RE: [CR] Teledyne Titan Questions...

(Example: Production Builders:LeJeune)

From: "Mark Bulgier" <mark@bulgier.net>
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: RE: [CR] Teledyne Titan Questions...
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 14:15:18 -0700


I just remembered a post I made to the framebuilders list when the subject of brazing Ti came up. Edited slightly:

The very first _Bike_Tech_, vol 1 (1982) had an article on the Morroni/Behringer brazed Ti frames, made way back in '73. Headline: "The Ultimate Titanium Frame? - As Stiff as Steel at Half the Weight". It went on to describe the "accident" that injected nitrogen instead of argon into the hot furnace to cool the frames, instantly coating them with a hard nitride layer. These "victim" frames were allegedly found by the makers to be approximately twice as stiff as the same frame without the nitride. I don't think there was any independent corroboration of the claims. (I'm not accusing them of lying, I just point out that no one else duplicated the feat).

One of the photos in the article shows a rear dropout in closeup, and it is indeed exactly the same as a Campy 1010 steel dropout - same forging marks, evidently forged in the same dies.

By the way, they said the tubing was NOT oversized; that is, 1" toptube, 1-1/8 downtube, and the wall was .025" (0.6mm) PG. That would make it probably the most flexible bike frame in history! (Modern Ti frames use 1-1/4 to 1-1/2" diameter and usually about .040" (1.0mm) wall.) They said they had the Czech Olympic sprinter Anton Tach ride 400 meter timetrials on it, 3 on his bike and 3 on the Ti frame, alternating, and all the trials on the Ti frame broke his personal record, while none of the trials on the steel frame reached it. This strains my credulity.

Having built lots of sprint frames myself, including for several National champions and two US Olympic team members, I must say sprinters are generally fanatical about stiffness.

Ken Carpenter continued riding his steel frames I built, painted to look like Ti and with Merlin decals on them, when he was sponsored by Merlin but they couldn't make a frame stiff enough for him. Ken used to get blowouts from the tire rubbing the stay from flex - on the oversize steel frame he rode before the ones I built (builder's name withheld). So this Anton Tach must have been remarkably different from the sprinters I have known, to even make it 400 meters down the track - once! - on such a flexible frame - even if it IS twice as stiff as regular Ti!

I'm sorta kidding about flex preventing a sprinter from going fast, but it's hard to imagine how even a zero-pound frame could have that much effect on 400m time trial times - except for the placebo effect, which of course can be huge.

Mark Bulgier
Seattle, Wa
USA