bfd
journeyman
Reged: 12/22/03
Posts: 77
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First, the above is correct that the Mass. welders from Merlin did not go to Tenn. Its my understanding that most got jobs with either IF (who now builds ti frames), Seven and rumor is some went to Lemond (whose ti frames are built in Wisconsin).
With regard to the Douglas brand - those ti frames are not made by any of the American Bicycle Group brands - Litespeed/Merlin/Q-Roos, but by Titanium Sports Technologies (TST), formerly known as Sandvik, out of Washington:
http://www.titaniumsports.com/frames.html
As to what to get? There are alot of good ti frames out there. In addition to Seven, which always seemed a bit overpriced to me, Serotta, Moots, Holland make excellent ti frames. If you looking for production ti frames, arguably one of the "best buys" in ti frames are the Lemond ones - if you fit them (e.g., long top tube).
However, if you want *custom* sizing/geometry ti, cheap, take a look at Habanero's chinese made frames - $995 for custom!
http://www.habcycles.com
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Lon
sage
Reged: 12/20/03
Posts: 595
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
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Thank you bfd for the interesting correction. It is ironic that you mention Lemond since Sandvik once made his Ti bikes. I did not realize they were still around.
I thought when Colorado Cyclist first had the Douglas name it said handmade in TN. Did they and then change suppliers? Maybe I'm thinking of another brand. 
vaxn8r there is some interesting reading on the subject in the Merlin threads. It starts out a Kudo's to Merlin. (A person who really likes their bike.) Tom got into it and referred someone over to the Spectrum site where there again was interesting reading. What made it interesting were folks who owned more than one ti bike and compared them. I believe one person had a Spectrum, Seven and Serotta for example.
Happy riding! 
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vaxn8r
contributor
Reged: 12/19/03
Posts: 222
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Lon,
for the record, I'm not really anti-Litespeed at all. I don't think the Classic of 1992 was a very good frame. We all know they've come a long way since then. As has everyone else in the ti business. I wouldn't mind a new Litespeed today but it just wouldn't make my highest cut, not because they aren't good but they've gone so non-traditional in their tubesets. A little much for me.
I agree their are a lot of interesting choices in ti. Holland on the $$$ side and Lemond on the more affordable side.
Look at Tom Kellog's Spectrum site. He has a lot of nice things to say, not just about the bikes he purchases from Merlin, but all Merlins. He loves the way they ride:
I soon found out that the handling advances of a well-made Ti frame do not hold for all Ti frames. Only high quality Titanium frames built by knowledgeable and experienced masters are able to enable Titanium to feel so lively. Several factors can lead to a less than ideal titanium feel. For example, Titanium tubes tends to loose the “Ti advantage” when tubes are tapered or use thicker gauge tubing because of smaller diameters. The noticeable handling changes appear to be related to the resiliency of the entire structure. Put simply, Titanium is a very resilient material. If that resiliency isn’t designed out of the frame, handling responsiveness is enhanced. The advantage is that a builder with the knowledge and experience can design an even more comfortable and stable Titanium frame while at the same time improving responsiveness.
If you think this is a bit confusing, get out there and ride a Merlin or Spectrum. After looking at the specs, you will see what I mean.
http://www.spectrum-cycles.com/614.htm
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Lon
sage
Reged: 12/20/03
Posts: 595
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
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Actually I don't find it confusing at all. Regardless of material it is the design and the execution of the design that is the all important factor. What would you rather have...a steel Waterford...or an offname carbon fiber or Ti bike that you know nothing about? That is a very easy question to answer even if your last choice in materials is steel.
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Lon
sage
Reged: 12/20/03
Posts: 595
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
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In a fit of optimism and rain so I could not ride I was searching around on Google last night to see if any dealer had a Calfee on a closeout price. Of course no such luck was coming my way. However I did find a number of Merlin's marked down. I can't really tell you where but if you were to do an advanced search and include Merlin, bicycle, sale, maybe the model if you have a favorite and so forth I'm sure they would start to pop up. With a lot of luck it could be a dealer close to you.
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charlesf
new member
Reged: 03/18/04
Posts: 13
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Max,
A belated thanks for all those e-mail posts. I actually did get an answer from Calfee - from Craig himself (even though I didn't e-mail him directly).
Essentially Craig thinks that the main reason tubes fracture or break is because people don't look after their bikes closely and blemishes turn into something worse. Chipped paint can be addressed by the owner, but gouges would need professional attention (by Calfee).
Charles
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TheMightySkunk
journeyman
Reged: 12/26/03
Posts: 82
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Hi Guys,
I don't own a Calfee, but I must say I think the Calfee forum has the best discussions on BikeFanClub. Only in the Calfee forum can the discussion be just as much about Litespeeds and Serottas!
Allow me to add to this thread by saying that I own a ti Serotta Legend AND two Litespeeds - a 2004 Vortex custom and a 2001 Ultimate. I also have a prototype titanium Ritchey. I am a bike freak and a weekend racer with disposable income (i.e. no kids, no wife, no ex-wives), so I ride lots of different bikes and buy several new rides every year.
IMHO, my Serotta Legend Ti is the best bike I've ever ridden. Hands down. If I had to own only one bike, that would be it.
The Litespeeds and the Ritchey are also terrific. I bought a used 2001 Ultimate rather than a newer one because I think the carbon monostays on the newer ones are BOGUS. No matter what bull***t Litespeed puts in their ad materials, the carbon is only there for one reason - cost. It takes 3 years to train a master ti welder, whereas any high school kid can be trained to mix up a batch of epoxy and glue (i.e "bond") carbon tubes & lugs together on a jig in a few weeks. Using the carbon monostay reduces the number of welds on a frame by almost half.
I have owned a bunch of carbon bikes, but I no longer own any. I made this decision because I have personally experienced and witnessed too many unexplained catastrophic failures of carbon structures in other sports (windsurfing, skiing, motor sports). Warranties are great, but they don't do you much good if you're dead. I'm sure Airbus has a great warranty on the carbon tail section which sheared off that American Airlines Airbus jet climbing out of LaGuardia 2 years ago, resulting in a crash which killed all aboard.
Going by laboratory specs, carbon is by far the best material for bike frames and components. So if I ever decide to buy a bike only to ride in a laboratory, it'll definitely be carbon.
I use aluminum handlebars, seatposts, stems, wheels, and cranks. I prefer Thomson stems and seatposts, they're a little heavy but they are machined out of a one-piece billet. No welds to mysteriously fail. I use AlphaQ forks with titanium steerer tubes. There is no carbon on any of my bikes except the fork tines, which I reluctantly use because there really are no reasonable alternatives available. But I do examine the carbon tines before every ride for any nick or scratch that goes even remotely beyond "cosmetic".
Those are my opinions, choices, and experiences. I realize posting such thoughts in a (carbon) Calfee forum is like posting Hamas philosophy in a synogogue, so thanks for listening.
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"I haven't failed. I've just managed to find 100,000 ways that don't work"
--Albert Einstein
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skuke
captain
Reged: 12/22/03
Posts: 311
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Quote:
TheMightySkunk wrote:
It takes 3 years to train a master ti welder, whereas any high school kid can be trained to mix up a batch of epoxy and glue (i.e "bond") carbon tubes & lugs together on a jig in a few weeks. Using the carbon monostay reduces the number of welds on a frame by almost half.
I have personally experienced and witnessed too many unexplained catastrophic failures of carbon structures in other sports (windsurfing, skiing, motor sports). Warranties are great, but they don't do you much good if you're dead. I'm sure Airbus has a great warranty on the carbon tail section which sheared off that American Airlines Airbus jet
I use aluminum handlebars, seatposts, stems, wheels, and cranks. I prefer Thomson stems and seatposts, they're a little heavy but they are machined out of a one-piece billet. No welds to mysteriously fail. I use AlphaQ forks with titanium steerer tubes.
Re: welding Ti. Welding Ti is only more difficult because of the inert atmosphere required to prevent embrittlement. I'm a machinist and I've welded Ti. It's not any more difficult than stainless. But, in respect to the great welders at some of the various bike manufacturers, I did not weld thin wall tubes and I didn't weld any high stress parts. However, I seriously doubt it takes three years to become proficient at welding Ti and doubt the bike makers only hire master welders. Having said that, again, I'm a machinist, not a welder, and my experiences for welding (Ti or anything else) is limited.
Re: failures. All components and material can and do fail. When pushed to the extremes for weight and strength in applications like airplanes, bikes, F1 cars... the failures are usually spectacular. With bikes, usually one person is hurt. With F1 cars, maybe several are hurt if the (pro) driver really loses control and hits others. Obviously, when a plane crashes, many people die. But do consider all the hours and miles traveled by those airplanes before a catastrophic failure happens. I don't know the specifics about the incident, but I do remember it. Are you POSITIVE it was a carbon fiber failure rather than something else that failed and then overloaded the carbon fiber beyond it's design parameters??
Re: Al components. One piece machined components are not necessarily stronger than a welded component. You can make a machined piece that will fail and a welded one that won't. ...All in the design and quality.
You speak of "welds mysteriously failing". Yet you prefer a welded frame???
You use a fork with Ti steerer. Ever heard of "notch sensitivity"? Ti is very susceptible.
It's great that you check your CF fork before every ride. Here is a CF fork that belonged to a friend of mine: www.geocities.com/skuke89/fork.html Yup, catastrophic failure like you're familiar with. But nobody knows if the CF failed or he kicked up a stick, animal... Nobody know if a crash would not have happened if he had a steel fork.
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Skuke
95 Carbonframes Tetra Pro
92 Bridgestone MB-1
90 Moser 51.151
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TheMightySkunk
journeyman
Reged: 12/26/03
Posts: 82
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Skuke:
It is a fact that AA flight 587 was brought down by a carbon failure. You can read the NTSB report, you can read any account of the investigation, or, if you have a barf bag handy, you can look at this photo:
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/topstory/7948/7948notw4.html
"Questions are also arising about composite materials, which entered flight-critical applications some 15 to 20 years ago and have been used increasingly ever since: Are composites subject to fatigue like metals are? Can delamination, where layers of carbon fiber fabric lose the resin matrix bond, lead to such failures?"
If you saw Bode Miller's crash at the Birds of Prey Downhill at Beaver Creek this year, or Chad Fleischer's famous blow-over crash at Kitzbuehel, a picture is worth 1K words. In both cases, their carbon skis simply crumbled, almost vaporized. Metal tends to fail progessively, i.e. it usually bends, then cracks, then fails. Usually. In the bending and cracking phase, it may still function. Maybe. Carbon seldom gives you that chance.
F1 designers such as Patrick Head of Williams and Adrian Newey of McLaren have both been extensively quoted about the heaven and hell of carbon race car suspensions. They're lighter and stiffer than aluminum or magnesium suspensions. But the hell part is that if the car "kisses" a wall or another car, there is no chance of it limping home on a bent suspension. The suspension, once overstressed, simply folds. Head, in particular, rued carbon suspensions in print when Michael Schumacher purposely barged into Damon Hill's Williams in a fatally damaged Benetton in the final race (Adelaide) of the 1994 World Driving Championship. Head specifically said that if Hill's Williams had an aluminum suspension, Hill might have been able to limp home to the World Championship.
Perhaps I draw false comfort from the above, but after having had carbon fiber windsurfing booms vaporize in my hands out on the water (thrice), and having a carbon snow ski turn into a piece of carpet under me (twice), I'll stick to metal, thanks. I race bikes a fair amount, crash occasionally, and riding on carbon frames that have been crashed or even boxed and air-shipped gives me the willies.
Oh yeah, and one more thing in the interests of full disclosure. I've owned three carbon bikes and never had a problem with two of them. The third one had some electrolysis problems where the carbon tubes were bonded to aluminum lugs, but that never affected its performance, and the Trek factory repaired it under warranty.
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"I haven't failed. I've just managed to find 100,000 ways that don't work"
--Albert Einstein
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skuke
captain
Reged: 12/22/03
Posts: 311
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Quote:
TheMightySkunk wrote:
It is a fact that AA flight 587 was brought down by a carbon failure.
...Are composites subject to fatigue like metals are? Can delamination,...
...Usually. In the bending and cracking phase, it may still function. Maybe. Carbon seldom gives you that chance.
F1 designers such as Patrick Head of Williams and Adrian Newey of McLaren...
Perhaps I draw false comfort from the above...
Thanks, MightySkunk.
Perhaps the NTSB and airplane designers where a bit "aggressive" in their weight (and thus fuel cost) saving methods. As eluded to in their report, much is still being learned about composites as well as metals. Unfortunately, their education and knowledge of these new material can have a high cost...
The only CF failure that allowed the user to "limp" home that comes to my mind was last year's Tour de France. As you may recall, Mayo rode over Armstrong's drive side chain stay cracking it. Of course the break wasn't discovered until after the stage, but after the crash, Armstrong was having difficulties with his bike and managed to ride smoothly enough to not exacerbate the problem. LOL, whether his finish that day could be called "limping home" is subject to debate.
F1 cars by their very nature are minimalist in design. I think (and I'm sure most agree) that by "pushing the envelope", frequent failures will occur. The problem is that the failures when using CF are much more spectacular since there is little warning, and cascading is rapid.
I don't follow F1 (or ski racing) and you seem to have some insight. So perhaps you could help confirm something I read a long time ago. In the early days of F1 and CF usage, the designers were wise enough to know they didn't know enough. They incorporated fiber optics into the components they built with the thought that the fragile glass fiber would break long before total failure. After a race/test, they would shoot a light into one end of the fiber optic and if they got light out of the other end, that meant the glass wasn't broken and thus the part in question wasn't over stressed. They would keep reducing material (minimalist) until the part wouldn't function as required or the glass broke, then build back up from there.
If this use of fiber optics is correct, I often wondered why it wasn't used in critical applications like tail assemblies in airplanes and forks on bicycles. Yes there is additional cost and bike forks may not warrant it since it would be much easier to just overbuild and have a higher safety margin. But in the airplane app, they fiber optic would greatly simplify maintenance and inspection.
I don't think you are drawing false comfort. You've had at least 5 experiences with catastrophic CF failure. That would make me gun shy. In fact, if we were to judge by your experiences alone, then I'd have to say the rest of us have a deluded sense of security! However, I do have faith in the engineers and designers of airplanes. I'm sure that if and when they conclude that some part needs to be fixed or rebuilt properly, it'll be done. Naive?? perhaps. But I have over one million air miles and am still alive... I know Calfee doesn't have the R&D resources to test frames like I'm sure he'd want, but overbuilding is one way to fix that. The gussets on his frames may be the key.
I hope you have a change of heart one of these days and buy a Calfee. Then you may feel more at home in this forum. Actually, I guess you do feel at home with 46 posts! It rather amazes me that you'd spend that much time in a forum for a product you don't own. There aren't enough hours in the day for me to do that.
--------------------
Skuke
95 Carbonframes Tetra Pro
92 Bridgestone MB-1
90 Moser 51.151
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