Anyone had any experiences getting a Custom Ti frame made? I am currently looking at the following:

Burl’s (UK) @ approx £1000
Triton (Russia) @ Approx £650
XCAD (China) at @ $700 USD

Anyone had any experience or other recommendations?

Have a peek over here and feel free to drop me a line if you want any advice (contact form on the site)…

http://www.spanner.org.uk

My experience of XACD was pretty painless.

More pics here

Drop me a mail if you want to know more.

Cheers guys – great feedback, just what I wanted to see.

Personally, I’d go the extra and choose Burls because you’ll get a proper guarantee should you be the unlucky one and have something go badly wrong. I went with Lynskey because they were the only people who were able to make the dropouts I wanted.

Burls would be my choice out of your list. He has alot of experience in the design. MTB’s, road etc. It’s made in Russia but I wouldn’t let that worry you.

I must say the only issue I have with Russia/China is the hassle & cost if the frame breaks…I am sure the quality will be fine, but frames do occasionally go wrong.

Hmmm decisions!

a word of advice – dont touch anything from XACD. they dont mitre the tubes properly, the titanium they use is inferior to the US stuff and has been known to contain imperfections. A simple search on mtbr.com and other mtb forums should bring provide you with enough examples of xacd made forks and frames failing.

I dont know about the russian frames, but if i were you i’d save up a bit more and go for a US made frame.

I’ve two XACD frames, road and CX, not getting as much hammer as an MTB frame but they’ve been fine(but oversized tubes, small frames and I’m light), you get what you pay for and they’re cheap. I’ve seen a few broken Ti MTB frames, I’d go for quality and expense if riding titanium offroad, it’s not all the bomb-proof wonder material that you hear about (and you’d be off your head to ride Ti forks from anyone IMO).