Titanium vs Steel which is better????
 

All things being equal which is a better frame material/better ride, titanium or steel? Discuss.....

Mutt

There is no single answer on that. Depends on what you want. On what you find important and for what.

Thank you Sheldon:

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/frame-materials.html

Just give me a good steel bike. I'll keep the $3000 and spend it on my race car. Or my girlfriend's engagement ring.

both are fine. I suspect as time goes on that ti is going to be very uncommon, but I've been wrong before.

Do size of the bike and/or size of the rider matter?

I have the feeling that, unless thicker tubing is used (as in custom cycles) that if you have a super tall bike, it'll be a whole lot more willowy than a smaller bike. That would apply to both, I'd think.

I have 3 high end vintage steel bikes and love the way they ride. However, IMO none of them ride as nice as nice as my titanium Litespeed. It is just such a pleasure to ride. It is stiff yet absorbs road vibrations well.It also weighs 15 lbs with clinchers.
I really don't like the ride of aluminum.I sold a beautiful Colnago Dream because it beat me up so badly.
I like the ride of carbon, but I don't trust it in the long term and everybody else rides carbon.

Steal is Real, fool!

but titanium is pretty darn sweet.....

considering that ti is the most durable (corrosion resistant) material, I find this hard to believe. as expensive as a ti frame may be, as a bicycle building material, it's not going anywhere. but then again i say that because i ride ti.

Wow nice replys. I would have thought a lot more would have been straight up steel. I've heard that Ti can be whippy. Say if you have the same frame but one in steel and one in Ti which you prefer and why?

Mutt

Assuming cost is no object, Ti by virtue of its inherently higher strength to weight ratio allows more deisgn flexibility. So, cost aside, it's a no-brainer. If lightness is paramount, we know that for Ti and alloy steel frames of the same yield strength that the Ti frame will be much lighter. If a certain level of stiffness is required, a Ti frame can be engineered to that stiffness and still be lighter than the most highly optimized alloy steel frame of the same stiffness. This is somewhat like F1 racecars. They can be engineered out of carbon fibre and other alloy & composite materials to meet all the structural requirements and be well under the minimum regulated mass. That allows the designers to add ballast to the minimum mass to optimize dynamics. My analogy with a Ti bike frame is, the frame can be engineered to have the required yield strength at all the critical locations and be well under the mass of a similarly optimized steel frame; material can be included at will where needed to achieve the stiffness goal while still remaining well under the mass of an alloy steel frame of the same stiffness.

is it possible to make all things equal? can you take a Columbus EL OS tube set for example. ( I chose this because the Nivachrome steel was developed to be fillet brazed or tigged without luggs) and make a Titanium tube set with the exact dimensions? how do you say this XXX Ti frame is equal to this SLX frame?

for me personally I like the ride of MAX frames a bit better than my Mega Pro XL Ti. and I have ridden them on equal courses and with almost identical wheels.

I have a wife who is a good rider but very short. The only way to fit her was to go custom bike and this is what Seven came up with. Ti frame built around 24" wheels. Not to get specific but it cost more than 10 times what I paid for my 1974 Paramount. Its worth it because she rides it. I am not sure how you can compare Ti and steel as many steel bikes are off the shelf and few if any ti bikes are not custom. To be fair you would need to compare a Seven or Litespeed with say a Waterford or Rivendale. Those are not the best examples because the philosophy behind each of those manufactures builds is different. Roger

They're the same, only different.

I was trying to think of a bike that came in either steel or Ti and the only one I could think of was the late '90's Paramounts, Serotta Ti/ Match Built 853. Same bike, same geo, different materials. Please continue....

Mutt

I love my steel bikes, but for pure riding pleasure nothing beats my titanium. I also love being able to clean it with steel wool....it looks NOS and it's a 92 that's heavily ridden. On the negative side, it's my least aesthetically magical bike.

Neither is better, they're different and there are pluses and minuses to both. The top end modern steel isn't much heavier than ti anyway.

Titanium or Steel???....well,.....Paper or plastic, Less filling / Great taste, Black or white. Girl or boy, Coke or Pepsi, Veronica or Betty, Michigan / Wisconsin....Go Red!!,....blehhhhhh!

Chombi

I've got a titanium bike I ride during my lunch breaks at work, and steel bikes that I ride at home on evenings and weekends. I really like both materials, and while there are minor differences in ride it may have something to do with the way they're set up. Both are comfortable, and a pleasure to ride.

In my opinion the steel looks better, lugged joints are just so much prettier than TIG welded joints, and having color rather than just the metal finish. On the other hand I don't ever have to worry about dinging the paint on the Ti bike because there is none, and as mentioned above, I can polish it with steel wool when I get a small blemish.
CMC

You forgot Ginger or Mary Ann, and you forgot Samantha or Jeannie. Geez, be thorough next time. :p

I say "to-may-to" and you say "to-mah-to" !??!

I agree that "all things being equal" is a stretch, but it's surprising how many things are at least close to equal between the two metals.

The stiffness per unit weight (specific modulus in Engineer's jargon) and strength per unit weight (specific yield stress) for the two materials are within 10% of each other (in both cases steel is higher, if you take the highest srength steels).

This being the case, a useful comparison between similarly sized frames can be made with a couple of simple formulae:

The stiffness of a frame is approximately the weight squared times tube diameter squared.

The strength of the frame is roughly the weight squared times tube diameter*.

Because there's a practical limit on the ratio between tube diameter and wall thickness, Ti frames will tend to have larger diameter tubes than steel frames. Because of the way that the market works, Ti frames will tend to be lighter than steel ones.

Taken together, these mean that a Ti frame will usually be a bit lighter, a bit stiffer and about the same strength as a steel frame.

One significant difference is fatigue strength - Ti has a better fatigue strength to weight ratio than virtually any other material, so a Ti frame will probably last longer.

Ride quality is another issue. At the current state of the art, the best steel frames have a unique liveliness which is highly valued by those who have experienced it.

*Both formulae assume that the ratios between the tube diameters of the various tubes are equal. That's not strictly true, amongst other things it is far easier to taper steel tubing without compromising its strength (it's just about impossible with titanium unless you get it post form heat treated, which no-one does).

Mary Ann and Samantha. Totally.

Titanium beats chrome moly, hands down, in my book. If two identical lengths of tubing are compared, titanium will be considerably lighter, just as strong if not stronger and it will not rust. I would offer rarely used anatomical body parts to get a titanium bike. That said...

My opinion on this is based on my experience with titanium in industry. The material is awe inspiring. However, I have never ridden a titanium bike so I must bow to the ride quality comments of those who have.

I happen to own a WTB Phoenix SE. It is a really awesome riding experience and like build exactly for my needs. Construction good, sizing good, angles good ....and also steel is part of the equation. While the 'regular' steel Phoenix is already a pricey ride, there exist a ti derivative. I do not see how I could enjoy that ti version more. Maybe someone should lend me his, so I could try, but no-one in my neighbourhood happens to own one.

On the durability issue: Concerning ti I think it is slightly overrated. Often I hear sayings of that it will last a lifetime and so on. I have seen too much proove that is not always the case. For as far I know early 90s Merlins are good. Of newer offerings I am not really aware how well they are put together, but ti is no easy material to work with and once you start saving by doing things in a rush you can easily mesh it up.

My personal reasoning is that I can buy a 1st class frame in steel and I can buy a 1st class frame in ti. They are not the same, but they surpass my personal needs anyway. The steel will set you back half the money.

This subject has been beaten to death. There's a lot of parameters involved in the design and fab of a bike frame, and material type is only one of them. The only advantage that Ti might have is corrosion resistance, but any steel bike well cared for won't have this problem either, neither do composites or aluminum.

Like composites, prices for new Ti frames have come down a lot, with many examples < $1k, so they might become much more common.