Fat Chance Titanium Size Small (16") frame

mzagorski

Old School Hero
1997? Fat Chance Fat Ti frameset, SN TF SM 037. No cracks. (Seatpost and seat not included). 16" Center of BB to Top of Top Tube. 15.5" Center of BB to Center of Top Tube.

$1950 OBO.
 

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I thought monostay were early models...has canti stop too, although that could have been requested when ordering.
 
Probably Very few of the earlier Ti type mono stay frames were still made then , most likely by 97-98 they were all done making mono stay version Ti frames. Does Seller have knowledge of when Disc bridge was added & by whom ?
 
Wow!...That is a very cool and functional frameset...in the spirit of aiding further analysis here's an image of a early Somerville built 1993 S/M (no.13), alongside a 1997 S/M Saratoga built frameset following the Yo. eddy pattern of seat stays etc.

P5061285 by JOHN WILLIAMS, on Flickr

Goodluck with sale :cool: , I have to say I love the mono stay style, (probably being biased towards them from starting out on a 1988 Saracen Trekker)
 
Re:

I think the transition to traditional twin stays took place around 96. They were still using the leftover Ti tubing from Somerville and building monostay frames in 95 at the Saratoga facility. Afaik FCC started to weld disc tabs on their bikes towards the end of their production in 99/00 before they closed shop. This could have been sent back to the factory for disc tab installation.

I have this frame in L. Its a special ride and a keeper for life. Manufacturers didn't make butted Ti tubes in the early 90s so FAT City used a lathe to do it. A time consuming costly process. Merlin experimented with chemicals to butt tubes but it was not effective, apparently. Pioneering bike technology at its finest, often copied and still not bettered even today.
 
Re: Re:

M-Power":3ra2u6b4 said:
I think the transition to traditional twin stays took place around 96. They were still using the leftover Ti tubing from Somerville and building monostay frames in 95 at the Saratoga facility. Afaik FCC started to weld disc tabs on their bikes towards the end of their production in 99/00 before they closed shop. This could have been sent back to the factory for disc tab installation.

I have this frame in L. Its a special ride and a keeper for life. Manufacturers didn't make butted Ti tubes in the early 90s so FAT City used a lathe to do it. A time consuming costly process. Merlin experimented with chemicals to butt tubes but it was not effective, apparently. Pioneering bike technology at its finest, often copied and still not bettered even today.

"Merlin experimented with chemicals to do this!"...v.interesting, unique I should say!..had not hear of that before. :cool: the amount of fabrication / craft-work that went into these frames is immense...some where on the "FatCogs" site once the actual welder wrote a message about making them... :cool:
 
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A crazy number of spin-off companies launched from ex FAT City Cycles employees. NorthernDave did a schematic showing this a few years ago and it was truly eye opening. They were such great innovators and experimenters, often imitated eg, the segmented fork but never bettered imo when it came to building steel and titanium frames.
 
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There were less than 200 of these Somerville Ti frames ever made and only a tiny % of those were small and larger sizes. This is in contrast to the many thousands made by Merlin. These FAT Tis were just too time consuming and expensive to make ( all that lathing of butts, the extreeme lengths gone to prevent contamination of welds by cooling and shielding, ensuring the frame geo was 100% perfect by bending it when hot etc etc as you cant easily cold set Titanium). All FATs made had their geometry checked on a Starret granite surface. I lost count of the number of Taiwanese frames that had frame geometry issues, thus affecting the tracking and handling at speed.
 
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