Best Titanium Frame on the market.??

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  • airwise
    airwise Posts: 248
    neeb wrote:
    The Seven does not feel as quick - of that there is no question. But in reality it is - certainly to within 1 or 2%
    Why do you think that is, is it just the acceleration that is a bit less instantaneous? And if so, are you sure it's not down to the heavier wheels and overall weight rather than the Ti frame?

    I use the same wheels most of the time - I think it's just down to a slight give on initial acceleration with the Seven. To all intents and purposes though the Ti frame will match the carbon over a ride, and still be doing it in 20 years. I do think some Ti frames are however too light - it's as if the designers are worried about weight more than overall performance - no doubt with marketing in mind.
  • John Stevenson
    John Stevenson Posts: 962
    neeb wrote:
    Does 6AL 4V have other properties that enable tube sizes and wall thicknesses not practical with 3AL 2.5V then, or are they effectively identical for the purposes of making bike frames?

    It's stronger, so you don't need as much of it to make a frame. But all other things being equal, if you just make the tube walls, say, 10 percent thinner, then you end up with a frame that's 10 percent more flexible.

    Where this stuff gets both interesting and tricky is if you can make the tube walls 20 percent thinner, but make the tubes 10 percent larger. That gives you about the same stiffness because the stiffness of a tube goes up as the square of its diameter, but it'll still be lighter.

    The problem is that very thin-walled tubes are easier to dent and more likely to buckle, which is why the tube walls of frames made from very high-strength steel alloys are still thicker than theory might suggest is possible.

    And the tubes have to be able to be welded, which gets harder the thinner they are.

    All this serves to make it hard to wring the last few percent of theoretical performance from metal alloys and 6Al/4V titanium is a classic case. It's hard to make into tubes in the first place, and to exploit its strength you have to make tubes that are hard to weld and potentially vulnerable to denting.
    John Stevenson
  • rvokes
    rvokes Posts: 36
    De rosa Titanium...
    used to have a bianchi 110,with columbus hyperion, great bike, but wasn't the stiffest, the big toblerone downtube looked bling, Brezin won a giro on one :-D

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