rgconner

I am sure they could. I could. It is anecdotal. Just like every other post on this bike forum is an opinion, from saddle preferences to tire choices.

This is not statiticianforums.com.

Kontact 

The material isn't temperamental, and the failure rate from the occasional bad weld is quite low. Do you think Litespeed or the Lynskeys would be around 31 years later if they were building that many warranty replacement frames?

You are much more likely to see your BB tube come loose in a Trek OCLV or your aluminum dropouts galvanically corrode in a Colnago than get a bad weld in a quality Ti frame. The failure rate is low.

WhyFi

So you think that the poor showing in the above exercise is simply a matter of bad luck in a small sample size?

Kontact 

That, and also this was in the '90s - how long did it take for companies that weren't using the best practices to see enough failures to realize their mistakes and address them? Dollars to donuts the failure rate among the old hands has been steadily dropping since the '80s.

Airplanes are full of welded titanium hydraulic lines. How often do you think those welds fail?

Bah Humbug

For anyone actually interested in some real discussion of the topic, this was a very interesting article from over at ST:

https://www.slowtwitch.com/Tech/The_...bate_6881.html

Tom A actually posts here. This was the best article/ column on frame material I've ever read, and the real outcome is "stop fretting about it". This also means "stop telling other people they're doing it wrong".

WhyFi

Dunno. You tell me.

Kontact 

Hardly ever. There's 26,000 pounds of titanium in one 747 - how many inflight hydraulic failures with resulting emergency landings do you hear of, despite there being more than 30 million flights a year?

The bike industry is constantly pushing boundaries, and doesn't necessarily do things the way more professional industries do. Merlin was started by guys used to welding steel MTBs at Fat Chance, not aerospace welders bored with hydraulic lines. There was likely an industry learning curve as all those bike people realized that they weren't welding steel anymore.

PedalingWalrus

my current road ride is Ti. I also have steel ride for Touring bike and CF ride for Fat Bike. I used to have CF ride as my road bike/commuter but ended up replacing it for my Titanium ride. Why? Curiosity was the main factor, then the resistance to rust was the next factor. Observation of my CF frame made me slightly nervous. I have a hockey background and when CF hockey sticks replaced wooden sticks I saw CF sticks explode almost every time I was at a hockey game. All it takes is a little ding during scuffles along the boards and next time you wind up for a shot, the extreme flex of the stick and the ding combine in a shattering display of breakage.

How does it relate to biking? I noticed a few chips on my front fork that were probably from rocks that ricocheted from passing cars and I thought all it would take is some extreme event when the fork is under extreme flex and then perhaps it will too explode just like the hockey stick ...

Kontact 

So did you go with an aluminum fork or a steel one on your Ti road bike?

PedalingWalrus

hahaha lol - you got me on that one. :-) Truth be told I bought my Ti frame used on Ebay and it came with <gasp> a carbon fiber fork. So there it is now but so far no dings on it as there were on my CF fork on my CF bike.

WhyFi

Dunno. You tell me.

Kontact 

I did. If you want more specifics, there's google.

79pmooney

I lived through a catastrophic fork failure. (Barely) Now I am rather picky about what forks I will ride. I choose to ride only steel forks with brazed crowns. If you do not push the materials and weight, very forgiving of even rather poor workmanship. I will never run aluminum again anywhere on a fork again. Now if my builder gets his hands on the right tapered tube to make a sweet ti fork, I'm in. These would be his welds and he had been doing them for 30 years.

Edit: I love the ride of steel forks on ti bikes. The Merlin I rode almost 20 years ago had "the ride". I had TiCycles build my custom with a steel fork. Rode it yesterday. After 10 years, still love that ride. My 2nd ti custom and another steel fork.

To me. a steel fork on a ti bike makes sense from a ride standpoint. It is the titanium tubing that makes those bikes come alive. Now all of those tubes are in some variation of beam bending or torsion with both ends supported, at least to a degree. Forks are different. They behave much closer to a pure cantilever. To bring response frequency up to the order of the rest of the tubes, making that fork from a material that is roughly twice the bending modulus (ie twice as stiff) makes sense, at least to my both mind and observation.

Ben

PedalingWalrus

If you find someone who makes good TI forks please let me know ... I am also interested to eventually replace my current CF fork on my Salsa Warbird Ti.

WhyFi

Nah. Based on what you're saying, it doesn't sound terribly applicable.

Kontact 

Dunno. You tell me.

Hiro11

The only way I've seen anyone kill a Ti frame is weld failure, which is getting increasingly rare these days.

Ti has a couple of advantages beyond resistance to work hardening and high strength-to-weight ratio:
1. It's really difficult to dent or deform Ti tubing due to the toughness and resilience of the material.
2. It's extremely resistant to oxidation. It will always look new, doesn't need paint and if it's brushed finish you can touch it up with some ScotchPads. Also, it's less prone to seizing BBs and seatpost than other materials.

All frame materials have unique advantages. Steel gets you the majority of Ti's qualities without the cost or availability issues. It's easy to make light and stiff frames out of aluminum and you can hydroform it into cool shapes. Carbon fiber is both lightest and stiffest and allows you to tailor every aspect of the ride. IMO, TI is best if you value ease of maintenance, durability and toughness above other factors.

carlos danger

Ti will last a long time if done the way its supposed to be done.
You need shielding gas on both sides and usually a trailing sled with shielding gas.
Needs to be clean, rods have to be degreased, tubes too. Needs to grab new unused gloves for every job when welding. Hardmetal tools for chamfering (no sandpaper drums etc), stainless/better brushes to not contaminate and so on. All this has been known for at least 50 years. You want to avoid skin fat on the tubes and rods, and avoid oxygen/nitrogen in the material, because then it turns brittle.

The good builders does all of this for steel too. Thats why a good custom steel frame cost just as much (or very close to it) as a ti one. It takes just as long to build it to the same quality.

I think the reason we see complaints about ti durability is because some makers sometimes cut corners to save time. And you cant do that with ti. Then it will only last for maybe a few years or less.
Also some makers do weird "fashion" designs that would have failed even if it was made out of unobtainium. But you can hardly blame the material for this.

Also everything built as light as possible will fail sooner than beefier stuff. Surprise surprise.
Only like 10 years ago most people understood that. Those were race day machines, used for racing only. Race day machines last a season or 2. And then you get a new one.

I have 2 lynskeys and these are from the cheap end of the spectrum for ti. But I bought models with sane construction, tried and proven. Not anything weird dropouts or similar. I kinda doubt they will fail anytime soon.

Carbonfiberboy 

I ride with several 10+ y.o. ti frames which are fine, and one on which a downtube weld failed with bad results. That rider is now back on his even older custom steel bike. Almost all of us now ride carbon, no failures even in crashes.

No, there's pretty much no proof of anything w/r to bike frames, though the above frame testing link is very interesting. That said, the carbon/epoxy matrix used in bike frames has technically by far the greatest fatigue resistance. See: https://calfeedesign.com/tech-papers/...l-white-paper/

Left out of most discussions are wood/epoxy frames, which offer all the fatigue resistance of and stiffness carbon fiber without the fragility. Wood is the original composite material. For instance: https://www.bicycling.com/bikes-gear...d-bike-review/ There are trees swaying in the forest which are thousands of years old.

Kontact 

Not disagreeing with you at all, but I think the resistance to hardening, toughness, resilience are all aspects of the same high flexibility. It is like how difficult it would be to damage a fillet knife - it flexes so much that you really to bend a long ways to kink or break it. On some level, Ti behaves almost like nylon compared to steel. When you are used to brittle, work hardening metals (brass/aluminum) or soft metals, a truly flexible metal is hard to wrap your head around.

Ultimately, steel is the stiffest bike material by volume, even more so than CF.

Kontact 

I bought a Calfee Luna because the tube walls are thick and all the metal parts are Ti. That frame is tough, but heavier than my Merlin.

mackgoo

I have a 30 year old steel frame, 23 year old Ti frame and a 11 year old carbon frame. All in great working order.

fietsbob

Specify tubing wall thickness... Thicker and larger the diameter the better..

Kontact 

Not if you want anything to ride nicely.

Sy Reene

Yes, but in the same way you have to worry about rust with steel bikes, you'd have termites to contend with on your wood bike.