Titanium weld repair - can it be done twice?

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As you say, we need to be cautious about Ti.

Ti - the dream material

You hear it all the time.

It’s not, it’s just a material. It can be badly spec’d in the design and badly fabricated. Well designed and implemented, it’s great. First gen Marin Team Ti’s broke. A lot. At the seatpost. Manufacture switched to Litespeed, then they stopped breaking. But then Litespeed has had its own woes regarding its ‘lifetime’ guarantee. And Vit Ts broke, a lot. Depends on the generation.

Dan Stanton takes pride in the fact that he has had no failure of any Stanton Ti frame. I have one. It’s brilliant. I spoke to Dan S about a certain fruit-named manufacturers’ eye wateringly expensive anniversary ti edition and he said that they had used an internal lugged design every one of which had failed in testing when he looked at the same lugs. Ho Hum. I have ordered one of his new Switch9er Ti’s since the rep of the company is so good.

I have had frames crack on me - steel Trek lugged bike was memorable. It’s not a huge deal but if a frame cracks it’s most likely going to crack again. If the metal is recycled then we are doing fine I think - and Ti is one of the worst metals to extract and produce from raw. Maybe we just have to accept that a frame prone to cracking is just badly designed and needs to be superseded by something which post dates it. Difficult for a Retrobiker to accept, I know, but it’s how I feel these days.

Starting to resign myself to it being parted out onto other builds & sales. :cry:

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Hmmm I think that you might need to entertain that thought. A few well-framed detailed pictures to Enigma or others would help I think. What I have found with good fabricators is that they don’t want to take on a nightmare, so they can be quite helpful in giving a realistic evaluation of whether something really is worth repairing. Three good photos with ‘is this really worthwhile to do?’ And ‘how much?’ To someone like Enigma is I have found always worthwhile. Probably will cost nothing and will save a world of pain. It’s heart breaking losing a loved one ... but if they eventually die you can give them to a ti fabricator for re-cycling and know that they will form part of something new and special. Bit like Hamlet when he talks of the dust of Julius Ceaser being formed into clay and used to bung a beer barrel. Well, you get the idea... Sort of ‘out with the old and into the new’. Then buy a nice 853 steel Cotic or Stanton or Dialled.

There’s a beautiful Dialled Alpine Mk1 for 150 quid on Pinkbike ...150!!! It is the short 16 inch though, and so too small for me. If it was the ‘long’ 16 inch I would be in there like a shot.....and that 150 gbp is probably less than a repair to the Ti Orange would cost....

tangent":1tlo3v2v said:

As mentioned enigma cycles can undertake this more advanced titanium frame repair work. I discussed via email a cracked seatube cluster (previously repaired and failed - my bad for riding too hard it I guess). Cost of cutting out and fitting a new tube was in the £100s of pounds , with the very good advice of ‘depends how much you love the frame‘... in the end I sold the frame (on here) as a ‘time line’ / collectors piece...

Click to expand...

Just returning to this thread, for further info and updates ... re-read my own info, and thought it best to re-post to emphasise that the original repair on the frame I was discussing had not been done by Enigma, I approached them for the 2nd repair , and decided against proceeding partly for cost reasons , partly for Retro 'dream' (a intangible factor!) having been blown for me. The advice depends on how much you love the frame was a good one.

Took it to my local welder & they were completely unphased. They asked me for a sacrificial BB to protect the threads from distortion. The guy only welds ti & has worked in aerospace industry for 25 years. He suspects the previous weld had stainless steel wire in it. £30

Hopefully it will last.

Wow, that's neat!

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I always thought the more colourful a Titanium weld the weaker it is?

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well made me look, made me stare.....and I found this......interesting.....

https://www.thefabricator.com/thewelder ... -they-mean

I always give a weld a damn good wire brushing and then coarse swarf clean to see what we have underneath the surface contamination....

Looking at pictures on the subject I'm not too concerned. The weld is bright silver except for that bit of blueing at one end & it's not as dark as picture. I think it just surface & will come out with wire wool. I also showed pics to a lad I know who was a frame builder & ti welder in the past & he never commented on the colouring.

http://www.metalspiping.com/how-to-eval ... ually.html

This is an undressed weld from a high end ti frame builder.



Happy to hear from folk in the know.

The blue bits are just oxide layers that were beyond the argon shield protection area. Around 300<340°c temp range. Not an issue.