Ti Rides

Titanium is the miracle metal. The Holy Grail of mountain biking. The kick-ass, all-singing, all-dancing wonder stuff that gets the juices flowing like no other material. You wouldn’t think that if you saw some – grey and boring, a bit like unpainted steel. But we discovered that’s where the similarity ends

Titanium is expensive but it’s not a rare metal – it’s the fourth most abundant metal found in the Earth’s crust. The problem is it’s expensive to extract from the ground (we’ll look at this later) and difficult to work with. Once you’ve got some, it’s a magic. It’s half the weight of steel but only half as stiff, which if you think about it means it has an equal strength to weight ratio. Aluminium is half the weight of titanium per volume but for bike frames you have to use more aluminium to get the strength up, so aluminium frames are not twice as light.

Titanium has great tensile strength and fatigue endurance, double that of steel. This means it can flex quite a bit without breaking, one of the reasons you see titanium (stays, leaf springs, etc) used as natural shock absorber in bike frames. It’s also strong – as strong as steel – but half the weight, remember. It also resists cracking very well and hardly ever scratches, because it’s so hard.

All these factors mean bike builders can design bikes frames that are as light as aluminium but lighter than steel, flex in all the important areas but are stiff in others and don’t rust or corrode, and will probably last forever.

If it’s so good, then why aren’t more frames made from it? Good question. To provide the answer we have to look at how titanium is manufactured and how hard it is to make a frame.

HOT, HOT, HOT

Titanium comes from ore. This is dug out of the ground, crushed into a powder and then shoved in a large furnace. There’s lots of heat involved using up loads of power from the National Grid and then more heating before finally raw titanium is produced. Aluminium and vanadium, the two alloying elements that bike firms always bang on about are then added. Most bike companies use 3al/2.5v titanium (three per cent aluminium and two and a half per cent vanadium) as opposed to 6/4 titanium (six per cent aluminium and four per cent vanadium) for the simple reason that the former can be made into seamless tubes, where as the latter usually has to rolled and welded. There follows more pummelling with big machines before a bar of titanium is finally produced. This is rammed through an extrusion machine to produce a tube. The tube then goes through a few more processes before it starts to look like the tubes used in bicycle frames.

The tubes are extruded in straight plain gauge sections but, like steel, double-butted tubes are also available. Shaped tubes are used too – ones that change orientation from the headset to the bottom bracket. Seat an chain stays are bent and twisted to fine tune the ride and increase stiffness/comfort depending on their location. Making any of these tubes is an expensive procedure.

Welding them is even harder. Weld contamination is bad news for titanium frames – if the welds are not done correctly then the whole frame could fail. To this end titanium is welded up in laboratory type environments. Welders wear special gloves to prevent grease or other elements compromising the weld and during welding Argon gas is pumped into the frame to reduce the risk of further contamination. Merlin, one of the titanium bike makers, says titanium is actually easy to weld but the tricky part is weld consistency or uniformity. Plus you can have problems if it’s too hot or too cold or there’s not enough penetration in the weld. In fact there are a whole host of things that we haven’t got the space to go into now. Suffice to say it’s expensive and bitch to work with, so not everyone bothers, which is why there are only a few Ti frames available.

THE LINE-UP

Of the few that do make frames Merlin and Litespeed are old hands at the game, both have been making titanium hardtails for over 10 years. After being in competition for so long, Litespeed has recently bought Merlin, lock, stock and titanium barrel – but how this effects things in the UK remains to be seen. Airborne and Omega are new kids on the titanium block and have each sent us their one and only Ti bike.

Litespeed’s Pisgah is a plain gauge 3al/2.5v titanium frameset that sits mid-range in the company line-up. It’s £1,190, which is average for a Ti hardtail, and 23.25lb, which is as light as you’re going to get without double-butting. It gets some trick features including a beefy four-sided down tube, shaped chain and seat stays to soften the ride but still retain stiffness, a bolt on disc mount and 6al/4v titanium dropouts. The frame is suspension-corrected for a 65mm fork, but we’ve just heard it’s going to be corrected for a 80mm fork next year.

Merlin’s Fat Ti XL is the only frame here with double-butted 3al-2.5v titanium tubing, hence the low 22.25lb weight. It’s also the most expensive at £2,700 and if you tot up the cost of the bits you’re looking at a £4,000 hardtail. If that doesn’t shock you think of it this way – you could buy the Airborne, Omega and Litespeed frames for the same money.

Omega is a Brit roadie firm based in Kent and its new custom Ti frame £895 is the first venture into the small but hotly competitive titanium mountain bike market. The frame draws on Omega’s road background sporting a long top tube. It’s also kitted out with a load of Brit products from USE, Royce and Middleburn to keep the flag flying.

The Airborne Lucky Strike is the cheapest titanium frame here at £580, for the simple reason that Airborne is one of those new internet bike firms. It has no dealers, no middle-men, no mark-ups, so can undercut the competition on price. It also doesn’t go through the usual retail channels – you have to order on line – but the bikes are killer value.

BEYOND THE TI CURTAIN

It was apt that we took our four test bikes to Ash Vale, site of Gorrick and West Drayton MBC races, but also adjacent to the MOD shooting ranges. Titanium was, after all, developed for military applications, including Russian Mig fighter planes. There were even rumours circulating that some of this red Ti had been built into mountain bikes. Gunfire sounded in the distance – armour-piercing bullets ripping into titanium plating, we reckoned.

Unloading the four bikes from the back of the cramped Renault Megane, one thing was certain – they all had that distinct titanium colour. It’s hard to describe – it’s shiny grey, but it has a depth to it that no amount of paint could replicate, and believe us many bike firms have tried. Sometimes it’s almost green but then there’s black in it too. This may sound irrelevant, but we reckon a lot of Ti owners get turned on by the colour. The other thing we noticed was even after rattling around in the back of the car for an hour there were very few marks on the frames – one of the benefits of Ti is that scratches don’t show.

Disappearing into the woods at warp speed, our four testers were elbow-to-elbow at the first stretch of singletrack. Straining through the gears they stomped up the first short climb, lungs raw from the effort. Gathering at the top you could see from the faces that these bikes were special.

Maybe we’re malicious but we like to test the expensive bikes just a bit harder than the cheap stuff, just to see if £2,500 is really that good. Storming down the first descent the four bikes jockeyed for top spot. The Airborne took pole position, not because it was faster than the rest, but because the flexy riser bars and supple fork allowed that tester to take a short cut across a bunch of roots.

The other three were soon clicking through the gears and lining up behind, twisting through the singletrack tyre to tyre. Our new tester, Adrian Lansley from XC race team Helly Hansen, jumped out of the saddle hard on the Litespeed – there was very little rear end flex. Litespeed’s all new geometrically-enhanced tube sets are shaped to address the tortional and lateral stresses when you put the hammer down. The tubes are also cold-worked which, Litespeed claim, makes them 45 per cent stronger than the titanium other frame builders use.

A nanosecond behind is the Kitch, sprinting on the Fat Ti XL, the only double-butted frame here and the lightest. Merlin talks about a torsionally stiff but vertically compliant frame: "We want to keep the powertrain efficient without losing that ‘titanium’ ride. We let the frame flex more in the seat stays for a better ride, and then beef up the bottom bracket and chainstays to keep them rigid. A lot of the balance is in the tubing geometry – using different thicknesses and diameters – and some in the frame geometry." Makes sense and to achieve this Merlin uses over 50 different tubes in it’s frames to get the lowest weight possible with the best ride – sounds simple but few firms rarely pull it off.

The Omega and Airborne bring up the rear. From our tests both have that titanium feel but the relationship between stiffness and compliance is a little bit different. Neither is a feathery smooth over the bumps, and honking out of the saddle, response times are slower.

DRUM ROLL MOMENT...

Retracing our steps three hours later you can see this has been a hard test. Each bike has been ridden into the ground but we know all of them can take it. It’s one of the things titanium is good for – abusing.

While it would be easy to rate the £2,700 Merlin over the other three, we don’t reckon it’s the best bike here. It’s the best made and has a classy finish but the Litespeed had a better overall ride and is more versatile because we’re not stuck with the Headshok suspension fork. Merlin makes a non-Headshok double-butted frame called the XLM or a plain gauge Mountain if you want to fit conventional suspension forks like RockShox.

At the budget end of the spectrum, the Airborne is easily the winner. In fact it’s not too dissimilar to the Omega, with a long top tube and requiring a short stem, but at £300 less it’s easily better value for money.

Our winner this month is the Litespeed Pisgah – the name aside we felt it had the right balance between stiffness, compliance, versatility and value for money. If the new model can take a longer travel suspension fork and a disc brake on the frame, not a bolt-on mount, it’s on its way to being the perfect bike.

Litespeed Pisgah £1190 (frame only)

FOR: lightweight, good value, great ride

AGAINST: rubbing side-mounted cable guide

• The Litespeed Pisgah is made from 3Al-2.5V seamless titanium tubing. A four-sided down tube adds extra stiffness to the front end. This is not easy to spot because the sides of the tube are not as distinct as you’d imagine, they’re actually rounded.

Each Litespeed frame is ‘geometrically enhanced’, in other words Litespeed custom tunes the tube sizes to the different frame sizes to get the best ride and the lightest weight possible.

Litespeed claim the S-bend seat stays improve rear end stiffness, and also braking modulation because the stays curve inwards at the brake boss area.

Nevertheless, we still noticed quite a bit of bowing when the rear brake was applied, so they’re not that stiff.

Multi-plane, asymmetric chain stays add lateral stiffness, reduce chain slap, and increase crank-arm and tyre clearance – all we can say is the Litespeed felt stiffer than the Omega powering out of the saddle, but more comfortable on the rough stuff.

The frame is disc brake adaptable with an optional bolt-on mount for £25. It’s suspension corrected, but only for a 65mm fork.

• Fortunately the Pisgah came with one of the best short-travel XC forks on the market, the SID XC. It has 65mm of travel from an air spring, rebound damping adjusted via a simple 90-degree knob on the lower leg and is light and relatively stiff for a fork at this price.

• Our test bike came conservatively specced with mainly Shimano XT parts. Front and rear derailleurs, BB and crank were all from this second-string Shimano group. V-brakes and shifters/levers are upgraded to XTR although we reckon the 8-speed cassette is a bit of a downgrade, especially with this competition.

• Flat bars are not our current faves but the Easton EA50 aluminium XC, being 23 inches wide, offered plenty of leverage. A new Easton EA 70 stem held the bars and a Easton EA 50 post supported a SDG Bel Air saddle.

• Spinergy’s Spox wheels are some of the lightest on the market and are one of the reasons for the Litespeed’s low 23.25lb weight, but they need constant care and attention to last longer than a season. The rear hub is not particularly well sealed but does sport a XT cassette body so can be replaced easily.

Tioga Factory XC slick treads are lightning fast fair weather tyres but with little in the way of grip down the centre are a big no for mud and gloop.

• Apart from the rear side-mounted cable guide rubbing on our thighs the Litespeed was a great bike to ride. It was stiffer than both the Omega and Airborne stomping out of the saddle, and seated we noticed a lot more compliance for soaking up the lumps and bumps – it was almost as if we were riding a soft-tail. Climbing, even rocky ascents, was rapid and surefooted; we hardly ever lost traction. Descending was equally good with the compliant frame taking off the hard edges the fork missed.

Ideally we’d have liked a longer travel fork but the short travel made the 65mm SID super fast and precise. If we did make mistakes in tricky terrain we could get out of trouble by flicking the front wheel out of the way instantly.

Conclusion

Litespeed makes better, more expensive hardtails if you really want the best money can buy, but why bother when the Pisgah delivers in every department? For the money we really couldn’t fault it. Okay, £1,190 is a lot of cash for a hardtail frame (you can buy a Specialized M4 for £599) but compared to the Merlin it’s bargain basement. If Merlin and Litespeed are at the top of your list then you’ve got two choices – one Merlin Ti Beat or two Pisgah frames. If you even consider the former you need to get back on the medication.

Chassis: 5

Wheels: 3

Transmission: 5

Brakes: 5

Other bits: 5

Performance: 5

Value: 4

•mbr• rating: 5

Omega custom Ti £895 (frame only)

FOR: good value for money

AGAINST: long top tube, harder rear end than the rest

• Omega have been building titanium frames for six years in their Kent workshop, although up until now all have been road frames. The Omega Custom Ti is the firm’s first foray into the mtb market.

• It’s constructed from 3Al-2.5V plain gauge titanium tubes produced by Ancotech (who supply a number of big-name US frame builders) and is modelled on well-known American brands like Litespeed and Merlin. Builder Mark Joynt reasons that anything the Yanks can do, Omega can do just as well or perhaps better. The tubes are slightly oversized and ovalised at the head tube, seat tube and bottom bracket to increase stiffness. In spite of this oversizing however, the seat tube takes a standard 27.2mm post. Double bottle cage bosses and a disk brake mount are standard.

• The Quake Air fork, the lightest in the Rond range, is slightly revamped from the one that appeared last year. Sadly this was a disappointment. A high spring rate and the fork had far too much initially stiction, too low and it blew through the travel easily. The rebound was also too slow and it packed badly on stutter bumps. It leaked air constantly and never achieved the claimed 65mm of travel. We felt it was marginally stiffer than a SID, but that’s the only redeeming feature.

• Being rather patriotic, Omega tried to produce a bike with as many British bits as possible. An admirable sentiment perhaps, but those chaps at Shimano didn’t get to where they are today by chance. What we’re saying is that mixing and matching components is rarely a good idea and in this case, we felt it detracted from the overall ride quality. The USE Alien seat post was striking in red and held a race-orientated Flite Titanium saddle, although we could live without the USE Spinstiks. The Chris King No-threadset is one of the best.

Mavic X517 rims and Continental tyres are also well up to scratch. The rear Royce hub was a bit sticky, giving a disconcerting chainslap on chain stay when freewheeling. The Royce bottom bracket creaked incessantly – a consequence of titanium spindle meeting Middleburn chainset.

• The ride is precisely as you would expect from titanium, with enough resilience to take the edge off the worst of the trail harshness. It’s light, supple and responsive, not as much as the Litespeed or Merlin but easily worth it for the money. Steering was as quick, although the longish stem slowed it down a bit. If we had a criticism it is that the top tube was too long and lopping a centimetre off would have tightened up the steering a tad and, more significantly, improved weight distribution. The long top tube/long stem made hoisting and hauling over trail obstacles hard work. For racing this set up is acceptable but we feel for a wider market a shorter top tube would be more appealing. We’d spec one if ordering a custom Omega.

Conclusion

British builders like Omega have a lot to offer UK custom fans and this frame is pretty good compared to the USA competition. Just as important though, it’s significantly cheaper than a USA import made from the same tubes which, when you add it all up, makes the Omega a bit of a bargain. If we were building up the frame we would have put a longer travel fork in it and possibly a homogenous Shimano groupset, but Omega assure us they can build whatever you want.

Chassis:4

Wheels: 4

Transmission: 4

Brakes: 4

Other bits: 5

Performance: 4

Value: 5

•mbr• rating: 4

Merlin Fat Ti XL £2,700 (frame only)

FOR: super lightweight

AGAINST: super expensive

• It’s official! Litespeed has recently bought long-time competitor Merlin, but whether the new owner will change things when it comes to the separate ranges remains to be seen. What we do know is the Fat Ti XL (Extralight) is one of the most expensive frames we’ve ever tested – for the same money you can buy all three of the other Ti framesets we tested!

• For £2,700 you get a frame, fork, headset and stem – the XL is not available as a complete bike. The frame gets double butted 3Al-2.5V seamless titanium main tubes, typically flawless finishing and that all-important head badge which carries the kind of kudos usually reserved for Ferraris.

• With that Cannondale Headshok up front, something you’ll notice immediately is the high position. Like on the majority of ‘Dales, the suspension is built in below the head tube, raising the front end a few inches, automatically making your normal riding position more upright. Merlin does spec a negative rise stem to counter this, but we felt that this still wasn’t enough and replaced it with a bigger sloping Syncros model to achieve a near normal position.

• Merlin is one of the few frames to use the Cannondale Headshok fork in its frames. The XL came with a Fatty Ultra, which is some half a pound lighter than the normal Fatty, and gives up to 75mm of plush travel from an air spring. At the top of the head tube there’s a damping adjuster that allows you to alter set-up one click at a time. Incidentally, Cannondale do make a Headshok with lockout – which we’ve seen on many of their top-end 2000 bikes – and it’s a little surprising that it didn’t come as standard on this race ace.

In our test arena the Headshok was more than a match for the biggest roots and sandy drop-ins we encountered; but on larger, rockier routes trail riders would doubtless prefer an extra inch.

• An almost complete XTR groupset takes the Fat Ti into the realms of super pricey dream machine, but let’s face it, it’s exactly what this bike deserves – if you’re paying this much for a frame you’re hardly going to build it up with mid-range components, are you? Transmission and shifting was as smooth and sharp as we’ve come to expect from the Japanese giant’s top kit, flawless in all test conditions. The only non-Shimano components are the SRAM brake levers.

• No complaints about the wheels – XTR hubs on Mavic’s lightest cross-country 517 rims. The Panaracer Fire XC Pro rubbers are pretty good all-rounders, with sufficient bite for fast, loose corners and traction in all but the gloopiest of weather.

• So how does the Fat Ti ride overall? In a nutshell – like a race bike. It’s fast, responsive and highly manoeuvrable. Acceleration is enough to make full suspension converts weep with jealousy, it’s light enough to loft both front and rear over obstacles with ease and, if that’s not enough, the frame’s forgiving enough to take the sting out of stutter bump slogs. In many ways it’s like riding an ultra-quick soft-tail. What’s more, if you stack – which is inevitable at the speeds this baby can clock – you’re not left with an unsightly gashed paint-job.

Conclusion

There’s no denying this is a classy frameset, with a super lightweight fork and the very best components money can buy, but... for this sort of dosh you could buy a handful of Smeg fridges or that nice little Honda Civic you’ve had an eye on. The ride’s sweet – as long as you can get a good position – you just can’t escape the fact that the Fat Ti is so damn expensive. For the seriously wealthy only.

Chassis: 5

Wheels: 5

Transmission: 5

Brakes: 4

Other bits: 5

Performance: 5

Value: 2

•mbr• rating: 4

 • Airborne is an internet bike firm that sells across the web. Log into its website and you can customise a range of frames with different components to create your dream bike. We ordered the Lucky Strike, the firm’s top of the line titanium hardtail, and fitted it out with a spec to die for.

• The frame is made from certified Aerospace Grade 3Al-2.5V titanium that is custom drawn and seamless. Like the Litespeed, the tubes are cold worked to retain strength. There’s an international standard disk brake mount and the frame is suspension corrected for a 80mm fork. Airborne claim the teardrop shaped top tube is three times as strong and laterally stiffer than the previous single axis ovalisation. It’s also longer (23 inches on our test bike) to ‘re-center rider weight over the bottom bracket’ and is intended to be run with a shorter stem to improve handling – like Gary Fisher’s Genesis geometry.

The Mono-axial ovalised down tube is not like this to increase lateral stiffness in the front end but to stop stress risers around the head tube junction, or so Airborne claim. The tubes are welded to a CNC machined head tube, a distinctive wishbone seat stay and beefy dropouts finish off a tidy frame.

• Hayes calipers are fitted to the frame, the disc rotors to Rolf Dolomite wheels. The latter benefit from Rolf’s unique spoking arrangement, hence paired spoke on the front and rear wheels. The hubs feature sealed bearings and removable adapter plates so you can fit alternative disc brakes if you get fed up with the Hayes.

• A RockShox SID XC fork came on our test bike and this is the first 2001 product we’ve tested. It gets a new crown and new lowers but the same old reliable performance and low weight we know and love. The fiddly air valves are gone, updated with sensible Schrader valves.

• Shimano provides all of the Airborne’s running gear. Contrary to popular belief, the XT shifter pods, front mech and 9-speed XTR rear derailleur provided smooth shifts on the Race Face chain rings. We never noticed any delay in getting the chain from ring to ring, even under load. The only hiccup was a bit of rubbing on the front mech caused, we think, by the flexy Ti bottom bracket.

• The Lucky Strike comes with a full complement of Race Face parts including a sealed bearing headset, forged aluminium crankset with carbon inlays, bottom bracket, XY seatpost and System stem. The riser bar is the lush Easton Monkey Lite, weighing a svelte 160g. Securely fastened to the ends, and staying that way, are Yeti’s Loc Jaw grips. A WTB saddle and Time’s excellent ATAC clipless pedals finish off a very impressive package.

• The Lucky Strike is pretty beefy at the front end and if we had to compare it against the others we’d say it was stiffer than the Omega although not the Litespeed or Merlin, but then it is half the price. It’s definitely more supple in the rear and with discs we didn’t notice any seat stay flexing. Factor in the plush 2001 SID XC and flexy stem and you’ve got a spot-on trail bike for epics and big ones. XC Racers may not like the fork set up, rubbing Hayes discs or high rise stem but Airborne offers alternative race specs on its website (XTR equipped Lucky Strike is £1,545).

Conclusion

The Airborne frame lacks the tubing manipulation and quality build of the Merlin and Litespeed but then that’s not what you’re paying for here. Instead you’re getting a lightweight, reliable trail bike that should last longer than any equivalent priced alloy hardtail. The fact that you can pick and choose any range of parts from the a la carte menu at Airborne.com and its stonking good value for money makes it well worth considering if you’re in the market for the magic grey stuff. 

Chassis: 4

Wheels: 5

Transmission: 5

Brakes: 5

Other bits: 5

Performance: 4

Value: 5

•mbr• rating: 5

© Mountain Bike Rider 2000. This article is property of Mountain Bike Rider and has been reprinted with their permission.