merziac

Well I'm glad you've done just fine with them. How old is the oldest one now. Plenty of folks have done ok with them and I would hope they have improved.

They were plenty of sketchy ones along the way, especially in the beginning when they lit the whole thing off.

Alan K

The oldest one is from 1996, a road bike, Catalyst. All others are newer but none of them are less than 14 years old.
They have been used quite a bit but never been in accidents etc.
I am used to my bicycles lasting a good long time, hopefully outlasting me.
Titanium was supposed to be tricky in the early period or so I gathered but with good techniques of welding, they seem to be as good as any other metal. We shall see how much longer they continue to survive.

[There was one Ti bike (can’t remember the name) in our area on Craigslist about 6 years ago, which was initially listed for $800 but after a few months came down to $600. I went to see it but decided not to buy it - it was unpainted clean metal but most welds had rainbow colors. The seller tried to convince me that he has been using it for several years and there has never been any issues with sturdiness. He even indicated that he might reduce the price some more, if I am serious about buying it. I informed him that I’m serious about buying a Ti bike but not this one.]

Alan K

You may have to search for more than a minute to find them.

https://www.modernbike.com/continent...erformance-e25

https://www.universalcycles.com/shop...?category=7131

repechage

thank you, the paselas look good. I know all black is the trend, but just brings to mind the Schwinn Varsity. Which should have an all black tire.

merziac

So yours is the same as the frame in question, albeit you had lots of backups, this one apparently wasn't up to the task and I don't think its an anomaly.

Alan K

a nom aly

noun

1. something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected.

If you are asserting that it is normal for most Litespeed Ti bicycles to have manufacturing defects leading to their failure (cracked frames), unless you credibly backup your claim, I’m afraid I don’t believe you.

Is your assertion based on your personal experience, many damaged bicycles brought to you by others (if you worked or owned a bicycle shop), or is it just hearsay?

Kontact 

All Ti frames have 'colors' after welding. It is a surface patina that goes away with the lightest use of abrasives, and is the result of heat changing the way the metal reflects light, not from some sort of contamination.



I have personally owned eight titanium bikes, four of them by Litespeed. None of them made after 1996, and one as old as 1990. No failures. I have also worked at dealers of Litespeed, Seven, Serotta, IF and Moots. Again, the failure rate so low that I can only recall two in all that time - neither of them Litespeeds, and both made after 2000.


You seem to have no data at all.

Polaris OBark

Yes.

They are good for the lifetime of the battery. When the battery dies, the warranty expires with it.

unterhausen

The fundamental problem is litespeed believing their own marketing puffery 25 years ago when it wasn't even the same owners. Anyone that knows about fatigue failures in ductal metal weldments knows that a unrestricted lifetime warranty is silly. Although if you assume that growth is inevitable, the consequences would be much lower. Didn't work out that way. They certainly should have thought about the ramifications of convincing everyone that Ti was good for a "lifetime bike." Maybe they were hoping their customers wouldn't live long enough for it to be a problem. Although I have seen a number of pictures of litespeeds where a crack obviously came from a sharp edge in the welds. People have tried to convince me that was in a cosmetic pass, I'm not convinced that really matters.

That's a steel frame, so there is going to be discoloration. And a lot of that is carbon precipitating out. The welds on that frame look serviceable, maybe not the most cosmetic. I don't see any issues and it's going to be covered with paint, probably. If you see a ti frame with a lot of discoloration, it's probably not good. Framebuilding forums tend to be pretty gentle on people though. If I see any really negative comments, it's from people who would wonder how to hook an argon bottle to their oxy/acetylene torch. I'm somewhat sensitive to posting post-braze photos of my frames because flux carries carbon away from the joints. Then I look at pictures from builders with a lot of experience and they look exactly the same. I like to say that I use more flux if there are people with cameras lurking about, including myself.

Kontact 

My bad, it came up in a titanium search and I assumed. Here's a photo of industry standards for ti welds:


Litespeed did not invent the lifetime warranty. Plenty of other bikes before Litespeed had them, including Trek.

unterhausen

Trek is a big enough company that the lifetime warranty isn't a problem for them. I know they still warranty really old bikes. I'm a little surprised when I hear about them rejecting warranty claims. This started in the earliest days, I used to handle warranty claims and Bevil Hogg would always help the dealer. I was a teenager and some of those claims were nonsense, but he was wiser. And needed dealers. Of course, predicting the growth that they have seen from the perspective back then was a real leap of faith.

Trakhak

There was a thread about 10 years ago on the subject of frame durability. A few pages in, someone posted brusquely, "Titanium frames last forever. End of thread."

In response, I provided a link to the result of a Google Images search for "Cracked titanium bike frames." Lots of photos.

Next post:

"Dude!!! He said end of thread!!!"

Johno59

My LBS worker bought a very expensive TI framed bike that he hoped would last a lifetime. Unfortunately it did not. The frame cracked just forward of the BB shell. They repaired it (rather than replaced it as he'd hoped) and it took nearly a year to get it back from the manufacturer. Needless to say there was no warranty on the repaired frame and it cracked again. If I remember correctly they actually replaced the offending tube. It was only a few years old and being in the trade he got preferential treatment! What he believed had happened was the initial failure put stress on the other joints (they were gas welded not electric and smoothed out as per a high end frame) and as such it was an accident waiting to happen, irregardless of the quality of the repair.

Alan K

I would expect that during the sandblasting or polishing part of the process of this metallic frame (not painted), rainbow corlors around the welds would have disappeared but they were not. In any event, I didn’t feel comfortable buying it, although it was inexpensive.

squirtdad

jealous of seeing Ramones early one Did see REM as they were just starting touring small clubs. Also saw Los Lobos when they were opening act for translator in same small club (keystone palo alto)

back to titanium frame discussion

Kontact 

I have yet to find a titanium bike that cracked from fatigue failure, with the possible exception of the Merlin Extralights that supposedly cracked at the bottle bolts from the tubing being too thin.

The fatigue limits of Ti alloys is simply better than chromoly, and then you have to the flexibility, which means that Ti used in bikes with oversized tubing isn't flexing anywhere near its yield compared to steel.

For similar reasons, greatly oversized aluminum frames, like Kleins, are also unlikely to to succumb to fatigue because no part of the frame flexes much at all, so despite aluminum not having a fatigue limit, something so rigid is also isn't going to fatigue a lot more than it would hanging in the garage.

The hubris is not that the materials aren't going to last, but that the welds are all perfect enough to never be contaminated. But I don't think that is really hubris as much as it is a way to convince the cycling market that 3/2.5 bikes (and later 6/4) had turned the corner from Teledynes that seemingly all broke. And I doubt the total number of warranty repairs or replacements have damaged Litespeed before or after the sale.

If lifetime warranties were a problem for Ti bikes, why would the companies with the most experience making Ti bikes still have them?: Lynskey, Litespeed and Seven all have connections back to 1986.

Some Asian builders just aren't doing the sandblasting or polishing to keep costs down. It isn't like the weld is dirty. I imagine some people like the colors.

Lamont Cobb

The appeal of titanium (to me) is that is never breaks. But if it breaks, it's appeal goes way down, and I would start looking at other frame materials instead.

Alan K

The bicycle I saw and did not buy had a polished Ti frame, I thought I mentioned that earlier.

Alan K

There is no metal which has an infinite capacity for stress.

dddd

Titanium's vaunted high tolerance for strain, and it's resultant very high fatigue limit, is "balanced" by it's higher sensitivity to manufacturing error.

Quite a few makers of titanium frames have had issues with the welding purity, many of those makers (besieged with warranty and perhaps liability claims) went away early on during "peak titanium".

Obviously Litespeed has (on average) had a good handle on managing the manufacturing difficulties as well as the design limitations having to do with titanium's other characteristics (such as stress concentration limits), which leads me to believe that the OP's frame has endured a decently-long service life under a not-so-casual rider.
It's not just the size and power output that counts though, since even ex-racers tend to put their bikes through tougher riding situations (such as speed over rough ground) than non-racers.

That the failure started at the highest-stress location along the downtube just makes it seem less likely to me that the failure represents a serious manufacturing lapse.
Some welds do perform better than others though, even among large samples of welds produced to high standards.
And as well, compared to some boutique brands, Litespeed frames are "made to a cost" relatively speaking.

merziac

OK well I've been called out enough here and still stand by my assessment.

This particular crack does and has plagued the whole Ti frame market for a long time.

Any company that cannot fully address it and still offers any kind of lifetime warranty should stand behind it if they cannot get it right this far down the road.

It may not be as widespread as it was but it still seems to elude the makers.

They are playing the odds and running the table when it suits them, which is often.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=cra...31085.jpg&pn=2

Kontact 

Which material that bikes are made of never break?

Kontact 

What part of "lost the receipt" did you not understand?

Ti bikes have one failure mode. Do you know how many carbon bikes I have warrantied for an incredibly wide range of defects? If you have a problem with defective construction techniques, go after the industry leading technique and all of the out-of-spec, galvanically corroded, flimsy, unrepairable junk that is sold for thousands of dollars as "cutting edge".

merziac

That's my point, one basic failure mode and often in the same place, DT-HT junction, get it right or quit selling it with a warranty, especially lifetime.

I know there is no receipt, shouldn't matter, this is and has been going on since they started and they still struggle.

They choose to ignore and deny their responsibility, inability, liability and willingness to so, why do they get any kind of pass at this late stage?

Atlas Shrugged

And there it is! Only a matter of a few more posts and some 60 or 70 year old misspells carbon or explode in a pathetic attempt to be witty like a 12 year finding a word that rhymes with boobies.