Scandium & Voodoo

pintoo

Hi All

Can anyone shed some light on what Alu with Scandium is like compared to: regular Alu and a quality cro-mo steel? Is it a good material?

I'm looking at a Voodoo Limba which feels incredibly light. The Halfords staff aren't too helpful with the material, though. Is it a worthy frame material? Does anyone have any experience of Voodoo bikes?

Thanks in advance.

Monty Dog

Voodoo is run by Joe Murray, the original founder of Kona. Scandium is an alloying element which when used with aluminium makes it stronger and so produces a lighter, stiffer frame in comparison to many aluminium alloys. The downside is that tube wall thickness is thinner and so more prone to damage.

pintoo

Thanks, Monty Dog.

Padova

I have had a couple of bikes made out of Scandium, and we can talk about the strap lines offered by manufacturers all day, but it is in the ride it counts.

First generation tubesets were prone to denting so vendors had to refine their offering. For me the ride quality is excellent, on par with good carbon, but at a fraction of the cost.

The bike is stiff under power but seems to offer some level of compliance compared to no Scandium alloy tubesets. You can see why Cross racers use it a lot on frames. I would expect as Carbon becomes more expensive you will see these tubes being used again.

beverick

Monty Dog wrote:

Voodoo is run by Joe Murray, the original founder of Kona. Scandium is an alloying element which when used with aluminium makes it stronger and so produces a lighter, stiffer frame in comparison to many aluminium alloys. The downside is that tube wall thickness is thinner and so more prone to damage.

However, givem the amount of scandium that finds its way into a bike frame compared to an air frame there's probably little difference in weight, thickness and performance over aluminium....

Bob

pintoo

Thanks for the opinions. It's near impossible to tell from a short test ride, just how durable or otherwise the material is. The Voodoo Limba is certainly very light, but the bike mechanics I spoke to had differing views on its durability.

My priority favours ride quality over lightness, but an overly heavy bike is not a go-er.

Appreciate your thoughts on this -- Sc certainly seems a good option for my requirements.

Thanks again.

ride_whenever

Beverick, you're saying that the alloying with scandium doesn't change the properties at all, even in low amounts. I'm sorry but that is a load of bull.

The scandium, as mentioned above, makes the aluminium stronger, therefore you don't need to use as much for the frame, hence yes, if you had identical frames in scandium and plain ally alloy they would weigh almost the same (scandium is a bit heavier than aluminium, but I cannot be bothered to find the relative densities of the alloys used) the point is they don't need to make them the same. Of the two identical frames the scandium one would be considerably stronger.

That's like saying 9 series reynolds steel doesn't allow things to be done that cannot be done in 5 series.