanium > aluminum; for lightness, aluminum > titanium > steel; for durability, all roughly equal (since no manufacturer wants to have to replace lots of frames under warranty, they're all designed for reasonable reliability); for ride comfort/quality (for a given geometry and, most importantly, wheelbase), all maybe roughly equal, though some people suggest that the ride of titanium bikes is superior.
Add in handling under load (not something a lot of people talk about) and, in my experience, the ranking is aluminum being slightly better than steel. (Experience with titanium is limited - only post-repair road testing back in my bike shop days.)
I loved riding my high-end steel bikes for 40 years; I've loved riding my high-end aluminum bikes for 15 years (there's some overlap, of course). Was never much tempted by titanium, especially after my first two friends who'd bought titanium bikes both cracked them. One of them received a warranty replacement frame and proceeded to crack that one, too. In fairness, though, he was a strong racer who averaged around 250 miles per week for most of the year.
Last edited by Trakhak; 02-26-24 at 06:38 PM.
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#153
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Teledyne and the Panasonic had a history of being prone to cracking, that was due to the early days of making TI frames the technology wasn't good yet. The Litespeed did not have any history of cracking, but since Litespeed was an expensive bike, and it has a lifetime warranty the poster should have sent it back, which leads me to believe he's not being honest and just wants to berate titanium, or somehow severely abused the Litespeed and they wouldn't cover it under warranty. Nobody with a bike that expensive is going to pass up the warranty unless they got so much money they simply don't care.
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#154
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Easyupbug - I have a question about your bike. What kind of handlebars are those ? I had ones just like them on my old Fuji and I loved them. I don't see ones like that anymore.
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#158
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With a sample size of just 3 titanium frames, the margin of error is kind of big.
If the actual Ti failure rate is 10%, the chance of getting at least 1 failure is:
1 - (0.9 * 0.9 * 0.9) = 27%
Statistics rambling aside, point taken about the way the material is used being the most important factor.
If the actual Ti failure rate is 10%, the chance of getting at least 1 failure is:
1 - (0.9 * 0.9 * 0.9) = 27%
Statistics rambling aside, point taken about the way the material is used being the most important factor.