Which frame material?

[rogerzilla]

Litespeeds are usually part-painted. Roger St. Pierre also painted his Speedwell track bike, back in the days when no titanium bikes were mass-produced.

[PH]

Ti doesn't make good forks. Its 'give' isn't ideal for them like it is for a frame, or some such.

Well that was sort of true at one time, not so much that the material wasn't suitabe, more that it required more manufacturing than was economical. As Ti technology has moved on forks are becoming increasingly commonplace. I've recently seen Ti forks by Linskey, Burls and Enigma, I have the Enigma ones, they're a match for anything in steel or carbon without the weight of steel or fragility (real or perceived) of carbon.

http://www.enigmabikes.com/components/e ... od_46.html

[Si]

Ti doesn't make good forks. Its 'give' isn't ideal for them like it is for a frame, or some such.

Well that was sort of true at one time, not so much that the material wasn't suitabe, more that it required more manufacturing than was economical. As Ti technology has moved on forks are becoming increasingly commonplace. I've recently seen Ti forks by Linskey, Burls and Enigma, I have the Enigma ones, they're a match for anything in steel or carbon without the weight of steel or fragility (real or perceived) of carbon.

http://www.enigmabikes.com/components/e ... od_46.html

that's handy to know should I ever save enough to aford the dream carbom machine, although by then I'm sure that the paper bike will be the in thing.

[speedsixdave]

Titanium has the reputation of breaking among cycling manufacturers. The problem is the welds.
My friend's titanium frame was a sorry sight when we were both hit by a car. See link.
http://www.pbase.com/gearoidmuar/image/85095874
Mine which was aluminium and had an identical crash was to look at, undamaged, though I chose to scrap it.
I got a bad hand injury out of the accident, but have made an excellent functional recovery.

I would therefore say, anything except titanium!

Being hit by a car is not a fair test of any frame's capabilities - you might as well complain about failure of a steel frame that had spent five years resting at the bottom of the sea.

Titanium welding is famously difficult but certainly not impossible. There are lots of industrial applications of welded titanium where weld failure could not be tolerated. Properly manufactured it remains a brilliant material to make tubular frames from - light, tough, resilient, and inert.

Carbon is clearly 'the future', but I'm with Mike Burrows on this - since there are few practical limitations on the shapes than can be formed from carbon fibres, why on earth are manufacturers still primarily 'building frames from sticks'? Well, the answer to this is obvious - because the UCI says so, therefore because that's What Lance Rides, therefore because that must be best. And we follow like dullard sheep with unlimited credit cards.

[rogerzilla]

Or if we ever want to race, since presumably British Cycling have to adhere to UCI rules? And TTs would be won by faired recumbents if the CTT hadn't banned them.

Anyway, my answer to the original question would be *light* steel. Steel, because it's the only frame you can easily have altered at a later date.

[willem jongman]

I would second that. Top quality steel rides beautifully, and you can have a custom frame for the price of an off the peg carbon frame. Titanium woud be the only alternative I would ever consider. Aluminium does not have a nice ride, and carbon is too vulnerable to my taste.
Willem

[djnotts]

"Aluminium does not have a nice ride"

In which case the design of the tubes and the way/shape in which thet are put together is WRONG! The material is per se absolutely nothing to do with the "nice(ness)" of the "ride" - howsoever one defines "nice".

Geometry, seat post, forks, bars and tyres have far more impact on the way a bike "feels" than what material the bit that holds those things together happens to be made from.

[Si]

"Aluminium does not have a nice ride"

In which case the design of the tubes and the way/shape in which thet are put together is WRONG! The material is per se absolutely nothing to do with the "nice(ness)" of the "ride" - howsoever one defines "nice".

Geometry, seat post, forks, bars and tyres have far more impact on the way a bike "feels" than what material the bit that holds those things together happens to be made from.

Indeed. C+ did a stiffness and comfort test on a number of frames of differing materials a while back - they found no difference between materials but major differences based upon how the frame was designed and built.

For instance, my 26" wheeled Alu commuter rides a lot more forgivingly than my 26" wheeled cro-mo commuter, despite having the same wheels, tyres and saddle. But my 26" wheeled 631 tourer, with the same wheels and tyres is more comfortable still.

Material, however, can have an impact on the combination of strength and weight (I say "combination" because if you build anything heavy enough you can make it pretty bombproof).

[willem jongman]

Let me explain. Aluminium is about a third of the weight of steel, but it also has about a third of the strength of steel. To achieve the same strength you therefore have to use about three times more material. Question is, how to use that extra material. Unlike steel, aluminium does not like bending (ever seen an aluminium spring?). The best way to use the extra material therefore, is to increase the tube diameter. This way the bike is both strong enough and stiff enough for the aluminium not to develope fatigue problems. The problem is this gives a stiff and uncomfortable frame with a ride that I don't like.
Willem

[stewartpratt]

Unlike steel, aluminium does not like bending (ever seen an aluminium spring?).

This is a nice piece of rhetoric that's routinely trotted out in the case against aluminium, but it's not really relevant. Aluminium's not used for coil springs, no, but coil springs undergo very significant deformation. Bicycle frames, on the other hand, don't.* Aluminium works fine for aeroplane wings, which undergo much greater defomtaion and strain than a bike frame will, and the wings don't generally fall off. The key with aluminium is to be able to keep its fatigue life in check for a given service envelope, which in turn partly requires keeping material defects to a known limit.

(I've deleted some lengthy continued ramblings about the whole "frame material in terms of ride comfort" debate always misses the point horribly and why steel's a daft material for a lightweight racing bike, suffice it to say that having owned and ridden bikes of various materials, all my aluminium road bikes have been both faster and more comfortable than all my steel ones and whilst I'd only ever choose steel or titanium for a tourer or a rigid MTB, I'd only ever choose carbon fibre or aluminium for a performance road bike.)




* Soft-tails (ie pivotless rear suspension bikes which use the chainstays as a leaf spring) do, though; and as I recall, aluminium has even been used for this. Naturally everyone's response was "Ohnoes! It's aluminium, it'll break and we'll die!"; the manufacturer's explanation was that yes, it'll break, and it'll do so after you'd ridden it off-road for a hundred years or so without stopping for so much as a piddle.

[willem jongman]

The early implementation of alumium in road frames of the 1970's did show up the possibilities of sudden failures in flexing narrow tubed alloy frames. I agree that aluminium frames need not be any weaker, however. All I am saying is that the good modern alloy frames that do not fail have fatter tubes than I like (and I have enough good alloy bikes around to be able to tell). It i s a matter of taste, of course: my wife prefers the tighter ride of an alloy bike, so that is what she rides.
Willem

[glueman]

steel's a daft material for a lightweight racing bike

Someone might tell the TdF winners and road record breakers who used it till about 15 years ago. Aluminium, carbon and titanium may have marginal advantages over steel for specific, extremely demanding applications (like climbing a Col faster than 100 other pro's or knocking a few seconds off a track record) but for the kind of use most club cyclists give their bikes steel has a lot going for it.

The main practical advantage of aluminium is volume manufacturers switched to ally which made the price extremely competitive, along with the bulk purchase of groupsets to put on them. This put genuine race ready bikes at under £1k and sometimes well under that pricepoint. Carbon is heading the same way, even though all prices have risen somewhat recently. It doesn't make aluminium or carbon a particularly good material if you want to keep a bike longer than 10 years or put it to the kind of use a CTC rider might typically do.
If MegaCorp Inc. decided the future of cycling was 953 frames set in cast lugs built by the hundred thousand they'd be cheap(er) and their virtues extolled in magazine advertisements. There's probably more bunk talked about frame material than any other aspect of bicycles.

[stewartpratt]

The early implementation of alumium in road frames of the 1970's did show up the possibilities of sudden failures in flexing narrow tubed alloy frames. I agree that aluminium frames need not be any weaker, however. All I am saying is that the good modern alloy frames that do not fail have fatter tubes than I like

Indeed. The fatter tubes reduce flex and also increase weld area. Worth noting, though, that whilst the main frame tubes - down tube especially - do tend to be fat, the seat stays don't necessarily. Cannondales, for instance, have quite narrow seat stays which are heavily S-curved, which should in theory add some flex. Although I'm still a firm sceptic when it comes to the princess's pea of vertical rear triangle compliance

As you say, preference means there's no right or wrong. Personally, for a road bike, I like the stiffness of an aluminium frame combined with tyres softer than traditionalists would insist on, and I find that both faster and much more comfortable than any steel frame with harder tyres. YMMV.

[stewartpratt]

Someone might tell the TdF winners and road record breakers who used it till about 15 years ago.

So steel was fine until round about the time that people got aluminium frames right, then

It doesn't make aluminium or carbon a particularly good material if you want to keep a bike longer than 10 years or put it to the kind of use a CTC rider might typically do.

True (though I'd dispute 10 years as a realistic figure for aluminium) but the original question was for road use with some competition, where aluminium's pretty well suited.

There's probably more bunk talked about frame material than any other aspect of bicycles.

Ain't that the truth

Well, maybe wheelbuilding

[glueman]

Aluminium has marginal advantages over steel in a TdF bike so long as you don't use it after a crash and throw it away every one or two seasons. Team race bikes don't tend to be particularly oversized in aluminium where the strength margins are shaved in a way they wouldn't be on a regular use bike. I was recently talking to a chap who is a friend of a British pro rider and he says professional frames are sent away for lab testing after a tumble (X-Ray and sonic presumably), that wouldn't happen on an off the peg amateur machine - even carbon frames are cheaper for a volume manufacturer to replace than test AFAIK.

Aluminium frames certainly can last, my wife has a Cannondale tourer that's almost twenty years old, but the potential for catastrophic failure is always present on a well used aluminium bike, as it is for aluminium components. There isn't a right answer to the material question but riders tend to inflate the advantages and diminish the downside of their favourite material.
As I said before, a Carradice is a great leveller.