Cycling UK Forum

ianrobo wrote:how though ? I am based in Birmingham nd they are based in Harrogate

Harrogate is easy to get to by train, and you could make the trip more worthwhile by turning it into a weekend trip with a bit of cycling. Lovely rides nearby. Trip to Fountains Abbey, Brimham Rocks, Nidderdale or whatever.

Understandably, this crowd are not great advocates of titanium.

Download the whole 132 page 'mega brochure' - it makes interesting reading on a cold and wet evening!



Should hopefully be more legible if you click on the image,

All the best, Simon

As an owner of a steel Spa tourer and a Titanium Spa tourer I can say that the Titanium is basically the same bike it's just wonderful and feels nicer, maybe it's because it looks better!

I've never had carbon but it's just never appealed so am in no position to compare but Titanium is bike Nirvana to me (if I get some cash I'll get a Titanium audax) but keep the steel for commuting.

I'd go to Harrogate for a visit (there's always Betty's!)

Regarding the Thorn diatribe I think that they're jealous of Spa! Yes the Ti is plain guage but so what? It's light enough to not matter. I'll use SJS for hits and bobs but after they threw their toys out of the pram over the Cycle review I've got no time for them I'm afraid!

I have two Van Nic machines - a Yukon tourer and a Ventus road/audax (I also have a 1975 531 Galaxy)

The Ti ride is not dissimilar to the steel framed Galaxy - it is lighter and no rust issues - very pleased with both machines

I don't own a carbon bike but have ridden quite a few miles on one (a Roux C9) - light and agile but perhaps I'm paranoid . .. it seemed to be "fragile" and not as forgiving as Ti or steel.

Rob

Here is an old post from bretonbikes with some interesting comments on titanium (my bold):

However in some respects Titanium would make a very nice touring bike - it has a good fatigue limit (much like steel) though that does depend on how it is alloyed - 'pure' Titanium is useless, it's the alloys that make the difference and there are some dodgy alloys around which have a poor fatigue limit. It also doesn't corrode which is a biggie long-term and not ever having to have it resprayed (at £100+ a knock) would be great to have. It can be safely made into a lovely springy frame (you can make springs from Titanium) On the other hand there are downsides as with any material - the biggest being it's very expensive. Titanium also doesn't have the notch resistance of Steel, so looses relatively more strength than Steel when scratched (as does CF which can be weakened hugely by surface damage). All the various 'braze-ons' we love so much also have a greater effect on a Titanium Frame. They are almost impossible to repair - not least 'in the field' as it were. A village blacksmith in Africa may well be able to fix a steel frame (it won't be pretty:-) and a decent frame builder can repair a steel frame like new and you may well find someone capable of doing this out-in-the-field - but a bust Titanium Frame is a write-off.

thanks all, very interesting and want it even more now, now just the hassle of trying to sell my other one when second hand market on beay looks very poor with many bikes with no bids !

hi, Have had a self built Merlin, about 8 years now, old model ..parallel t/tube on 10sp Campag, Mavic wheels. ridden for a few years weekly , as others say no rust issues and a rub with wire wool covers up any marks, ride it when the notion takes me, always gets a few admiring glances, when i built it i noticed the magic feel, but now i don't think it that special over a good steel like a de Rosa.. yes an itch worth a scratch certainly,ime hold their value well amongst afficanados.. will

I have had a Van Nicholas Yukon for about ten years and it is a pleasure to ride and still looks good as new. I have never tried a carbon bike so cannot give a comparison but I assume that you can get a lighter bike for the same amount of cash. No doubt you have seen the arguments that CF frames are more easily damaged than metal but then some people downplay this alleged disadvantage and say that their frames are still going strong after many years of regular use.

Note that the Spa Elan has plain guage tubes which some, like Thorn, will pour scorn on, however, I found it a very smooth ride so it is definitely worth a test ride. Spa will let you try it out for an hour or two which is more than I can say for most bike shops that I have visited.

I have also had two steel bikes from Thorn which I regret buying and I certainly would not buy a bike from them again although I do buy bits and pieces off them.

SimonCelsa wrote:Understandably, this crowd are not great advocates of titanium.

Download the whole 132 page 'mega brochure' - it makes interesting reading on a cold and wet evening!

Should hopefully be more legible if you click on the image,

The thing with Thorn opinions is if you don't like them you don't usually have to wait long before they've changed.
Previous Brochures have been just as dismissive of disk brakes which are now on offer. They even have a titanium disk fork as an option on one model - it's hard to see the logic of saying it's an unsuitable material for a frame but suitable for a fork!
Don't get me wrong - I have a Thorn and I like it, both the bike and the service from them. But the brochure is too far over the top to be taken seriously, it should be re titled the world according to Thorn, it makes such exaggerated claims I sometimes wonder if it's a spoof.

ianrobo wrote:thanks all, very interesting and want it even more now, now just the hassle of trying to sell my other one when second hand market on beay looks very poor with many bikes with no bids !

seems to me you need to take a cold shower or something

I like Ti frames and I have owned some nice ones, but ultimately I don't think that it is such a versatile material as steel, or as easy to repair in the event of trouble.

Thorn's logic is slightly flawed, ( actually, steel, Ti and Aluminium have the same specific modulus, and often a similar specific strength too, which has some important consequences for frame design using each material) but I basically agree with their end conclusion; you are probably best off with steel for a load-lugging touring bike.

cheers

Brucey wrote:I like Ti frames and I have owned some nice ones, but ultimately I don't think that it is such a versatile material as steel, or as easy to repair in the event of trouble.

Thorn's logic is slightly flawed, ( actually, steel, Ti and Aluminium have the same specific modulus, and often a similar specific strength too, which has some important consequences for frame design using each material) but I basically agree with their end conclusion; you are probably best off with steel for a load-lugging touring bike.

cheers

for touring I would agree that Steel is by far the best but for road cycling and events, clearly carbon is the best there because of the weight but Ti just looks so damn good, this is the one I will get if I can make the money work, it looks fantastic !!

I'm no engineer, but I am lucky in that I can get frames prototyped in Ti and steel and ride them.
Much of what I "know" about the engineering aspects is thanks to people like Brucey and this forum, and I would agree that if you want a load-lugging tourer that the village blacksmith can repair in Outer Mongolia, then steel is the way to go. (and that is tongue in cheek, too.....a good steel frame is a delight....)
The very early Ti frames got a bad press for being "too flexible"......this is because they were made with tube sizes about the same as was used for steel frames. Now my flawed understanding is that Ti is less dense than steel (about a third less dense) but also less stiff in about the same ratio; so a one gram cylinder of Ti one centimetre long will be bigger diameter than a one gram one centimetre cylinder of steel, but about the same stiffness.
However, the major determinant of tube stiffness in bicycle frames is the diameter of the tube.....again this is stuff I don't really understand, but I think if you multiply the tube diameter by 2 (with the same wall gauge) the stiffness will increase by somewhere between the square and the cube .....the tube will be between 4 and 8 times as stiff......and that's a big difference.
Now with steel, you run into a problem making big diameter tubes.....they are either heavy, or the walls are so thin that the tubes dent too easily.
The majority of Ti frames are made of plain gauge tubing 0.9mm thick.....experience shows this works OK, its thick enough not to dent easily, and in the hands of skilled welders, assuming the finished frame is properly annealed to minimise stresses, the failure rate is acceptable.....you generally get a decent warranty on a Ti frame.
Even in the twenty first century, both steel and Ti tubes are generally supplied in diameter increments of one eighth of an inch....this means there is both a finer gradation and a bigger overall range of stiffness that you can use in Ti than there is in steel tubes, without running into problems of tube denting or excessive weight.
Seatstays and chainstays aren't very much bigger in the average Ti frame than they are in the average steel frame. (apart from anything else, you can't get a much bigger chainstay between the chainwheel and the back tyre) This means that a Ti frame will generally have a more forgiving rear triangle than an equivalent steel frame, which is good for comfort with a narrow tyre, but bad for lugging survival gear and water in panniers.
Something which is currently exercising my curiosity (and which I think deserves much more attention) is tube profiles. Round tubes are traditional and easy, but if you simply ovalise a tube you can make it stiffer in one plane and more flexible in another plane. So ovalise the down tube and the top tube to produce a frame which is both stiffer laterally and more compliant vertically with the same weight of metal as an exactly similar frame with round tubes. (I'm sure there will be people who could calculate the degree of ovalisation required to make the tube twice as stiff one way as it is the other.....but it isn't me!)
As a 70 year old man whose cycling is purely recreational, I'm surprised by how much difference it makes to have a laterally stiff frame. Theres no winding it up over three or four pedal strokes, one push on the pedal and its off. I think some of this is a function of how you ride. I set my bikes up so that even when freewheeling I have very little weight on my hands......it follows that to push even a bit harder, I'm "working the bars"....pulling back on the bars to counteract Newton's "equal and opposite" reaction to the force I'm putting on the pedals. However, if I had more weight on my hands to begin with, I would need to be pushing much harder before I needed to "work the bars", and before I felt any difference from lateral stiffness.
Also I hate to see the chainstay squashed to fit between the chainwheel and the back tyre.....come on guys, all you have to do is bend the stay accurately and you can "thread the needle" and fit the un-squashed width of the stay in there, and then the chainside stay is as stiff as the other one.

I have a Spa Elan (as designed by Colin) and am very happy with it. My decision to buy was based on this review http://www.bikeradar.com/road/gear/category/bikes/road/product/spa-cycles-elan-ti-ultegra-review-50955/
and a visit to Harrogate for a very helpful and friendly chat with the chaps there and a one hour test ride.

531colin wrote:CUT
As a 70 year old man whose cycling is purely recreational, I'm surprised by how much difference it makes to have a laterally stiff frame. Theres no winding it up over three or four pedal strokes, one push on the pedal and its off. I think some of this is a function of how you ride. I set my bikes up so that even when freewheeling I have very little weight on my hands......it follows that to push even a bit harder, I'm "working the bars"....pulling back on the bars to counteract Newton's "equal and opposite" reaction to the force I'm putting on the pedals. However, if I had more weight on my hands to begin with, I would need to be pushing much harder before I needed to "work the bars", and before I felt any difference from lateral stiffness.
Also I hate to see the chainstay squashed to fit between the chainwheel and the back tyre.....come on guys, all you have to do is bend the stay accurately and you can "thread the needle" and fit the un-squashed width of the stay in there, and then the chainside stay is as stiff as the other one.

Must indeed be the way you ride/ have set up your bikes
I'm 65 and still riding competitive with my either not stiff titanium China made frame or a very stiff aluminium frame and feel absolutely no difference in "performance "whatsoever.
I'm sitting rather forward and stretched on my bikes.
I'also pretty sure there is no significant power/energy loss by lateral elastic bending of frame or frame parts.