Suggestions for a Ti frame for randonneuring

[jbo...@ithaca.edu]

I am in the process of trying to select a frame builder for my new rando ride. I am currently riding a Litespeed Arenberg, which currently sports a Carradice bag which is p-clipped onto a Nitto Marks rack on the rear. It works OK, but can only handle clip-on fenders and 25c wheels. I would like to have a 700c wheeled bike which could fit up to 32mm wide tires with fenders and would be able to handle a front bag without making the handling too twitchy or too slow.
__________________________________________________________
I have a few questions for those of you that ride Ti frames:

Are there any carbon fiber forks that could handle a tire that wide and be able to hold a small front rack or am I limited to a steel fork with the appropriate braze-ons.

How does your bike handle with a bag vs without a handlebar bag?
____________________________________________________________
I am considering the following builders/frames:

Kent Ericksen-I have seen a few of his bikes. Welds are really nice and I have heard nothing but good things about him and his work.

Hampsten-I know some of their Ti bicycles were made by Kent or Independent Fabrications. Considering a Tournesol or Strada Bianca Titanium.

Independent Fabrications-Ti Club Racer, a bit more expensive.

Moots-Vamoots LT

Strong
________________________________________________________
If any of you have bikes from the builders above could you describe your experience with the builder (turn-around, expertise, etc.) and how you like your bike and would you do anything differently.

Thanks for your time and advice.

Jim Bondra

[Jeff Arasmith]

Jim,

There are tons of options with carbon forks.  My bikes are both disc brake, so that's my area of focus.  I'm sure that if you are not disc specific like me, there are even more options.

I'm using the Winwood Dualist Carbon Disc fork.  Dualist= it has both disc and canti mounts.  I have the Velo Orange Pass Hunter Front Rack with integrated decaleur on the canti mounts, and my brakes on the disc tab.  It's a pretty tight fit between my VO fenders and the 35 mm wide tires I'm running now.

I spend some time at the Wound Up Composites booth at NAHBS.  They have a lot of options available for their forks.  If I had it to do over again, I'd seriously consider them.  I think the options include the following and maybe more, different crowns, metal vs carbon steerer, steerer length, rake, and 1' or 1-1/8" steerers.

As for handling, I'm not completely satisfied, but it may be mostly operator error (me), so I can't blame the hardware yet.

There are tons of carbon forks.  These are the ones that had a disc version when I was looking 2 years ago.  If they have a disc brake version (cyclo-cross) then I expect there to be lots of room for tire clearance.

IRD Mosaic

DT Swiss XRR SL Ti

Nashbar Carbon Cyclo-Cross fork

Origin8 Pro-Pulsion and Ultim-8

Redline Carbon Cross

Ritchey

White Brothers Rock Solid

Winwood Muddy or Dualist

-Jeff

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[Alan Walker]

I have a Ti bike custom-made specifically for randoneuring in mountainous terrain.

Are there any carbon fiber forks that could handle a tire that wide and be able to hold a small front rack or am I limited to a

steel fork with the appropriate braze-ons?

- Numerous cyclocross forks

How does your bike handle with a bag vs without a handlebar bag?

- Mounting a handlebar bag alters the feel of the bike. Whether the change is objectionable is a matter of taste. I always use a
handlebar bag on randonnees. When the handlebar bag is on and packed full, I can ride no-hands indefinitely.

Have fun!

Alan

[littlecirclesvt.com :: mike beganyi]

Jim,

I'm very happy with my IF Ti Club Racer with steel fork.
I had mine built up in 2006, when IF was in Somerville.
Went down for a tour and finalized a few details.

If I were to do it over I'd spec the Paul Racer brakes - but at the
time I was coming from a carbon 'race' type bike (painful for my first
brevet series) - so I thought 28 was wide.
I opted for the Shimano long reach. I can fit a 30-32 under a Planet
Bike plastic fender (depending on tire make).
Normally I run a Honjo narrow fender with a Conti 4 season GP 28.
Works well for me on dirt, pave, etc.
Without fenders I can run a Ritchey Speedmax cross tire 35, Nokian 35
studs, and some wide Pasela's.
With the Pauls I'd be able to run those with fenders.

Bags: I've run:

Carradice on a Brooks
Ortlieb handlebar bag
Acorn boxy rando bag on a Mark's Rack
Revelate Seat Bag
Revelate Harness with dry bag and sleeping kit up front on the bars
(lite touring)

I'd have to check my specs for fork rake - but I'm pretty sure I have
the 'middle' of the 3 options that IF supplied at the time.
I can ride no handed with any of the above combinations. Occasional
frame shudder with the Ortlieb, but putting my knee on the top tube or
pedaling makes that go away.

Here's the bike fully loaded for a wet Flèche: (Acorn bag front and
back
http://littlecirclesvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/img_8332.jpg

Here's a pic with the Revelate seat bag and Ortlieb handlebar bag:
http://littlecirclesvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/IMGP1112.jpg

I moved away from the Acorn bag - handling was fine (see pic here -
descending @ 29mph and snapping pics http://littlecirclesvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img_7974.jpg)
- but I just felt that the look and materials were wrong for my bike.
Best analogy I can offer is that I built a BMW sport touring
motorcycle but dressed it up like an old Harley.

Here's a pic with the Revelate harness and pouch (and my sleeping bag
and misc gear strapped on):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31827372@N00/5730933533/

I'd love to pick up a Zugster bag or have something custom made, and
I'd go back to the big front bag again if I had the extra $$.

-Mike

[TTW]

I have a three year old steel IF Club Racer. It has been a great
bike. I heard that when they moved from Sommerville, they split up,
so I don't know who is building their frames theses days.

Ted

[Bob the Wheelbuilder]

I'm riding an Independent Fabrication Ti Independence with disc brakes and Fargo-style Paragon Machine Works dropouts.  It is set up with an Acorn front bag on a Rivendell Mark's rack.  I rode it for most of my super series and for PBP last year.  It handles 32 mm tires with Honjo fenders and will take 35 mm tires with SKS Longboards, which are the fenders I took to France.  I love the bike.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-o-28hYggMSk/T4bsaSEqKcI/AAAAAAAAACQ/Y-UAX0_3Uac/s800/IMG_4509.JPG

[Joey Korkames]

I'm willfully ignoring your request for more info about a 700c Ti builder
because I'd like to dissuade you from that path, based on my experience with
it.

I assembled this kind of "sport touring" Ti bike for PBP 2011...
-Habenero Ti CX frame
-700c x 32c tires
-custom steel fork (with _less_ trail, but not that low)
-front rack I made myself
-14L handlebar bag (Swift Industries)

It did perform far better than my AL racing bike for brevets, but it was
still not as large of an improvment I wanted given the time and
expense I put into it. I should have let go of
my road racing instincts and commissioned a 650B steel French-ish randonneur
(which I'm now going to build myself), which would have cost nearly the same
(eg. "Boulder Bicycle").

The focus on component weights and shapes in road racing does not
apply equally well to speeding through long brevets. The robust materials
and designs of the traditional French bikes makes the rider more
energy and time efficient than a lightweight and featureless racing bike
(laden with ill-fitting, high-center bags, rigid tires/stays/forks,
and lights with underpowered and heavy batteries)

I don't mean to syncophanticaly push all of the Bicycle Quarterly kool-aid,
(or Velo-Orange bike fashion snobbery), but I really do buy all the
functional arguments for this "new" kind of bike. Riding on my "compromised"
sport tourer seems to validate them:

-A slighly-smaller 650B front tire lets you use a bigger handlebar-bag (suitable for long
permanents or out-of-state open-jaw trips) without it awkwardly spilling over the top
your handlebars. That is an aesthetic thing there, but I think having
that lower Center of Gravity would be an improvment over the steering of my
front-loaded 700C setup. I notice a lot of the pictures of 700C
frontload randonneurs don't really have much of a bag (or any at all) on the
front racks, sometimes stuff is just strapped directly to them.

-a custom steel fork with French-ish low trail (lots of forward rake)
"stiffens" your steering for a lot of the moderate-speed & sleep-deprived
rides we're doing. Your run of the mill stock carbon fork is raked at 45mm
offset is is tuned to ride hands-free at 25mph+. most randonneurs are not
going this fast, a lower trail fork is tuned for the 16-22mph range.

-a custom steel fork with high rake also deforms
to absorb real hits in the road (i can look down and watch the blades move
when riding over some cracked up roads), whereas in my experience, carbon
forks only stiffen up when hit by a big crease. the hits add up to
soreness and slowness, my 600ks on flat but endlessly pockmarked roads leave
me much worse for the wear than climbing 600ks with perfect roads.
carbon forks are claimed de-attenuate road "buzz", but I can count on one
hand the amount of roads I've traveled that had such a finely poured yet
minutely uneven surface to actually trigger this and display such an
insignificant benefit.

-the Ti frame is less buzzy than Aluminum and far more durable than it or
Carbon but my frame DOES NOT FLEX IN ANY WAY AT ALL. That stiffness is great
for the end of an hour-long criterium field sprint when you need
instantaneous acceleration, but it absolutely stinks during a long brevet
when you're galloping up a hill or to the finish and are just beating your
legs up with the rigidity of your frame that forces you to get out of your
saddle and push off of the pedals, swinging the frame left/right
("dancing"), and using every joint you have in order to save your knees
while pushing hard. A steel frame would simply flex a little bit more under
hard load, which slows acceleration a minute amount but returns the spring
to back to road more gradually, providing you with better momentum and, more
importantly, less strain to your body because you are using the frame as the
"differential" rather than your dancing muscles.

-I am liking 32Cs over most roads on brevets, but when I hit road
construction they are still not absorbent enough, and forces me to slow down
below my capacity to keep my track straight (unless I hold a death grip on
the bars, which is strains my upper body and slows reaction for quick
turns). A 42mm 650B tire (like the one on my cargo bike) rolls right over
nasty stuff and has no more rolling resistance at the proper pressures than
a 23c racing tire. The extra air and rubber in a pair of 650B tires will
cost a pound (over 32s), but it the lightest and cheapest suspension system
money can buy. having less soreness and strain in your muscles and joints
over a ride by using larger tires always increases my speed, i've observed
this in my tire progression over the years (23c < 25c < 28c < 32c).

The overall theme here is that you are constantly working against
the design of your racing bikes by trying to oversize them to go on brevets.
They end up being heavy, unwieldy, ugly, and pointlessly expensive! Some
adaptations look better and are more durable than others, but they are all
comprimises. The better way is to soften the materials, set the
steering geometry to fit the speeds of a brevet rather than a world
championship, and make more room for your bags/lights - the "new" 650B rando
bikes do this well. It will give you a few "tricks" to speed you up (less
strain on your muscles & joints over long distance, able to eat/equip with
less stops) and the weight difference is within 4 pounds. That is not a
significant detriment to climbing speed, and most randonneurs can lose
at least 10lbs off themselves if they really want to see the "magic"
improvement in their climbing speed that racers attain (their rules-mandated
16lb pound bikes have little to do with it).

Save the higher-gear 700c wheels & featherweight materials for your
club/racing bike, but get something more robust for randonneuring. I
don't deign to tell people what can or can not be ridden, people can ride
anything they have on a brevet(and they should, as long as they can tolerate
it!), but I hate to see someone pay big $$ to buy a compromise
if I can help it. My TI bike is going to be dedicated solely to CX racing
soon enough (which its twitchy high-center racing geometry is really good
for!)

-joey

jbo...@ithaca.edu writes:

[chris]

You might also try Lynskey. I have a custom Cooper, which I set up to
be able to run 28c tires plus full fenders. I used a IRD Mosaic 57
carbon fork, as I also spec-ed long reach brakes for a bit more tire/
fender clearance. While some people poo-poo the long reach brakes I
find the braking perfectly fine. With that fork though 28c is about
as large a tire as can fit. They don't do custom Coopers anymore, but
a custom R230 would be even nicer, and probably a bit more comfortable
over the long run. That being said I did PBP on the Cooper last year
and it performed like a champ.

With 28c tires the ride is very smooth, but the bike feels light,
stiff, and climbs exceptionally well. You'll wait a bit for a custom
frame, but they do nice work down there in Chattanooga.

On Apr 10, 8:20 pm, <jbon...@ithaca.edu> wrote:

[Richard James]

I have a Ti rando bike with 650Bx42 (GB Hetre) and a steel version of what you want (700C-31, GB Cypres), both are the BQ-ish front loading geometry (29mm trail for 650B and 30mm trail for 700C). If you want low trail you are pretty tied to a non-standard fork. Two choices spring to mind:

1. Custom steel fork: can be TIG (e.g. Fat City/Chris Igleheart-style) or lugged
   
2. Seven carbon fork for wide tires with a a big offset (these are really Reynolds forks and they machine Ti dropouts that plug into the bottom of a single carbon fork assembly, so the same carbon fork can have 36-58mm offset in 3mm increments and fender eyelets). They're not cheap, but Seven makes nice stuff
   

The 650B bike handles fine without the bag so long as you have narrow bars (I normally ride 46cm C-C, but have 41cm C-C on the 650B bike and it is _much_ better this way). I use normal width bars on the 700C bike with no issues (whether it has the bag installed or not). I would say that this low trail business is generally not noticeable unless you are looking for it specifically-- i.e. if I rode either bike without knowing that it had a strange front geometry I would not comment on it. The remarkable thing is how normal it continues to be when there's 15lbs of stuff in your bag...

My Ti rando bike, which I rode at PBP last year, came from Alchemy cycles in Austin. Fittings were from Paragon (3D dropouts, FTW) and welds were quite nice (think they learned their trade in Colorado before starting up in Texas, but I may mis-remember). Frame was very nicely priced (even with S&S couplers). This was by sixth custom frame, so I had my fit dimensions and ordering process well in hand and basically bid out the work to a number of builders and chose based on lead time. All communication was via email and phone. The new frame was at my front door eight weeks after deposit, which is _shockingly_ fast compared to some of my custom frame (mis)adventures. I would recommend them if you already know exactly what you want-- they aren't randonneurs themselves, so you will want to specify the fittings and locations.

[kavalk]

You need to speak with someone who truly understands titanium as a
frame material.
If you are speaking of a truly custom frame(set), builders like Tom
Kellogg, a designer
of custom titanium framesets for years and years knows the material
inside and out.
(Seven Cycles builds all of Tom's titanium designs ... which speaks
well for both organizations.)

Lynskey has been building with titanium since the word "go". They are
experts in all sorts
of rare and lesser used metals ... titanium just happens to be the
alloy used to build bicycle
framesets.

There are others of course. Serotta has been building in titanium for
years as well... I am just
not knowledgeable in the degree of customizing they will do with their
new business design.

I have had the good fortune to own several of the builders' framesets
and have spoken to
individuals of each of the organizations. They will tell you what
they are willing to do
without reservation.

I just get so tired of people presuming that certain materials are
only good for certain functions.
I own steel framesets and love them ... but don't short change
titanium ... it is a wonderful
alloy and can be manipulated to do many things.

Keith Andrews
Batavia, New York

On Apr 10, 8:20 pm, <jbon...@ithaca.edu> wrote:

[benzzoy]

I don't get it. You do not recommend a 700c Ti bike because you tried
to repurpose a stiff Ti bike with the inappropriate geometry and
didn't get a good result?

You yourself stated that the Habanero CX has "twitchy high-center
racing geometry" which probably would have disqualified your
comparison. In addition, Ti, just like any other material, has innate
properties that must be taken into account when designing a frame for
a particular purpose. For example, Ti actually has lower modulus than
steel, so given tubings of exactly the same dimensions, the Ti version
will be more flexible. Any competent builder can take that into
account to get a Ti frame to exhibit the same "flexiness" as a
reference steel frame. As an example, my old Merlin Extralight is a
noodle, exhibiting a lot of the "planing" characteristics that Jan
alludes to.

And 700c wheels are not inherently bad. You're entirely correct that
smaller frames should really consider 650b wheels for functionality if
not for aesthetics. I'm a prime example of this as my handlebar bag
essentially sits on top of my fender (i.e., it's as low as it'll go)
but the top is still jutting out on top and crowding into my handlebar
grab space. I should have considered 650b but I was far too vested in
700c components (dozens of wheels, spare rims, tubes and nice tires).
However, for bigger frames, 700c can be the appropriate wheel size.

Finally, I'm not convinced that you've really observed your fork
flexing. Fork flex is real but the movement is really quite very
small. Try removing your front wheel and setting your fork dropouts on
a piece of wood. Try to flex the fork by compressing via the
handlebars. Didn't move that much, did it? And that's without the
suspension of the tires that would have made that flex even smaller.
The observed blades flexing is most likely due to a change in your
head position relative to the fork and the reference point (your
handlebar?) when you hit bumps, large or otherwise.

[Steve Park]

Check with Seven.

They make a ton of ti bikes so they obviously know ti. The more
interesting thing about Seven is the apparent enthusiasm of a few
folks I've met there to build bikes that are more interesting or
complex than the average race bike.

This is the most recent Seven rando that I know of:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31408987@N04/6996908287/in/photostream

I heard Ahren Rogers built the steel fork - not sure if that's
accurate or not.