Quote:
Originally Posted by aroundoz
(Post 10031008)
I think some frame builders don't like titanium because they are not skilled enough to work with it.
When I bought my custom Co-motion in 2003, they claimed their aluminum road bike frame, the Ristretto, was better than a titanium bike. I had to check their site and they have removed that sentence.
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That is it in a nutshell. Back in the day of vintage lightweights many steel makes were making a killing selling cheap steel tubing as thousand dollar "framesets" as value added. The punchline being that anyone can learn to build a very nice steel frame in about two days. If you let someone build for a year, you'd be hardpressed to tell their frames apart from the acknowledged master builders if examples of both were stripped and repainted, and the bikes were dressed with identical neutral components.
In reality most people like the fit and finish of a custom hand crafted steel bike, but like their Joe Bell paint job even more. What is true, and was back in the day, is that the technical competence required to weld aluminum and titanium can't even be seriously compared to what is required to work with steel. You can learn to lug a steel bike in an afternoon, if someone competent shows you. You can learn to lay a TIG bead on a steel bike in about a week.
If you can weld aluminum or titanium competently you are making near six figures working for a defense contractor (not building bikes), and you are near the pinnacle of your craft.
Back in the day, when the likes of Masi were relocating to the US to cash in on the bike boom, aluminum bikes from Cannondale and Klein were lighter, stronger, stiffer and faster than anything the steel boys had, or reasonably could come up with. When you can't compete on product you compete on misinformation. The bike industry geared up to castigate rumors of Cannondales being "too stiff."
The funny thing is that some of these preposterous rumors endure. We all know someone who has a Quintana Roo hanging in their garage with some torture device of a solid carbon shell TT "saddle" adorned on it. That cyclist will boast of how the near 100g "saddle" saves him seconds on the bike portion of his Tri. The funny thing is that same cyclist has a custom steel build that he boasts is more "comfortable" than anything else he has ever ridden. He believes it too.
Truth is that a vintage Klein or Cannondale from that era is STILL a freakin' phenomenal rocket bike. Veritable craigslist race bikes if built up with modern carbon fork, wheels and components. No the steel makers of the world were NOT going to survive selling people snake oil with a Colnago sticker on it any longer.
Titanium is more interesting for singles. You can make an epic bike out of ti. It is durable, comfortable, and can almost be built to be as great of a climber as an aluminum bike, and can almost be built to be as effective in a sprint. However, while you want to race on aluminum, you want to take that once in a lifetime bike vacation on your titanium bike. It doesn't need to climb as effectively, it doesn't need to purely accelerate. There is more to a great bike than just pure speed, and pure efficacy of translated energy.
However, some hack master builder can't work with titanium because in reality he isn't really a tenth the craftsman he purports to be, so titanium gets shortchanged a lot. To me it is idiocy to build a custom bike out of steel. That is like having a custom engagement ring setting designed to display a lump of coal.
Titanium always builds a better bike than steel. ALWAYS.
As for tandems, while titanium makes great singles, it is very hard to build a good titanium tandem. There are just too many limitations on the available tubesets. If you talk to someone who has a 68cm or larger custom titanium single, odds are you know someone who sold it for pennies on the dollar. They hated it. It was noodly like wet spaghetti and they were completely disappointed in the ride characteristics. Big powerful cyclists on big bikes with big triangles embarass steel and titanium frames. However, even little cyclists on tandems can stress a tandem frame beyond the material's build range.
Nothing is as disappointing on a tandem as a flexy inefficient frame. Lateral frame stiffness is required on a tandem. Quite simply you can always build a better tandem out of epoxy or aluminum than titanium. We won't mention steel. There is no such thing as a quality steel tandem. These are price point bikes even if they have a Santana or Co-Motion sticker on them.
