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Titanium is just marketing ****craft to get you to buy aspirational new purchases every couple of years.
One of the worst bikes I've ever ridden was titanium. it was awful.
Didn't Charge build up two bikes exactly the same but one in steel and one in titanium & found no one could reliably tell the difference?
I'm another advocate for refurbishing what you have. I bought my Thorn Audax twenty years ago and it had a repaint last year from Argos cycles, with new decals and dents filled. It had been going rusty, but it's very comfortable and a good Reynolds replacement frame would be expensive. In that context, a few £hundred on fixing it up seems like good value. Did me proud on PBP last year and I expect I'll use it for LEL next year.
Why would/should you be able to tell the difference as it's supposed to be like steel, except it's lighter, and lasts forever.
Except everyone insists a bit of extra weight on their steel bike doesn't matter, and the latter......
thepodgeFree Member
Didn’t Charge build up two bikes exactly the same but one in steel and one in titanium & found no one could reliably tell the difference?
Yep, maybe 15 years ago now? That was a great test, and an issue of the magazine that I hung onto for years
I couldn't tell you the material in a blind test but I could tell you which bike I preferred but if both bikes we built to be the same stiffness then I would have no preference.
I like very stiff frames which are also light so carbon is obvious answer for me with steel never being the answer.
thepodge
Free MemberDidn’t Charge build up two bikes exactly the same but one in steel and one in titanium & found no one could reliably tell the difference?
Sure, but then Charge basically designed their ti bikes to be similiar to the steel ones only lighter. Like any material, titanium and steel can both have a lot of variation in how they feel, from the design/construction. I mean, we've probably all ridden alu frames that feel different to other alu frames, or whatever. Tube thickness plays a huge part, construction, bracing, etc also, and the material influences that but doesn't absolutely dictate it. Mostly it sets minimums
Like, I had at various points a Soda, a BFe and a Soul all from the same generation, all 3 were really different. The BFe felt dead and solid, the Soul was classic stereotype steel springy, the Soda was really soft but unspringy. I built them with mostly the same parts and it was still really clear. My alu Ragley Mmmbop and titanium Ti similiar, that was a super stiff alu frame and a fairly stiff ti one, you wouldn't necessarily ride the Ti and say "this is titanium" as it was no noodle, but if you rode the two you'd almost certainly say "this one is alu, this one is ti", one was super stiff and brash and harsh, the other had less chatter, more grip.
Equally if you rode an old carbon 456 and steel one, or a gen 1 Scandal and an Inbred, I think most people would get it the wrong way round tbf.
Good marketing over bad design and fabrication. That's the essence of 90s MTB.
Now Everything is pretty much spot on and you have to try really hard to buy something that's terrible, or has had terrible designed in to make them stand out (treks road frames,for example)
My anecdote comes from the Dialled Bikes. I had an Alpine and loved it for fun, but it felt dead and heavy. Somehow I managed to ride the Ti prototype they built and it was springy and jittery - the enjoyment of the steel frame was in being planted, sorted. With the Ti, that was lost. It wasn't just the same bike but lighter. Or maybe I just had the tyres pumped up too hard.
But, I have Ti Tripster and it's awesome for touring and semi-road duties.