TITANIUM into the Modern Era
HEY! Someone should hire me, purely on the basis of how much I know about TITANIUM bicycles.
"If you don't know your past, then how can you know your future?" for example.
Seriously, I would be a great addition to your team. -Ann
Trend: Advanced Engineering and Atypical Frame Design
(Trend: Advanced Engineering and Atypical Frame Design)
Nicknamed the "Cha-Ching" due to its high cost. Oddly enough, the Canadians (via Lavoie Industries) are involved in this story.
Featuring humongus (by today's standards) filed welds that almost look like filleted joints (or filed Aluminum joints at any rate), the Passoni is really a step backward in time. But, maybe, by being so backward-looking, it is really looking, in some way, towards the future. Lol.
The Titan Titanium Compe is... certainly different.
I think Bill Stevenson had a hand in designing the Alpinestars Ti Mega. Must have been a nightmare to build.
I really dislike Ibis as a company, largely because of Scot Nicol's weird and childish need to name everything in the manner of an "edgy" 13 year old boy. But Ibis did work with tube suppliers to develop some of the first "internally butted" (non-milled variable thickness) TITANIUM tubing.
Featuring a remote-release "dropper" seat post, hydraulic brakes and dropped (reverse-elevated) chainstay for maximum chainring-tire clearance, this Rewel is positively ZOOMING into the future!!!
Trend: Advanced Offroad Suspension
One of the more popular initial Unified Rear Triangle (URT) designs.
I'm not sure why they painted this bike, but it is TITANIUM, welded by Mike Augspurger of One-Off Titanium. The famous (or "infamous") bladder-suspension Unified Rear Triangle (URT) as designed by Roo Trimble, one of several brothers interested in bicycle design. As is mentioned in my interview with Mike Augspurger of One-Off Titanium, he thought that Roo is the one who got the pivot placement right in the big URT showdown.
These Boulder Ti Defiant bicycles receieve generally positive reviews, depending on what kind of riding you like to do (preferably XC).
"I have a magazine clipping from Bicycling where they said it was the fastest, lightest mountain bike they ever rode. Again, that was before modern suspension. It was actually pretty awful in really tight technical situations, like if you're trying to ride along a railroad track, a trials move, the frame was so flexible that it's almost impossible to ride. If you're totally relaxed, it's fine, but if you tensed up, you would get this unwanted wiggle." -Mike Augspurger, owner-operator of One-Off Titanium, via my interview with him.
This is a very interesting frame, where all of the spring action of the front and rear suspension come from specialized parts of the frame itself, rather than separate compoents. The visible elastomers are there for damping effect, but probably are not as effective as hydraulic damping units would be. In any case, I think that this Merlin frame comes closest to truly embodying the full potential of TITANIUM as a frame material. As Mike Augspurger pointed out to me in our interview, however, TITANIUM zero-pivot or "soft" frame suspension designs tend to fail (crack). Perhaps, in the future, advances in computer-aided design will allow the dream to be realized in a higher-performance and more robust package.
A later example of zero-pivot TITANIUM soft tail frame construction, the radical (and radically expensive) Bow-Ti.
Trend: Aerodynamic Frames
I believe that these deep-profile aero TITANIUM tubes are manufactured in that profile, cut, and welded by the more-or-less standard methods.
These LOOK frames, in comparison to the above Bianchi, must have taken FOREVER to build. According to the article, the frames started life as normal round-tube TITANIUM diamond types... before having custom cut-and-shaped TITANIUM sheet fairing welded to them! What an insane idea.
Trend: Paris Roubaix Style Road Suspension
The above Road Bike Action Magazine review of the TITANIUM Boulder Paris Roubaix says pretty much what you might expect: if what you want is a supple ride, and you're willing to relinguish sprinting, climbing, etc., performance in order to obtain it, then this is the frame for you. Actually, enough of these were made and sold on the civilian market that you see them pop up for sale every now and again.
Amazingly, Clark Kent's Lemond-branded full-suspension Paris Roubaix bicycle frame was offered for sale, at a slightly lower price than some competing designs. I have no reason to believe that any civilian consumers purchased them, however, and nobody seems to know the whereabouts of the two or three that were made for the 1994 Paris Roubaix race. Possibly, the less-than-amazing performance that the frames showed during the race has something to do with this. Also, the design appears somewhat hasty and not very well thought out, at least in comparison to the much more obviously dedicated Boulder offering shown above.
I don't know much about this Paris Roubiax frame. It appears to be based on a relatively simply Mountain Bike design. I have my doubts about its road racing suitability.
Trend: Offroad Capable Road Bikes
According to provided information, the above touring bicycle uses front-and-rear AMP disc brakes for superior stopping performance (even under wet conditions), and is shown outfitted with knobby tires. On a road bike! Imagine that. Bob Folline says: "We [Bob and Dave Levy of Ti Cycles] built the full titanium bike to be a show piece of technology and to be usable for both loaded touring and for club race and training rides. The light weight of the couplings allowed me to meet my goal of a 23 pound bike complete as shown in the picture." Pretty neat! It will be interesting to see if any other manufacturers decide to use disc-brakes on their road frames.
This beautiful TITANIUM machine, welded by Wes Williams of Ibis, is based off the justifiably famous steel Bruce Gordon Rock ‘n Road bicycle, and sports an exotic 700c cantilever brake-equipped RockShox fork with custom machined crown for use with ultra-big Rock ‘n Road 700 x 43mm tires! Wow!
