One bike for everything?

[moderncyclista]

As the super content owner of a Salsa Vaya I will throw it out there that Salsa does make the Vaya in titanium if you can budget that. I simply LOVE my Vaya. Most comfortable bike ever and even though it's not a light weight it still has a lot of pep. I didn't try to build mine up light. It's more utility than anything but I find it's still my favorite bike of any I have owned. If I could change anything about it I would have bought the frame in titanium but the price wasnt an option at the time. Maybe in the future :-)

Doesn't titanium fatigue (ie. stretch and become spongy on a microscopic level - affecting power and pedal stroke to energy convergence) like aluminum over time? Steel always seems like a better choice, to me anyways.

I've still mulled over an Atlantis despite the risky propositions of chaining it up...anywhere. LOL. But, budget and possibility wise, my money is still on the Cross-Check. (If you're not into the LHT that is.) ;D

[Crankin]

There's nothing stretchy about my titanium bike.

[moderncyclista]

There's nothing stretchy about my titanium bike.

Frame fatigue is supposed to take years. I'm not a metallurgist, so it's just something I've heard about in bike shops and read about online. New bikes probably wouldn't feel stretchy, and in the time it takes for the metal to fatigue - I'm sure most people assume they're getting slower because of age, not power transfer. *shrugs*

[Blueberry]

It would seem that it does not: http://www.ibiscycles.com/support/te...ium_advantage/

As long as these loads are kept below a certain level, titanium and steel both have thresholds below which they will never fail.

[moderncyclista]

It would seem that it does not: http://www.ibiscycles.com/support/te...ium_advantage/

"Fatigue is a stochastic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic) process, often showing considerable scatter even in controlled environments.
The greater the applied stress, the shorter the life.

Fatigue life scatter tends to increase for longer fatigue lives.

Damage is cumulative. Materials do not recover when rested.

Fatigue life is influenced by a variety of factors, such as temperature (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature), surface finish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_finish),

presence of oxidizing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxidizing) or inert (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert) chemicals, residual stresses, contact (fretting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fretting)), etc.

Some materials (e.g., some steel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel) and titanium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium) alloys) exhibit a *theoretical* fatigue limit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_limit) below which continued loading does not lead to failure.

In recent years, researchers (see for example the work of Bathias, Murakami, and Stanzl-Tschegg) have found that *failures occur below the theoretical fatigue limit* at very high fatigue lives (109 to 1010 cycles). An ultrasonic resonance technique is used in these experiments with frequencies around 10-20 kHz."

I guess it "is" possible, even below expected limits. That's why I've seen even steel frames crack. Meh. Carry on.

Again, I vote Cross-Check! A single-speed complete version comes out sometime the end of this month! Single-Check!

[Biciclista]

Titanium may be fatiguable (is that a word?) but no one I know has ever had an issue with that. So while it might be within the realm of possibility, I'm betting my steel frame and all my friends' titanium frames will out last any carbon or aluminum bikes..... so that isn't something a normal sized person should be worrying about. We use titanium for its strength and lightness in airplanes... And THEY get a workout.

[Biciclista]

oh and I use one bike for everything too. It's a custom steel framed road bike (Davidson) I have a whole bunch of stuff on it, but i use it for shopping, going to the library AND big rides (well, nothing really long recently)