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Comment by Trias11 | Hacker News Reader

I think titanium does the job well enough?

Can't beat it's quality to price ratio with super exotic scandium.

Ti and Scandium have different ride characteristics. Scandium (and aluminum) is stiffer. Ti, like steel has a little flex to it. While I honestly doubt anyone can really feel the difference, there are plenty of people who swear they can.

They've pretty much both gone out of style and largely not for the reasons this article suggest. Carbon fiber more or less took over the higher end of the bike industry. It is lighter and can be tuned for better ride characteristics than either Ti or Scandium (it can be stiffer than aluminum or or more flexible depending on layup).

Carbon is even pushing aluminum out of the mid-high end of the bike market in many places.

I went from steel to aluminium and I do think I could tell a big difference. Not a double blind test ofc.

I think where the difference between flexible materials like carbon fiber and steel, and stiffer materials like aluminum is most easily observed is on rough road surfaces (like rumble surfaces or even cobbled stone).

That and in the position of the bottom bracket, in a 'stiff' bike you'll definitely see much less movement of the bottom bracket (and thus less change in orientation of the pedals), on an aluminum based frame this can be quite noticeable while cycling, especially when standing on the pedals.

There is an open question into whether the flex in the bottom bracket is recovered microseconds later into forward motion. Not much of the energy that goes into flexing a stiff spring is lost as heat. And could it even be beneficial because it works more naturally with the body of the rider? Sean Kelly rode some of the early "noodly" aluminium frames and if anyone could flex a frame, he could. Didn't seem to slow him down.

Oh, to clarify: I did not mean that it would lose you any energy, it is just something that is different.

Personally I've never felt the change in bottom bracket flexing, but I always feel how different frames feel on certain bits of road. Maybe I'm just not outputting enough power, I don't know.

Or quite possibly you have pretty stiff bikes. I have an oldie aluminum one that is so flexible that I don't like to drive it, an oldie steel one that is as rigid as they come and my 'regular' bike (and older carbon frame) is now living elsewhere so I can't compare them side-by-side anymore but it was pretty stiff as well.

Tube diameter for the tubes connecting to the bottom bracket can make a big difference too. The tandem we have (a Koga 26") is pretty flexible too but it is kind of logical for being aluminum and that long, you can really tell if you're both pushing hard, the whole thing warps. But better bending than breaking!

"While I honestly doubt anyone can really feel the difference, there are plenty of people who swear they can."

Problem here is that most people will have one bicycle, which makes it hard to compare. When I started cycling again, I bought 2 bicycles, in 2 slightly different sizes to get a feel for the right size. One was made of classic steel, one was made of oversized aluminium. I really could tell the difference over rougher roads. To my surprise, wheelsets made just as much difference. When switching different wheelsets, I could double the comfort of the steel bike by matching it with really nice wheels. With the aluminium bike I could double the harshness. Using the steel bike with the hard wheelset and the aluminium bike with the nice wheelset, made it somewhat even for me.

If you need advise for a nice wheelset, I can heartily recommend a Campagnolo Scirocco wheelset :)

I have 5. Ok six if you count the tandem.

Steel, aluminum, and carbon fiber, cover all the bases. I mountain bike mostly though so the tires can dampen a lot of the vibrations people suggest steel sucks up. Also, I think getting a good carbon bar on an aluminum bike does wonders for whatever vibrations the trail is kicking up.

I do agree about wheels though, good stiff wheels and a through axel completely change the ride of a bike versus old school aluminum rims with quick releases.

There are parts of a bike that you can absolutely feel, and parts that a skilled rider can feel.

Easily noticeable:

* Tires. Wide supple tires make a huge difference, especally as the quality of the road goes down. They're no slower than narrow tires. Narrow high pressure tires chatter, the feel faster from the vibration, but they're not when tested.

* Fork. Carbon forks change the vibration profile dramatically, aluminum forks are pretty harsh in my memory, and steel can be liveish, or just harsh and stiff, depending on how it's built. An aluminum or steel bike with a carbon fork rides very similar to a carbon frame carbon fork.

Less noticeable:

Handlebar/Seat. These cantilever out, and there is flex, but it's subtle. On the other hand, if you don't have a good seat for your anatomy/riding style, it's the single best upgrade you can make.

Stem/Seatpost. There's some flex in these, but it's much less than the above, but they still are there.

Possibly noticeable:

Frame stiffness/Weight/Wheel stiffness

I've got three bikes I ride now, a Carbon/Carbon road bike, with 25mm max tires, a cheapish Al/Carbon Fork "all road" bike that's had 700cx25, 700cx35, and 650bx42 (Babyshoe Pass) tires on it, and a handbuilt steel tandem with 26x42mm tires. I've also ridden most combinations of Steel frame/ Al/Carbon/Steel fork, Al Frame w/ Al Fork/Carbon Fork, and Carbon/Carbon.

The narrow tires are horrible, except on excellent roads, of which there are a few. The 650b tires are nearly the best thing I've ever put on a bike, with the possible exception of a seat that fits my butt. They glide on bad chipseal, where my riding companions chatter their cables and teeth. They're ok on everything this side of singletrack. The Al/Carbon bike still feels a little dead, and it doesn't really reward high power spinning, which I attribute to the heavy stiff frame and the carbon fork. The Tandem just feels alive riding, and you can see the fork flexing over road noise. It's got a quality of ride that just isn't there with the other bikes.

My next bike is going to be Steel with a pretty flexy fork, and probably a pretty noodly steel frame at that. (Looking at a Crust Canti Lightning Bolt or best match, if I can ever get one). It'll have 42mm tires minimum, and maybe 48's if they will fit with fenders.

I'm not racing, I'm riding alone or with friends, not super long nor super fast, but 60->100mi at 16-18mph depending on terrain, wind, and fitness levels.

I think scandium alloy is cheaper? I had scandium lacrosse sticks. they were half the price as Ti. And lighter.

the Sc-Ti shafts were nice. iirc, the scandium only alloys were more prone to dents or even bending.

Titanium bikes are very rare because for the price you can get very high quality carbon composites, which most people prefer

I think the usual argument is that Ti lasts longer but carbon lasts for ages if you don't crash it and the people willing to spend $10k on a bike usually welcome the chance to buy a new one every 5-10 years anyway.

I'm not sure the argument that Ti lasts longer is really valid anymore.

I have 2 carbon mountain bikes that I've put thousands of miles on. Both are about 7 years old at this point. Early carbon as a bit fragile, but newer carbon seems pretty damned solid.

Even if you do break them, they are repairable. My wife broke the frame on her bike not long ago and she wound up getting it repaired. It was surprisingly affordable and the fix is likely stronger than the original.

Yeah that seems likely, I have seen people do repairs on carbon before depending on the level of damage.

There is also the old saying "If you don't tell the rest of the group ride that your bike is titanium, it will transform in to aluminum."

The argument is not always true though. Welding of titanium is not easy, and often there is tension in the frame. Even 10 years and 50 thousand kms later it can crack. The better welding culture is in the US and Russia, but even then there are series of bicycles that earn a bad reputation for cracking.

Another argument against titanium is that mining and purifying of titanium is not so easy on the environment. If that is important to someone, it might get counted as a factor.

When 99% of modern Ti bikes have a carbon fork I don't think this argument holds up much. The advantage of Ti for me is that it is a metal bike (metal wears beautifully) without the weight penalty of steel. The downside is the cost...

Out of legitimate curiosity: what is the actual weight difference between a nice steel frame and a Ti frame? My nice road bike is 40 or 50 years old Reynolds 531 and it feels like it weighs nothing, especially compared to my mountain bike or my beater road bike.

My understanding is that with advances across the industry, it's pretty easy to build a bike under the UCI minimum weight, which suggests that you could make the frame out of whatever is best for the application.

Assuming both have a carbon fork, the difference is a few hundred grams.

Some of the lightest road bikes out there are steel, in the ~14lb range.

You can get stupid light in Steel, Ti, Carbon, Aluminum, but once you're in the sub 16ish lb range, you're going to be going with superlight parts all around, as there's just not that much frame left to make light.

You can make a fully equipped (steel) randonneur at 20lbs, with fenders, rack, pump, generator, and lights. It's not cheap (~10k+ is my guess), but man is it a well crafted bike. With some care, I think that style bike can be done with common components and off-the-shelf frames in the 25lb range.

I'm a big fan of steel bikes, so don't take this the wrong way, but you cannot build a steel bike as light as a carbon one for any reasonable price or robustness. The most high end steel bikes will barely be competitive with mid-level carbon weight-wise. If you are optimizing for weight, carbon is the only way to go. However, there is more to a bike than just weight :)

If you're going for stupid light, there are compromises. Money and robustness are the first two things to go.

Rodriguez is advertising production steel bikes at the 14lb level: https://www.rodbikes.com/catalog/outlaw/outlaw-main.html Yeah, they're pricey. (10k) (That's production vs custom frame, meaning that they might have one off the rack in the right measurements, if not it's a couple of hundred to do a custom geo)

But superlight Carbon is going to be up there too, and it's going to use basically the same parts, +- bottom brackets and such. And frankly, I would trust superlight steel before I'd trust superlight carbon.

There are some pretty awesome Ti bikes as well, including custom 3d printed lugs, cranks, forks, stem, etc. They are in the same weight range, and IIRC 8kUKP.

If you're looking at commercial production, probably fair that carbon is going to be lighter. But the the people pushing the edges aren't limited to that.

I wonder how much of it is basically a fashion issue? It is increasingly unusual to see new road bikes near me that are basic tubular constructions, to the point it feels like part of the design is simply showing that they're heavily design influenced carbon composite.

Note: I'm personally excluding modern carbon bars here, because I find the lovely sculpted wings far more comfortable when compared to old-style bent tubes :)

There are type of people who will put carbon-carbon brakes even on a bicycle just for the sake of it.

As manufacturing tech advances, fancy design becomes so cheap to do that, why not? We saw this happen with plastics.

Ti is absolutely a vanity/ fashion statement at this point. Carbon out-performs it in almost every way. Particularly since you can lay up carbon in different ways to get different amounts of stiffness/ flexibility.

Definitely not rare around here (SF Bay). I guess I look for them but I see a lot of people riding them. Maybe the allure of the more compliant/comfortable ride and durability attracts them. Often more $ than carbon as you said.

I have a feeling that in SF, high end bike frames are a Veblen good.

Different tools for different jobs. My Eriksen is as fine a bike as you’ll find anywhere, but it’s probably too supple for the serious amateur racer. I have a couple very high end carbon bikes, which are marvels. For a race, I’d go carbon super light. For a really climby day I’d take the super light. For a long ride, casual ride or a personal tour, I’d take the Eriksen every single day. I’ll own that bike the rest of my life and probably ride it as long as I can ride.

As for the topic, it’s apropos to our ti tangent. Scandium made the aluminum a bit easier to work and a bit more supple (al frames can be brutally stiff, like really racy carbon frames) I think they triple butted the ends of the tubes to provide enough material to bond which added stiffness. With scandium you can weld it without as much metal, it’s stronger and since you use less metal it has a bit more flex. Al construction got better and carbon came along which is even cheaper... I keep a bianchi veloce cross scandium bike, still quite delightful to ride, it’s my main winter bike and it doesn’t seem to beat me up like some of the really stiff al racing bikes of the era.

My understanding is that (normal) aluminium frames have to be stiff due to bending fatigue.

Steel is much more forgiving (Ti is the same, iirc), and carbon fiber in a suitable matrix can handle dynamic loads above 50% of it's ultimate tensile strength.

You're probably right for road bikes. Money buys you carbon.

But for mountain bikes, the high-end seems to be titanium.

https://www.bikesdirect.com

As an avid mountain biker, I can tell you that the high-end for mountain bikes is definitely not titanium, it's carbon fibre. Titanium mountain bikes are rare, probably even more than road bikes.

Every major brand uses carbon fiber in their high end bikes.

Wow, I stand corrected. I did not notice this change - I haven't bought a mountain bike in a number of years.

Last time I bought one ~2011 I swear it was a little steel, mostly aluminum and a tiny fraction of titanium.

That's true, but as someone who rides a titanium MTB, you tend to get looks from people who think I'm riding some super-exotic high-end machine.

It's a custom frame which costs much less than a commercial carbon fibre frame. Titanium is only expensive because there aren't that many vendors that make them, and they all want to position themselves as high-end.

This is not true.

For both road bikes and mountain bikes, Ti is a vanity product. Carbon dominates mountain bike industry at every price-point above about $3,500 right now.

There are certainly a few high end ti bikes, but carbon is king and very few people still argue ti is superior in terms of performance.

I stand corrected. you are right.

Back when scandium bikes were a thing they were cheaper then Ti bikes.

Also, from the article:

Any time you ride a high-quality aluminum racing frame made of welded 7005 series aluminum, you're probably riding on a little scandium. A lot of 6061 grade aluminums use scandium too. In fact, the bicycle industry is one of the biggest scandium markets, still.

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