If aluminium cost as much per tonne as titanium, it would be the premium bike frame material. Agreed?

Yes a repair doesn't seem good enough, especially considering how much you paid.

My cracked aluminium frames have all been replaced in their entirety when I broke them. (2 kinesis and 1GT), and these were cheap in comparison to your Baum.

Possibly titanium is more repairable than Alu? Or more 'worth repairing'?..

If I remember rightly, Rich was the chap selling a stunning Pegoretti dripping in top-end Campag - it wouldn't surprise me to find he has a £7k frame! Mind telling us what it is Rich?

not all lifetime warranties are equal, try getting a 5 year old cannondale cracked frame past the warranty guys at CSG, I bet their first reply will be "you've got enough use out of it"

Lifetime warranty soooo Cannondale wins?

I wouldn't buy a frame if they didn't stand by their work for at least 5 years.

I was assuming the comment from Rich the Roadie was a joke (can you even pay £7k for a frame?), but if not then that's very bad luck!

Decent frames come with good warranties, mine is 5 years and even that's considered short for titanium

My £7k Ti frame cracked after 1 year...

Alu can be built into a top quality frame, one of my mates is trading his top end Litespeed Ti frame for a Caad10 after a quick ride on mine! The issue seems to be that Alu has traditionally been built into cheap bikes and now that more money is being spent on frame R&D it's getting far better. Plus it can't so easily be built into 'aero' monstrosities! Probably will never be more 'premium' than Ti but should compete more and more with carbon.

Again, I have to disagree - Cannondale have always stood by their alu frames, albeit only more recently hanging top end groupsets off of them.

Specialized have recognised that people who race buy alu (again, referring back to Cannondale's CAAD range) because it's cheaper to replace than their higher end carbon counterparts with little in the way of deficit performance-wise (with the weight difference also being nigh-on negligible). It's a bit more "thrash it and stack it then buy another" than the 'more precious' (read: expensive) carbon version of the same bike.

Will you ever hear people complain about a performance difference? No.

Alu can be made as floppy or stiff as the manufacturer likes, modern Alu frames are comfy enough for most use cases. There seem to be two different types of tech making waves in the pro world, vertically compliant frames and flat aero profiles/ integrated components (brakes in the forks, stem into headset etc). Most of these designs are being made with carbon and taking advantage of being able to make it almost any shape you want and strong + flexible (compound bows and arrows are made from carbon). Stuff aimed at pros now will be aimed at the public sooner or later whether there is any point to it or not.

That one doesn't count, because he races steel aswell

If I would do Flanders again I would pick my Early Carbon again, thin carbon tubes, 25 mm seatpost:
http://innercitymobility.blogspot.de/2013/01/made-in-europe-french-carbo... my personal soft ride

Between my 2.2 kg steel frames, 1.5 kg titanium and similar weight aluminium, the aluminium gives a harsher ride, I do not feel a difference between the steel and titanium rides.

One of the reasons aluminum is so cheap is because it's RIDICULOUSLY easy to work compared to other metals. It takes less energy to alloy, form, and weld than steel or Ti alloys. Even if the raw cost of aluminum was the same as Ti, Ti bikes would still cost more.

Top end bikes are heading in a different direction now: aero. It simply isn't feasible to come up with the current aero frame shapes using Ti or even new alu techniques like hydro forming. Alu and Ti TT bikes look laughably dated compared to carbon.

Frames nowadays can be light AND strong AND stiff AND comfortable (to an extent) and that can be achieved with Ti and alu. The difference is; light Ti and alu is around 1200g while for carbon it's around 900g and in some cases a lot less.

You couldn't put the same premium on alu as you can carbon. It isn't justifiable.

Alu bars and stems make sense to me because they're more likely to bend rather than break leaving the bike ridable.

Gkam84 wrote:

Look at pro's OUT of the race, alot of them are NOT using carbon frames

Got any pics?

Rob

Err No!

Try riding Tour of Flanders on your Alu bike. I did, once. Try riding a bike with Alu forks, and you can quickly figure out why Alu frames are stiff. My wrists are still recovering.
I have also had 3 bike frames fail with cracks in tubes, all of them Alu.

Most comfy bike I have is an R3. The best combination of design and material in my book.

The main reason we're all riding carbon (well, I'm not, but 'generally') is because it's cheap to make and the marketing folk make us believe it's the thing to ride - the same reason that alu had a brief spell as the material of choice.

All materials have their merits, AND their reputations - Ti for example id considered 'comfortable', but I've ridden Ti frames that'd rattle your teeth out, and my Baum has all the whip and power transfer of a Cervelo R3.

In the same vein, alu's reputation is for a stiff but harsh ride. Sure, many (most) cheap alu bikes will give exactly that, but a decent alu bike is an absolute joy to ride - my old CAAD9 is the bike I did my longest ride on (253km) and I felt pretty fresh at the end of it. The bike was comfortable and stiff.

Carbon is generally favoured because it's stiff, comfortable and light. Good carbon can be incredible, but I'd rather ride good alu than average carbon for the same money.

If it were lighter the material we would all (still) be riding is steel. Good steel bikes give all the comfort of Ti or carbon, all the power transfer of carbon or alu, the longevity and 'repairability' of Ti and it's still fairly easy to build to the UCI weight limit.

That said, REALLY good alu is tough to ignore - the likes of Pegoretti's Love #3, Stoemper's Darrell and Gaulzetti's Corsa are all delicious bikes and I would have any of those even over top end carbon.

I'm riding a hired top of the range carbon Domane this weekend, which certainly feels lovely but I wouldn't say it is a massive improvement over my standard Alu bike. According to Strava I'm no quicker either.

Having said that, it is pretty tasty on the rough stuff though I think it's more to do with the 25mm tyres and the decoupler than the carbon used.

I think if I had £4k+ to spend on a bike then I would undoubtedly buy a carbon frame, but my bike cost about £1k and at that price you can get a quality Alu frame with 105 or a really budget carbon number with Sora or worse. Ti didn't even figure when I was shopping for it.

Beyond a certain point you're paying an awful lot extra for not much more. Alu certainly seems like the best value.

At the end of the day though, at our level, ride whatever sets your heart on fire. That's why we do it, right?

There's a reason pros use Carbon.

As for the carbon bars failing thing - have you ever actually seen carbon bars fail? Oh, i know everyone know's someone who saw them fail that one time... but have you ever seen it?

I'm sure there are alu frames which are just lovely, but ti is ti and posh, and carbon is better because the pros use it.