Researching A New Bike, Carbon or Titanium

I’ve been spending a bunch of my free time on the train and after the kids go down researching my goal gift, a new road bike. I’ve wanted a road bike for many years but I never could justify the investment given than I had a mountain bike already and seriously stressed that bike a lot. Now that I’m only about 30 pounds from my goal weight, I’ve lost 165+ pounds since buying that mountain bike, and said bike is over 10 years old I figured I can justify a new bike and that I’d better start researching my options.

I was pleasantly surprised when I started riding this season that not only was I able to go a long way, even on the first ride, but I was able to do it without a sore behind. Heck, I was even able to tackle the hills with some tenacity and came out wanting more. These are things that were much harder last year when I was 60+ pounds heavier. My bike also seemed to be less stressed this season with my lower weight and I was having a ton of fun.

Are You A Clydesdale or Athena?

I’m sure your asking … ummm, a what? Yea I was at first as well … most people dont take to kindly to being called a massive horse. Cycling is normally a sport of 140-160 pound riders on sub 17 pound bikes and a few of the high end bikes can’t even be ridden if your over 190 pounds. If you’re over that racer weight you’re kinda an outcast or in this whole new Cyldesdale category of cyclist.

A male is referred to as a Clydesdale and a female as an Athena (nicer than a horse I guess) and your in these categories if your over 200 pounds. I’m sure your thinking like I am, that’s most of America now days isn’t it? It seems like it to me at least but maybe I’m a bit jaded being in a community of people working on losing weight and getting healthy.

Carbon Fiber or Titanium

Given my special weight constraints while cycling I’ve been trying to research bike components and frames that can handle the stress I will put it under without folding the frame or requiring a lot of maintenance (aka $). I’m sure your thinking I can just drop into any local store and grab a bike and I’ll be just fine right? No, that’s not how I really roll nor would I recommend anyone do that.

I really like to have high quality components with solid craftsmanship and I’m going to be putting upwards of a 100 miles in a good week onto this bike. Try doing that with a Walmart special at any decent cadence or speed and come out alive. The difference in shifting, braking, accelerating, road shock, noise, or a million of other things is very noticeable with higher quality components. As the adage goes, you get what you pay for.

Right now I’m trying to narrow down the frame material. I’d like to graduate out of Aluminum (my current mountain bike) and into something stronger, stiffer, and lighter. I’m not at all concerned about the weight to be honest, the options just happen to be lighter and I should be the one losing the weight before the frame needs to. I’ve been looking closely at Carbon Fiber (CF) and Titanium (Ti) as options for the frame.

My biggest problem right now is weeding out the opinion from the reality when it comes to CF. I really love what the manufacturers are doing with CF, check out the frame on the Trek Madone 4.5 and the Look 566, a few of the CF bikes I’ve been checking out. Pretty sweet ahe? I’m just concerned about the things people claim about CF like:

• It’s fragile and cracks easily — Drop it on the ground or against something, sliding in a crash, hitting anything small and you can easily render the frame unsafe.
• It fails fast — When it does fail it fails catastrophically and very quickly at that. There are a lot of horror stories online about CF frames collapsing seemingly out of nowhere.
• It’s hard to get warranty claims fulfilled — Because of the fragile nature of CF number of manufactures seem to deny claims unless you do tons of fighting.

Some of these have merit and some not so much, it’s just hard figuring out the reality from the opinion. If you happen to know some details I’d love to hear from you.

I know people online tend to vent a lot but the mere presence of these stories cautions me. I’m not overly harsh on my bikes, actually the bike mechanic said he was impressed with how clean my bike and frame were given that they were 10 years old. Despite that though I have dropped it a few times and I’ve actually crashed trail riding at least 3 times. It’s hard for me to imagine that my expensive frame could be toast after a small crash or fall against a flagpole or something.

This is what’s led me to look at Titanium (Ti) as a frame material. I’ve specifically been looking at the Lynskey Cooper and Litespeed Xicon frames. They’re the only two frames remotely in my price range as Ti is pretty darn expensive. Fortunitly for me there’s a glut of Ti on the market and the economy is depressed thus manufacturers have responsed with cheaper frames.

It’s still very light (not as light as CF), extremely strong, and nearly impervious to scratching or other small damage especially if you go with the natural frame and not painted. The weakest point in a Ti frame actually is the weld which is much easier to inspect visually than every square inch of the frame like in CF. About the only things people can say bad about Ti is the price and the fact that the frames can’t be shaped as creatively as CF.

Bike Test Riding

I’m hoping to ride all of the bikes (or close cousins) before dropping the coin on one. I started this past weekend trying out a Lynskey R330 frame, it was the only Lynskey the LBS had but they could order me a Cooper. Unfortunately it was also tricked out with SRAM Red components, their top of the line group set. It can only get worse from here and while I was primarily interested in testing out the feel of the Ti frame it was nice to try out the SRAM shifting technology (more on that in a later post).

I was able to accelerate quickly on the Lynskey with little to no flex in the frame, very much the opposite of my aluminum mountain bike. The road noise wasn’t really noticeable or jarring but I wasn’t able to ride it very far either. It was certainly a completely different ride than my mountain bike, that’s for sure. I tried accelerating, stopping, fast turns, slow turns, hitting bumps on purpose, and some quick road obstacles and the frame was very stiff and responsive. Nothing in my limited skill set seemed to cause any concern while riding it.

I was mostly concerned about accelerating and how flexible the Bottom Bracket (BB) felt. Since it did so well I’m very excited to see if I can find an actual Lynskey Cooper or Litespeed Xicon to try out, easier said than done but I’m determined to find them as I have high hopes for these affordable Ti frames. I’m also planning on test riding the Trek Madone 4.5 or a low end 5 series as well as the Look 566. I’ll keep everyone posted when I do.

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