2manyoranges
Old School Grand Master
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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 Maybe we just have to accept that a frame prone to cracking is just badly designed and needs to be superseded by something which post dates it.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.
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.