Originally Posted by
repechage
I owned a Teledyne back in the day.
Flexy, comfortable. It did "plane" in certain circumstances. A bit unnerving when braking hard, the wheelbase drastically shortened, like up to 15 mm. You got used to it.
Part of the lateral flex could have been the collared down downtube in two sections. I understand why they did it, but a significant compromise.
The fork... Too bad they did not think out of the box enough and just do a straight bladed fork. My thought the radius work hardened the tubes in the wrong place.
Could have used an 1 1/8" steerer, under the BB cable routing too... The engineers knew they had to increase the tube diameter to get reasonable stiffness... they had to tool up the fork crown anyway...
Tandem headsets did exist...
I do have a later brand X ti fork, a unicrown style creation, pretty terrific, but very limited tire size capable.
I test rode a friend's Telydyne Titan back in the late 1970's, all Campy equipped. The amount of front derailleur trim required with even the slightest amount of hill climbing was pretty laughable. I mean, it appeared that if you stood to climb in those racer gears with the corn cob freewheel, the bottom bracket flex was of the magnitude of almost an inch side to side. Or that was what if felt like. Even though my Masi Gran Criterium was quite a bit heavier, when I got back on it - it felt like an absolute crotch rocket in comparison. Ultimately sprintable, with seamless acceleration.
Today's titanium frames have come so far. My current titanium bike is a "Veritas" from about 15 years ago. The oversized tubes and the 1-1/8" carbon fork and the compact geometry make for a really tight, yet compliant ride.