base2 

Aluminum FAN? There is just too much involved in bicycle engineering & variation in components & design to have single minded focus on material.

Nailing any one characteristic to frame material, in isolation, is a fools errand. Bikes components (aside from the frame) are all made with a variety of materials too.

Fanaticism is dumb...As is most other -ism's.

General Geoff

Pertinent to this thread:
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/rinard/...tigue_test.htm

The strongest, most durable and long lasting frame in the test was aluminum.

livedarklions

Leather

Thomas15

Please explain to us why aircraft (airframes) are made out of aluminum. Is it because Boeing hates humanity?

70sSanO

You’re not that rich if you have to tell someone.

John

ljsense

Haha, good one. Hadn't thought of it that way.

mr_bill

Aluminum fans. Hope this helps.

-mr. bill

cyccommute 

People are under the mistaken impression that aluminum is a brittle material that "shatters" when it breaks. That doesn't describe aluminum (or carbon fiber or fiberglass or a number of other materials that are "known" to shatter on impact). Aluminum is a very soft metal. Yes, it can crack but that crack propagates as a tear in the metal. It seldom just shears off without warning. In fact, shearing off without warning is something that describes steel's failure mode much more than aluminum's.

I've broken steel frames and parts and I've broken aluminum frames and parts. Steel has always just gone "ping!" and it's broken...think of how a spoke breaks. I've broken pedals...the spindle just sheared off without warning or bending or gentle release of energy. The spindle was attached one minute and broken in two the next. Steel frames have broken on me the same way. There's not warning. The frame is just broken. I've had a steel fork break on me which I discovered while I was changing bearings but the crack never manifested as anything that could be seen as a warning that something was wrong.

On the other hand, I've broken a fair share of aluminum parts as well. I broke a crank. When I thought back on it, the crank was making a creaking noise long before it broke. I've broken numerous rims from cracks at the spokes to cracks down the middle of the rim on the inner wall to side walls. They all made noise prior to failure. Same with frames. The frames creak and groan prior to me noticing cracks. I also broke an aluminum fork and it made a lot of noise before it broke. Often I've ignored the noise but it was there and noticeable even if I didn't note it.

This makes sense if you consider the way that both materials behave under load. Steel, being stiffer, doesn't really bend until such time as there is too little metal to hold the tube in place. When the last little bit of metal breaks it does so rapidly because the material is stiff and strong. The steel can handle bending even as the crack propagates because of the stiffness and strength.

Aluminum is strong as long as the tube is solid but when a crack develops, the crack will will open and close as the frame flexes. The ends of the crack rub against each other and the noise resonates through the metal. We just usually ignore those warnings.

But, honestly, there's nothing wrong with aluminum as a frame material. The vast majority of mountain bikes are made of aluminum. I haven't noticed piles of shattered mountain along the trails nor do I see that many aluminum mountain bikes that are broken in my local co-op...and I see a lot of bikes per year. On the other hand, I don't see a lot of broken steel bikes either. I've broken 4 frames...2 of each material...out of 39 bikes I've owned. I consider a broken frame of any material to be more of an aberration than proof that there is something wrong with the material of construction.

Finally, let me ask: If you worry so much about aluminum's failure mode, do you ride steel wheels with steel hubs? Steel cranks? Steel handlebars? If you use aluminum for any of those applications, why aren't you worried about those parts failing?

Sandstrom

Mmmmmhhh Ahhhhhh, feeling cooler already, thanks!

fietsbob

friday1970

Here's a good question. How does aluminum frames hold up against areas close to salt water? I plan to ship a bike to Okinawa, as something to use when I visit my in-laws. I'm assuming for the hot, salty air there, aluminum would be the most preferred material. Am I wrong in thinking this? Steel would rust, and I don't know how well carbon fiber would do in humid heat like what we have there. .

indyfabz

Don’t know about the frame, but water and my caustic sweat caused the aluminum headset spacers to fuse with the steel steerer tube of my carbon fork. They had to be cut with a Dremel tool then pried off.

79pmooney

It's not that aluminum frames break more often, it is the failure mode. I've heard a lot more stories of diamonds braking and causing crashes with aluminum than steel. Welds failing. Front ends detaching. In all my steel failures, the bike has remained rideable after tubes severed completely (barring that one metulurgy oops). Yes, they broke quietly. No, I hadn't been checking the frames prior except my racing bike which I knew full well was on its way and was assured that I could ride it to failure, no big deal.

As I said before - I ride bikes I like until they die. I want them to die gently so I can walk away. I"ve used up too many of my 9 lives already I probably don't have another to spare. (Well, I am getting better at retiring bikies that I know have seen damage.) Of the common bike materials, steel (until you get into the high-strength alloys) is very forginving to minor damge. (I won't own a higher grade than 531 for that reason. If I want to go lighter, I go titanium where you can have far more material. My ti bikes are conservative, not light and very strong. Built by someone with decades in the business who is local so if I have any qualms, I can get ithem checked out any time..

Ben

Trakhak

Setting aside the fact that, as explained in detail above by cyccommute, the true failure modes of steel and aluminum are very different from what you think they are, you hear more stories of aluminum failures (however few they are, and they are very few) than of steel failures because steel bikes, despite the impression given by steel bike lovers on BikeForums, have essentially barely registered above the level of statistical noise in the annual worldwide sales of bikes for the last 30 years.

By the way, I've noticed that, as a rule, C&V steel apologists seem to think that steel frames fail despite being steel, whereas aluminum frames fail because they're aluminum.

If anyone has wondered why aluminum took over the market from steel so quickly (despite the understandable initial reluctance of bike companies to invest in such a massive transposition), one clue comes from a chance conversation I had with a Trek sales rep in the early '90s. I asked what the effect of introducing their aluminum frames had had on Trek. The rep immediately said, "Warranty costs are down. We're spending much less money replacing frames under warranty because the failure rate is much lower with our aluminum frames."

bruce19

There's an entire thread called the Cult of CAAD. Look there.

berner

One problem I see with carbon composite is, so far anyway, it is not recycleable. At the end of it's useful life, so far anyway, it becomes a pile of trash. Even a beer can can be recycleable. Even the ullitmate output of beer is recycled.

General Geoff

It's funny how popular perception is often so far from reality.

Leinster

When I was a kid, one of the older kids had a blue Cannondale, imported from the States. The big tubes and 105 groupset and cool blue paint job and, a couple of years later, Mario Cipollini, all made me want an aluminium bike. And now, years later, I own 2. (and a couple of steel ones).

I absolutely love my CAAD10. I tried cf bikes and steel bikes while shopping for it, but no other frame had the bang-for-buck that my CAAD had.

I feel no desire to ever buy a road bike again. The next bike I buy will be an offroad machine of some capacity. It will, most likely, be aluminium.

bruce19

I was out today on my CAAD 12 and I love this thing. As much as my Guru Sidero (steel). And, I love my Guru.

Mogens

As of a few years ago, I had an aluminum hybrid bike that was awful. It was joyless and dull to ride and for about a decade I thought I just hated bicycling. And then I had a series of epiphanies that led to me buying a 1982 Bianchi road bike. It was zippy and just wanted to go fast. In a single summer, I went from not having biked more than a few blocks in years to riding a century. So that was my experience in 2018: aluminum = joyless, steel = joyful. Last year I decided that I wanted a bicycle more suited to the riding I wanted to do. The Bianchi was designed for racing and it was a little too small for me anyway. So I looked and I eventually settled on an aluminum Cannondale Synapse 105, and I LOVE it. Cannondale makes a big deal about it's "SAVE" frame architecture that builds some resilience into the frame. Whatever it is, it does not feel anything like the aluminum hybrid bike I used to own. Perhaps I would have preferred the CF, but the aluminum version was about as much money as I'm willing to spend on a bike. I have kids to put through college. Anyway, yeah. I'm a fan. If properly designed, aluminum bikes are an affordable and even elegant material for bicycle frames.

Metieval

I love aluminum, just not the way they are designed now. Leaving the Down tube open ended with a raw edge at the BB... is a huge no for me.

Hydroforming AL, is so awesome, and then.. frame makers go and half ass the frames. I am pretty sure that was 1 engineer, and then it just got copied by many manufactures.

Really is no different than Gerard Vroomen making an Awesome Cervelo, and then some Twiddle dumb butt engineer comes along later and changes the tolerances on the Cervelo Blueprints for the BB, so they don't reject so many frames in manufacturing.... which leads to all kinds of trouble for the end users. (no names here, but that engineer now works for Cannondale, which also Explains why so many BB30 C'Dale frames have issues with the BB **CLUE!!!!!!**)

Anyways Aluminum has potential, but when treated like an entry level material, we the Cyclict, will get entry level engineering.

veganbikes

I just did a google search, tons of aluminum fans! Are you looking for a ceiling fan or something on the floor or something different?

I personally like the Dyson fan, very quiet and good airflow. Though I think the actual fan is plastic. Would be cool to do a Lexan or other plexiglass version with a brass inner fan so you could see the workings and because brass fans look cool.

ramzilla

AFAIK this is one of the oldest mass produced specimens of aluminum bikes on the planet. I think it's great. Light & fast. A great ride.

ramzilla

I only had this one a couple of days. But, it was a really good riding machine.

Raleigh Revenio 1.0

DropBarFan

I think an aluminum frame plus a (nice) suspension fork & suspension seat-post would make a much better touring bike than currently popular steel:
--Same weight or even lighter
--more comfortable ride even with narrower faster tires
--better handling by obviating the need for frame geometry to absorb bumps