RE: [CR]Re: Teledyne Titan Questions...

(Example: Framebuilders:Alex Singer)

From: "Mark Bulgier" <mark@bulgier.net>
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: RE: [CR]Re: Teledyne Titan Questions...
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 13:53:51 -0700


Jim Merz wrote:
>
>
> Seems the scans are too crude to read. I would like to see this
> story though.

Any chance you are viewing them too small? Can you zoom in, in whatever picture viewer you're using? I have the same scans, sent to me by Kurt, on my web page at http://bulgier.net/pics/bike/CoolBikes/Teledyne/ - see if maybe those are more readable for you. I can read 'em just fine.
> Pino was trying to make some light weight bike parts and got
> together with Cecil Beringer. Beringer figured
> out a way to braze ti, using special gold alloy in a vacuum
> furnace.

This was written up, with photos, in an old Bike Tech magazine. Sorry it's in storage right now so I can't give you the year and volume number.
> The lugs were made from solid.

Are you sure about that? Curt Goodrich got ahold of some leftover lugs and stuff from that project and sold 'em on eBay a while back. The photos clearly show the lugs as made up from tubing - though there could have been another generation of lugs machined from solid too. See: http://bulgier.net/pics/bike/FrameParts/Morroni-Behringer_Lugs.jpg
> Tubing was made in Albany, I can't remember the company name.

Probably Wah-Chang, coincidentally owned by Teledyne but no relation to the Teledyne outfit that made the Titan other than being owned by the same conglomerate. Wah-Chang is gigantic, the size of a small city, and they produce some large fraction of all the Ti metal used in the US (or claimed they did when I visited in about '92). They make metal from ore, and also make various finished or partly finished shapes including tubing. The 3/2.5 tubing used on US-made frames comes from three mills that all get their raw material from Wah-Chang. Some kinds of finished tubing was being made there in '92, but none of the nice 3/2.5 used in bikes and aircraft hydraulic systems - they told me only Haynes, Ancotech and Sandvik made that stuff, out of pierced billet supplied by Wah-Chang. (Probably Wah-Chang had made 3/2.5 previously though.)

When I was there I visited their library. The librarian confidently told me he could get me any info on Ti and/or Teledyne, but he was stumped when I told him about the Titan - he had never heard that Teledyne had ever made bike frames, and was unable to look up any info on it! He did show me photos of a Ti frame a Wah-Chang engineer had made for himself years ago, I want to say late 70s?. It had oversize alloy tubing (not CP) and nice welds, probably a lot better frame than the Titan. Those Teledyne units should talk to each other more! Although I don't know when Teledyne bought Wah-Chang, maybe it was after the Titan era. And Linair, who made the Titan, was spun off and is no longer a Teledyne unit. Maybe they weren't even both under the Teledyne umbrella at the same time.

Mark Bulgier
Seattle, Wa
USA