Titanium
Titanium
The first and most notable drawback with titanium is cost. It’s both an expensive material in itself and requires specialist machinery and skills to work it into a frame, which is why ti bikes aren’t all that common and the ones on the market tend to cost a bit more, particularly when it comes to other metals like steel and aluminium.
Cost might be the main factor that’s stopped titanium breaking through as a mass-market material, because in many other ways it’s a great choice for a bike frame.
Where titanium takes a step ahead of steel is in weight. You can make titanium frames with oversized, thin-walled tubing as it has a similar stiffness-to-weight ratio to steel, but is much lighter meaning that the resulting frame will be lighter than a steel offering. Enigma’s top-end Excel titanium frame weighs from 1,250g, which is comparable to many carbon and aluminum frames, if not the lightest on the market.
So it’s light, but not the lightest, but what titanium has over carbon and aluminium is durability (said to be twice that of steel) and damping. The reason that most ti frames aren’t painted is that they don’t have to be, as the material naturally resists the corrosion that other materials suffer from and it doesn’t rust either. Similarly, they’re far easier to repair than carbon frames. It why some will tout a titanium frame as a ‘bike for life’.
Damping is the property than most significantly ride quality, and titanium does an excellent job of minimising vibrations as the metal has a lot of natural shock absorption. The trick for a skilled framebuilder is balancing that shock absorption with stiffness (so the bike doesn’t feel ‘soft’ when pedalling hard), and it’s not always an easy task.
The most common grade of titanium used in bike frames is 3AL-2.5V, an alloy which contains three per cent aluminium and 2.5 per cent vanadium, and thus leaving 94.5 per cent pure titanium. However, the aforementioned Enigma Excel is made from a 6AL 4V alloy which reportedly boosts both stiffness and strength, but it’s harder – and even more expensive – to work with.
Titanium is most often than not favoured by riders looking to make an investment in a bike which will stand the test of time, where reliability, durability and ride quality are perhaps more important than absolute low weight. Like steel, there are also any number of framebuilders offering custom frames. Just don’t expect to do it on the cheap.
As we’ve outlined, there are no shortage of options when it comes to choosing a frame material for your bike. While carbon fibre is now almost ubiquitous and it without a doubt remains the best material from which to make a high-performance frame, aluminium, steel and titanium all have plenty going for them. It’s all about assessing what you want from your bike.