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

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  • May 4, 2013 at 9:36 pm #18683
    Tom Amos

    Having bought an aluminium road bike, and been very happy with it, it has constantly occurred to me that the only reason that Alu frames have a stigma is because aluminium is a relatively cheap material to produce bike frames from. If alu suddenly flew up in price, it would suddenly become a premium material. Do you agree?

    I would go so far as to say that I prefer it from carbon fibre. My bike will withstand a real knock in a crash that a carbon fibre frame might get written off in.

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Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 33 total)
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  • May 12, 2013 at 9:50 pm #732253
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    700c

    Yes a repair doesn’t seem
    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’?..

    May 12, 2013 at 9:13 pm #732251
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    RichTheRoadie

    700c wrote:I was assuming the

    700c wrote:
    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


    You can – the likes of Parlee, Serotta, Seven and Firefly can all reach those kinds of numbers quite easily if you spec the build a particular way.

    Mine is a Baum Corretto – lifetime warranty, but they would only repair it. Appealing service after only a year.

    May 12, 2013 at 8:09 pm #732249
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    notfastenough

    If I remember rightly, Rich
    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?

    May 10, 2013 at 9:52 pm #732247
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    mhtt

    not all lifetime warranties
    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”

    May 10, 2013 at 8:53 pm #732245
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    badkneestom

    Lifetime warranty soooo
    Lifetime warranty soooo Cannondale wins?

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

    May 10, 2013 at 11:45 am #732243
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    700c

    I was assuming the comment
    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

    May 10, 2013 at 11:26 am #732241
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    Tom Amos

    RichTheRoadie wrote:My £7k Ti

    RichTheRoadie wrote:
    My £7k Ti frame cracked after 1 year…

    Interesting. After buying my recent bike, it has certainly made me realise than you should never ultimately buy a bike which you can’t afford to lose in its entirety. OK, it’s unlikely that you will have damage all of it completely but not impossible. Any of us could crash. A freak accident could happen. Don’t spend more than you can afford to lose. Or be prepared to take out insurance on it.

    May 9, 2013 at 9:06 pm #732239
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    RichTheRoadie

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

    May 9, 2013 at 8:06 pm #732237
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    700c

    NorthernRouleur wrote:
    I have

    NorthernRouleur wrote:

    I have also had 3 bike frames fail with cracks in tubes, all of them Alu.

    Ditto. This had been my experience too.

    I don’t think enough had been made of this point – aluminium, IME, will be great at taking abuse then suddenly, after a build up of winter road grit & salt, or one too many potholes, will fail, often quite spectacularly with a large crack in the tube.

    No idea whether carbon is the same or not, but then pros can just get a new one from the Sponsor. For must people, owning a bike for several years is the norm, hence why Ti is a good investment, despite the initial higher cost.

    May 6, 2013 at 10:04 am #732235
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    MattT53

    Alu can be built into a top
    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.

    May 6, 2013 at 8:12 am #732233
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    robert.brady

    Dave Atkinson

    Dave Atkinson wrote:
    robert.brady wrote:
    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.

    not sure i agree that it’s not feasible. look at some of the stuff that kinesis are doing with superplastic forming; you can pretty much make any shape you want.

    and don’t forget that the daddy of all aero bikes is alu: the cervelo s1. And it’s still a better ride than many aero carbon bikes.

    True, but if you made an alu bike in the exact same mould as that new Pinarello TT bike it’d weigh a ton.

    And the S1 has since been superseded by the S3 and S5, both in carbon. You surely can’t argue that the S1 is a better aero bike than the S5.

    Dave Atkinson wrote:
    alu was relegated to ‘cheap’ bikes and wasn’t developed much. but what we’re seeing now is more of the R&D time going into to possibilities of alu. and there’s some impressive stuff out there: look at canyon and rose, and giant’s new TCR alu frame is only just over a kilo. a sub-1kg alu frame in the next two years is a certainty.

    And I’m sure they will prove popular but they will have to come in at a much lower price point than a comparable carbon frame to be a success. As I’ve said, companies couldn’t get away with putting a huge premium on them.

    Rob

    May 6, 2013 at 8:06 am #732231
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    RichTheRoadie

    Again, I have to disagree –
    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.

    May 6, 2013 at 7:58 am #732229
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    robert.brady

    RichTheRoadie

    RichTheRoadie wrote:
    robert.brady wrote:
    You couldn’t put the same premium on alu as you can carbon. It isn’t justifiable.

    Marketing has made the cycling world believe it isn’t justifiable.

    Have you ridden one (and, again, I mean GOOD alu – by which I mean nothing less than a CAAD10 or Specialized S-Works Allez, and preferably Gaulzetti / Stoemper / Pegoretti) to know?

    And it’s marketing that makes people believe alu is as good as carbon, hence Specialized and Cannondale sell their top of the range alu frames with top of the range groupsets on them; to convince people they must be good to justify a £2k groupset.

    They wouldn’t put a premium on them that brings them in line with their own carbon offerings as the market wouldn’t stand for it.

    Rob

    May 5, 2013 at 6:58 pm #732227
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    musicalmarc

    Alu can be made as floppy or
    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.

    May 5, 2013 at 6:07 pm #732225
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    bashthebox

    Gkam84 wrote:bashthebox

    Gkam84 wrote:
    bashthebox wrote:
    There’s a reason pros use Carbon.
    carbon is better because the pros use it.

    WRONG, The pro’s have no choice as to what they are riding, the team are told their bike with be…. X and then they can fit whatever to it within the sponsor agreement.

    The reason they ride carbon in most races is because they are told to ride it.

    Look at pro’s OUT of the race, alot of them are NOT using carbon frames 😉 ;)

    That’s a load of shit and you know it. Let’s take the obvious example of Team Sky and their obsession with marginal gains. We’re told again and again how they’ll do anything to shave fractions of watts off their effort – you think if carbon wasn’t the best choice for frames that they would still use it? Come on. Sky have a huge budget from their main sponsor; bike sponsor budget is pretty small in comparison – they ride whatever makes them fastest.

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