Titanium Bikes

On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 11:01:00 AM UTC-5, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 8:43:31 AM UTC-7, Steve Weeks wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 9:08:51 AM UTC-5, jbeattie wrote:

How does the current Airborne fit into all of this? https://airbornebicycles.com/ It's all BMX and MTB, and in fact, I bought my son an Airborne Goblin hard-tail for a birthday present when he was in high school.
I'm pretty sure the current bikes are "Airborne in name only". Someone got the rights to the name.


The thing breaks, and it's land fill.
I'd hope that it would be recycled. Ti would probably worth a few bucks.. :-)
And to be fair, you could get it fixed. That is the one good thing about Portland, you can get anything fixed, from Ti: https://www.ticycles.com/repair#:~:t...can%20fix%20it.

To CF: https://ruckuscomp.com/?gclid=CjwKCA...BoCNagQAvD_BwE

The repair cost, however, would be high -- but at least you wouldn't need paint.

-- Jay Beattie.

Well................yes anything and everything can be fixed. But is it worth it to fix it? I broke my Don Walker custom, track frame. Car-bike wreck. Busted down and top tubes. I talked to Don Walker and it would be $800 to fillet braze in new tubes and then a few hundred more for a new paint job. He was not going to have his frames with a rattle can paint job. New factory paint was required. So it was $12-1500 to get the frame fixed. Too rich for me. I bought the bike used for cheap and made it a single speed. I also contacted another frame maker, builder, repair place in St. Louis and sent him pictures. He replied back that the tubing was too thin for him to guarantee anything and was not interested in trying to fix it. Price from him was just a couple hundred dollars. So to get it fixed it had to be done by the man who made it originally.

On Sun, 16 May 2021 07:30:32 -0700 (PDT), Tom Kunich
wrote:

On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 7:08:51 AM UTC-7, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 6:03:41 AM UTC-7, Steve Weeks wrote:
On Saturday, May 15, 2021 at 7:45:40 PM UTC-5, Steve Weeks wrote:

IIRC, Airborne morphed into "Flyte", and then "Van Nicholas" (https://www.vannicholas.com/)
More on the Airborne=Flyte=Van Nicholas history. I found this from 2007:

Airborne Europe and Airborne USA were different companies. Huffy purchased Airborne USA. Huffy decided to no longer offer Airborne bike so the old Airborne USA owner, Jamie Raddin, decided to keep producing Airborne bikes and license the name from Huffy. Huffy then decided to not renew that agreement so Jamie started Flyte. As to the status Flyte (take note that the link wasn't working in December, recently it has been fine), you'll have to contact Flyte. I believe Van Nicholas is what has become of Airborne Europe.

That is the story as I know it. I may be wrong on some of the details, but that is more or less it. Definitely a bummer to see Airborne go down like it did, I loved that company, their products and their customer service were all top notch. C'est la vie!
(Source: https://www.mtbr.com/threads/flyte-b...siness.250019/)

This is from the same source in 2008:

How sad this is. I started working for Airborne in October of 2001, while they were still owned by Huffy. Those were the glory days. Jamie Raddin ran Airborne at the time, and we had plenty of money because of Huffy's recent success with scooter sales... seriously.
Customer service was incredibly important to Jamie. Every bike heading out the door had to be perfect. I eventually became the production manager. I built over two thousand bicycles between 2001 and June of 2004. I received only one legit complaint from a customer during that time.
Huffy sold the company back to Jamie at some point in 2003, I think. There was no real change for a while. We remained in the Huffy building in Springboro, Ohio until April of 2004. We moved about a mile away to the Hiawatha address and were known as Flyte. The quality and mission remained the same. The deep Huffy money was no longer with us, unfortunately. In June of 2004, a few of us were permanently laid off. I left on very good terms and was very, very sad to go. It was a dream job for a bicycle mechanic.
I went back to visit my former coworkers about a year later, and things were the same. I stopped there again in the spring of 2007, and everything was gone. I tried to get in touch with Jamie and the former VP of the company, but had no success. I heard that Jamie moved back to Texas.
For those who think he is a crook, please let me tell you about him. Jamie Raddin is a family man (wife and three kids, last time I checked) who has a deep faith in God and his fellow man. He would NEVER knowingly rip off a customer. He had an incredible commitment to customer satisfaction during my time with his company. If his website continued to accept credit card payments after he went out of business, it was certainly an oversight. He is a man of integrity and passion.
-Craig
How does the current Airborne fit into all of this? https://airbornebicycles.com/ It's all BMX and MTB, and in fact, I bought my son an Airborne Goblin hard-tail for a birthday present when he was in high school.

My impression of the Goblin was that it was a good Chinese aluminum frame with bang-for-the-buck components with some corners cut (hubs/wheels). Certainly worth the price, but my son broke the rear axle within weeks, and I had to build a quick replacement wheel. Customer service sent me a replacement axle later -- which was a bitch to press-in. The hub itself was a Chinese commodity part that looked like every other alloy Chinese cartridge bearing hub and weighed a ton.

I recall that the Airborne Ti frames had QC issues but that you could get a good one (or a bad one). I wouldn't bother buying one in the used market to flip it. Zero warranty. Zero customer support. The thing breaks, and its land fill. And it was a bargain brand to start. Even if I were in the market for a Ti frame, a nearly 20 year old budget Ti frame would be at the bottom of my wish list.

Remember, we had this conversation before. If a Ti frame doesn't fail immediately it doesn't fail. The reasons for these failures have to do with poor coverage of the Argon or Nitrogen blanket that has to be around the titanium during welding to prevent oxidation. This occurred in a friend's brand new Litespeed so it isn't a case of poor technique but likely someone opening a door causing a breeze to wash away the blanket.


"the Argon or Nitrogen blanket"?
See
https://resources.arcmachines.com/th...nium-tube-ami/
under the subheading "How to TIG Weld Titanium Tubes", the second item



--
Cheers,

John B.

On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 9:26:05 PM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 16 May 2021 10:50:46 -0500, AMuzi wrote:

On 5/16/2021 9:30 AM, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 7:08:51 AM UTC-7, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 6:03:41 AM UTC-7, Steve Weeks wrote:
On Saturday, May 15, 2021 at 7:45:40 PM UTC-5, Steve Weeks wrote:

IIRC, Airborne morphed into "Flyte", and then "Van Nicholas" (https://www.vannicholas.com/)
More on the Airborne=Flyte=Van Nicholas history. I found this from 2007:

Airborne Europe and Airborne USA were different companies. Huffy purchased Airborne USA. Huffy decided to no longer offer Airborne bike so the old Airborne USA owner, Jamie Raddin, decided to keep producing Airborne bikes and license the name from Huffy. Huffy then decided to not renew that agreement so Jamie started Flyte. As to the status Flyte (take note that the link wasn't working in December, recently it has been fine), you'll have to contact Flyte. I believe Van Nicholas is what has become of Airborne Europe.

That is the story as I know it. I may be wrong on some of the details, but that is more or less it. Definitely a bummer to see Airborne go down like it did, I loved that company, their products and their customer service were all top notch. C'est la vie!
(Source: https://www.mtbr.com/threads/flyte-b...iness..250019/)

This is from the same source in 2008:

How sad this is. I started working for Airborne in October of 2001, while they were still owned by Huffy. Those were the glory days. Jamie Raddin ran Airborne at the time, and we had plenty of money because of Huffy's recent success with scooter sales... seriously.
Customer service was incredibly important to Jamie. Every bike heading out the door had to be perfect. I eventually became the production manager. I built over two thousand bicycles between 2001 and June of 2004. I received only one legit complaint from a customer during that time.
Huffy sold the company back to Jamie at some point in 2003, I think. There was no real change for a while. We remained in the Huffy building in Springboro, Ohio until April of 2004. We moved about a mile away to the Hiawatha address and were known as Flyte. The quality and mission remained the same. The deep Huffy money was no longer with us, unfortunately. In June of 2004, a few of us were permanently laid off. I left on very good terms and was very, very sad to go. It was a dream job for a bicycle mechanic.
I went back to visit my former coworkers about a year later, and things were the same. I stopped there again in the spring of 2007, and everything was gone. I tried to get in touch with Jamie and the former VP of the company, but had no success. I heard that Jamie moved back to Texas.
For those who think he is a crook, please let me tell you about him. Jamie Raddin is a family man (wife and three kids, last time I checked) who has a deep faith in God and his fellow man. He would NEVER knowingly rip off a customer. He had an incredible commitment to customer satisfaction during my time with his company. If his website continued to accept credit card payments after he went out of business, it was certainly an oversight. He is a man of integrity and passion.
-Craig
How does the current Airborne fit into all of this? https://airbornebicycles.com/ It's all BMX and MTB, and in fact, I bought my son an Airborne Goblin hard-tail for a birthday present when he was in high school.

My impression of the Goblin was that it was a good Chinese aluminum frame with bang-for-the-buck components with some corners cut (hubs/wheels). Certainly worth the price, but my son broke the rear axle within weeks, and I had to build a quick replacement wheel. Customer service sent me a replacement axle later -- which was a bitch to press-in. The hub itself was a Chinese commodity part that looked like every other alloy Chinese cartridge bearing hub and weighed a ton.

I recall that the Airborne Ti frames had QC issues but that you could get a good one (or a bad one). I wouldn't bother buying one in the used market to flip it. Zero warranty. Zero customer support. The thing breaks, and its land fill. And it was a bargain brand to start. Even if I were in the market for a Ti frame, a nearly 20 year old budget Ti frame would be at the bottom of my wish list.

Remember, we had this conversation before. If a Ti frame doesn't fail immediately it doesn't fail. The reasons for these failures have to do with poor coverage of the Argon or Nitrogen blanket that has to be around the titanium during welding to prevent oxidation. This occurred in a friend's brand new Litespeed so it isn't a case of poor technique but likely someone opening a door causing a breeze to wash away the blanket.

The reports on the Airborne Ti was almost entirely good, two people had the seat tube crack immediately and no customer service to replace the frame. Another thought it road too soft. He thought it was a noodle, But 210 lb racers said that it handled and cornered perfectly and was a top notch racer. They all thought that straight gauge tubing made for a heavier than necessary frame. But it is still light. I'll give you a report. The customer service problems appear to be when Huffy was running the show.


"If a Ti frame doesn't fail immediately it doesn't fail."
That is demonstrably not true.
The problem with saying "Titanium Bicycle" is that the designation is
essentially meaningless as "titanium" is manufactured in a great
number of alloys with a very wide range of physical properties. For
example ASTM grade 1 (which is basically the unalloyed metal) has a
tensile strength of 240 MPa and a 2% yield strength of 170 MPa while a
Ti-10V-2Fe-3Al(a)(c) titanium alloy has a tensile strength of 1170 MPa
and a 2% yield strength of 1100 MPa

Note: 1 MPa = 145.03 PSI

As an aside I see 10v-2fe-3al UNS R56410 tubes, which is described as
"provides the best combination of strength and toughness of the
commercially available titanium alloys" priced at $100 - $25 per
kilogram range in quantities of 300 kg or more (larger quantity =
lower price) China product.

John B.

Are your titanium prices in bicycle tubing or ingot form? I'm guessing there is quite a bit of difference in price. After all, steel is currently at $211 per ton per Google. So a pick em up truck should cost about $422 since its about two tons of steel. But new fancy dandy pick em up trucks are about $80,000 today. So the steel must get shaped a little bit in between. Kind of like titanium from the raw material maker has to get rolled and shaped a bit before it can be welded into a bicycle frame.

On Sun, 16 May 2021 16:48:33 -0700 (PDT), Tom Kunich
wrote:

On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 9:44:26 AM UTC-7, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 8:14:59 AM UTC-7, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 7:30:34 AM UTC-7, wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 7:08:51 AM UTC-7, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 6:03:41 AM UTC-7, Steve Weeks wrote:
On Saturday, May 15, 2021 at 7:45:40 PM UTC-5, Steve Weeks wrote:

IIRC, Airborne morphed into "Flyte", and then "Van Nicholas" (https://www.vannicholas.com/)
More on the Airborne=Flyte=Van Nicholas history. I found this from 2007:

Airborne Europe and Airborne USA were different companies. Huffy purchased Airborne USA. Huffy decided to no longer offer Airborne bike so the old Airborne USA owner, Jamie Raddin, decided to keep producing Airborne bikes and license the name from Huffy. Huffy then decided to not renew that agreement so Jamie started Flyte. As to the status Flyte (take note that the link wasn't working in December, recently it has been fine), you'll have to contact Flyte. I believe Van Nicholas is what has become of Airborne Europe.

That is the story as I know it. I may be wrong on some of the details, but that is more or less it. Definitely a bummer to see Airborne go down like it did, I loved that company, their products and their customer service were all top notch. C'est la vie!
(Source: https://www.mtbr.com/threads/flyte-b...siness.250019/)

This is from the same source in 2008:

How sad this is. I started working for Airborne in October of 2001, while they were still owned by Huffy. Those were the glory days. Jamie Raddin ran Airborne at the time, and we had plenty of money because of Huffy's recent success with scooter sales... seriously.
Customer service was incredibly important to Jamie. Every bike heading out the door had to be perfect. I eventually became the production manager. I built over two thousand bicycles between 2001 and June of 2004. I received only one legit complaint from a customer during that time.
Huffy sold the company back to Jamie at some point in 2003, I think. There was no real change for a while. We remained in the Huffy building in Springboro, Ohio until April of 2004. We moved about a mile away to the Hiawatha address and were known as Flyte. The quality and mission remained the same. The deep Huffy money was no longer with us, unfortunately. In June of 2004, a few of us were permanently laid off. I left on very good terms and was very, very sad to go. It was a dream job for a bicycle mechanic.
I went back to visit my former coworkers about a year later, and things were the same. I stopped there again in the spring of 2007, and everything was gone. I tried to get in touch with Jamie and the former VP of the company, but had no success. I heard that Jamie moved back to Texas.
For those who think he is a crook, please let me tell you about him. Jamie Raddin is a family man (wife and three kids, last time I checked) who has a deep faith in God and his fellow man. He would NEVER knowingly rip off a customer. He had an incredible commitment to customer satisfaction during my time with his company. If his website continued to accept credit card payments after he went out of business, it was certainly an oversight. He is a man of integrity and passion.
-Craig
How does the current Airborne fit into all of this? https://airbornebicycles.com/ It's all BMX and MTB, and in fact, I bought my son an Airborne Goblin hard-tail for a birthday present when he was in high school.

My impression of the Goblin was that it was a good Chinese aluminum frame with bang-for-the-buck components with some corners cut (hubs/wheels). Certainly worth the price, but my son broke the rear axle within weeks, and I had to build a quick replacement wheel. Customer service sent me a replacement axle later -- which was a bitch to press-in. The hub itself was a Chinese commodity part that looked like every other alloy Chinese cartridge bearing hub and weighed a ton.

I recall that the Airborne Ti frames had QC issues but that you could get a good one (or a bad one). I wouldn't bother buying one in the used market to flip it. Zero warranty. Zero customer support. The thing breaks, and its land fill. And it was a bargain brand to start. Even if I were in the market for a Ti frame, a nearly 20 year old budget Ti frame would be at the bottom of my wish list.
Remember, we had this conversation before. If a Ti frame doesn't fail immediately it doesn't fail. The reasons for these failures have to do with poor coverage of the Argon or Nitrogen blanket that has to be around the titanium during welding to prevent oxidation. This occurred in a friend's brand new Litespeed so it isn't a case of poor technique but likely someone opening a door causing a breeze to wash away the blanket.
And, as we discussed, you're wrong. Ti will experience fatigue failure and weld or material failure after infancy. There are plenty of examples. Moreover, dealing with a defunct company also means less availability of any proprietary parts, assuming the bike has any -- and conformance with old standards, e.g. straight steerers, tight-clearance rim brakes, non-replaceable rear derailleur hangers.

The reports on the Airborne Ti was almost entirely good, two people had the seat tube crack immediately and no customer service to replace the frame. Another thought it road too soft. He thought it was a noodle, But 210 lb racers said that it handled and cornered perfectly and was a top notch racer. They all thought that straight gauge tubing made for a heavier than necessary frame. But it is still light. I'll give you a report. The customer service problems appear to be when Huffy was running the show.
I don't particularly care since this is another one of your weird purchases where you'll whine for months over nobody wanting to buy your kludged-together Airborne because Joe Biden ruined the economy -- when in fact it will be because nobody wants a 20 year old discount Ti frame with Chinese carbon wheels and EC 90 oddities. Why not start with a frame from a reputable manufacturer that you know will sell? Or just skip the compulsive bike flipping and weed your rock garden. Go ride your Felt on some gravel. There must be some awesome roads over near Mt. Diablo. Pack a picnic. That's what I would do.
Fatigue failures are almost always in pure titanium and not its alloys. This is because the strength of the alloys is so high that you cannot approach the start of the fatigue limits with even incompetent design. The SR-71 was designed with titanium alloy and was only recently taken out of service as a Mach 6 aircraft. This was so fast that air friction would heat the metal up very close to its thermal limits. So they had to build them with such large gaps in the spaces between the plates that they leaked fuel almost as rapidly as they could put it in. So they would take off with minimal loads and refuel in the air at speed. Does this sound as if fatigue failures was any real kind of problem with aerospace alloys?

The SR-71 is a supposed Mach 3 aircraft but they well exceeded this on many occasions. Most of the real information on it is very classified and the proposed SR-72 is a much faster aircraft. Generally the supported speed records are over long distance flights like across the US at Mach 2.8 which included refueling. This was in a little more than an hour.


There you go again. Real information is available and the SR-71 was
capable of sustained speeds of more then 3.2 Mach.

See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstro...-030-DFRC.html
https://edition.cnn.com/style/articl...ign/index.html
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us...blackbird.html
https://www.popularmechanics.com/mil...-71-blackbird/

By the way Tommy I actually worked on a SR-71 a few times. When they
first moved to Beale AFB the airplanes and ground crews got there
first and the "field maintenance" shops came later and we (the SAC
guys) had to provide some support until their own shops were
established. As I had a top secret clearance I actually had to go and
drill some screws out of the wing of one of them :-)
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 7:53:15 PM UTC-7, wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 11:01:00 AM UTC-5, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 8:43:31 AM UTC-7, Steve Weeks wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 9:08:51 AM UTC-5, jbeattie wrote:

How does the current Airborne fit into all of this? https://airbornebicycles.com/ It's all BMX and MTB, and in fact, I bought my son an Airborne Goblin hard-tail for a birthday present when he was in high school.
I'm pretty sure the current bikes are "Airborne in name only". Someone got the rights to the name.


The thing breaks, and it's land fill.
I'd hope that it would be recycled. Ti would probably worth a few bucks. :-)
And to be fair, you could get it fixed. That is the one good thing about Portland, you can get anything fixed, from Ti: https://www.ticycles.com/repair#:~:t...can%20fix%20it..

To CF: https://ruckuscomp.com/?gclid=CjwKCA...BoCNagQAvD_BwE

The repair cost, however, would be high -- but at least you wouldn't need paint.

-- Jay Beattie.
Well................yes anything and everything can be fixed. But is it worth it to fix it? I broke my Don Walker custom, track frame. Car-bike wreck. Busted down and top tubes. I talked to Don Walker and it would be $800 to fillet braze in new tubes and then a few hundred more for a new paint job.. He was not going to have his frames with a rattle can paint job. New factory paint was required. So it was $12-1500 to get the frame fixed. Too rich for me. I bought the bike used for cheap and made it a single speed. I also contacted another frame maker, builder, repair place in St. Louis and sent him pictures. He replied back that the tubing was too thin for him to guarantee anything and was not interested in trying to fix it. Price from him was just a couple hundred dollars. So to get it fixed it had to be done by the man who made it originally.

Just a first class paint job can make tube replacement economically unfeasible -- but if you really love a bike, it is at least possible to fix Ti and CF. Its fun to look through the Ruckus repair gallery. https://ruckuscomp.com/news/category/featured-repair

-- Jay Beattie.

On Monday, May 17, 2021 at 1:45:07 AM UTC-7, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 16 May 2021 16:48:33 -0700 (PDT), Tom Kunich
wrote:

On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 9:44:26 AM UTC-7, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 8:14:59 AM UTC-7, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 7:30:34 AM UTC-7, wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 7:08:51 AM UTC-7, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 6:03:41 AM UTC-7, Steve Weeks wrote:
On Saturday, May 15, 2021 at 7:45:40 PM UTC-5, Steve Weeks wrote:

IIRC, Airborne morphed into "Flyte", and then "Van Nicholas" (https://www.vannicholas.com/)
More on the Airborne=Flyte=Van Nicholas history. I found this from 2007:

Airborne Europe and Airborne USA were different companies. Huffy purchased Airborne USA. Huffy decided to no longer offer Airborne bike so the old Airborne USA owner, Jamie Raddin, decided to keep producing Airborne bikes and license the name from Huffy. Huffy then decided to not renew that agreement so Jamie started Flyte. As to the status Flyte (take note that the link wasn't working in December, recently it has been fine), you'll have to contact Flyte. I believe Van Nicholas is what has become of Airborne Europe.

That is the story as I know it. I may be wrong on some of the details, but that is more or less it. Definitely a bummer to see Airborne go down like it did, I loved that company, their products and their customer service were all top notch. C'est la vie!
(Source: https://www.mtbr.com/threads/flyte-b...siness.250019/)

This is from the same source in 2008:

How sad this is. I started working for Airborne in October of 2001, while they were still owned by Huffy. Those were the glory days. Jamie Raddin ran Airborne at the time, and we had plenty of money because of Huffy's recent success with scooter sales... seriously.
Customer service was incredibly important to Jamie. Every bike heading out the door had to be perfect. I eventually became the production manager. I built over two thousand bicycles between 2001 and June of 2004. I received only one legit complaint from a customer during that time.
Huffy sold the company back to Jamie at some point in 2003, I think. There was no real change for a while. We remained in the Huffy building in Springboro, Ohio until April of 2004. We moved about a mile away to the Hiawatha address and were known as Flyte. The quality and mission remained the same. The deep Huffy money was no longer with us, unfortunately. In June of 2004, a few of us were permanently laid off. I left on very good terms and was very, very sad to go. It was a dream job for a bicycle mechanic.
I went back to visit my former coworkers about a year later, and things were the same. I stopped there again in the spring of 2007, and everything was gone. I tried to get in touch with Jamie and the former VP of the company, but had no success. I heard that Jamie moved back to Texas.
For those who think he is a crook, please let me tell you about him. Jamie Raddin is a family man (wife and three kids, last time I checked) who has a deep faith in God and his fellow man. He would NEVER knowingly rip off a customer. He had an incredible commitment to customer satisfaction during my time with his company. If his website continued to accept credit card payments after he went out of business, it was certainly an oversight. He is a man of integrity and passion.
-Craig
How does the current Airborne fit into all of this? https://airbornebicycles.com/ It's all BMX and MTB, and in fact, I bought my son an Airborne Goblin hard-tail for a birthday present when he was in high school.

My impression of the Goblin was that it was a good Chinese aluminum frame with bang-for-the-buck components with some corners cut (hubs/wheels). Certainly worth the price, but my son broke the rear axle within weeks, and I had to build a quick replacement wheel. Customer service sent me a replacement axle later -- which was a bitch to press-in. The hub itself was a Chinese commodity part that looked like every other alloy Chinese cartridge bearing hub and weighed a ton.

I recall that the Airborne Ti frames had QC issues but that you could get a good one (or a bad one). I wouldn't bother buying one in the used market to flip it. Zero warranty. Zero customer support. The thing breaks, and its land fill. And it was a bargain brand to start. Even if I were in the market for a Ti frame, a nearly 20 year old budget Ti frame would be at the bottom of my wish list.
Remember, we had this conversation before. If a Ti frame doesn't fail immediately it doesn't fail. The reasons for these failures have to do with poor coverage of the Argon or Nitrogen blanket that has to be around the titanium during welding to prevent oxidation. This occurred in a friend's brand new Litespeed so it isn't a case of poor technique but likely someone opening a door causing a breeze to wash away the blanket.
And, as we discussed, you're wrong. Ti will experience fatigue failure and weld or material failure after infancy. There are plenty of examples.. Moreover, dealing with a defunct company also means less availability of any proprietary parts, assuming the bike has any -- and conformance with old standards, e.g. straight steerers, tight-clearance rim brakes, non-replaceable rear derailleur hangers.

The reports on the Airborne Ti was almost entirely good, two people had the seat tube crack immediately and no customer service to replace the frame. Another thought it road too soft. He thought it was a noodle, But 210 lb racers said that it handled and cornered perfectly and was a top notch racer. They all thought that straight gauge tubing made for a heavier than necessary frame. But it is still light. I'll give you a report. The customer service problems appear to be when Huffy was running the show.
I don't particularly care since this is another one of your weird purchases where you'll whine for months over nobody wanting to buy your kludged-together Airborne because Joe Biden ruined the economy -- when in fact it will be because nobody wants a 20 year old discount Ti frame with Chinese carbon wheels and EC 90 oddities. Why not start with a frame from a reputable manufacturer that you know will sell? Or just skip the compulsive bike flipping and weed your rock garden. Go ride your Felt on some gravel. There must be some awesome roads over near Mt. Diablo. Pack a picnic. That's what I would do.
Fatigue failures are almost always in pure titanium and not its alloys.. This is because the strength of the alloys is so high that you cannot approach the start of the fatigue limits with even incompetent design. The SR-71 was designed with titanium alloy and was only recently taken out of service as a Mach 6 aircraft. This was so fast that air friction would heat the metal up very close to its thermal limits. So they had to build them with such large gaps in the spaces between the plates that they leaked fuel almost as rapidly as they could put it in. So they would take off with minimal loads and refuel in the air at speed. Does this sound as if fatigue failures was any real kind of problem with aerospace alloys?

The SR-71 is a supposed Mach 3 aircraft but they well exceeded this on many occasions. Most of the real information on it is very classified and the proposed SR-72 is a much faster aircraft. Generally the supported speed records are over long distance flights like across the US at Mach 2.8 which included refueling. This was in a little more than an hour.
There you go again. Real information is available and the SR-71 was
capable of sustained speeds of more then 3.2 Mach.

See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstro...-030-DFRC.html
https://edition.cnn.com/style/articl...ign/index.html
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us...blackbird.html
https://www.popularmechanics.com/mil...-71-blackbird/

By the way Tommy I actually worked on a SR-71 a few times. When they
first moved to Beale AFB the airplanes and ground crews got there
first and the "field maintenance" shops came later and we (the SAC
guys) had to provide some support until their own shops were
established. As I had a top secret clearance I actually had to go and
drill some screws out of the wing of one of them :-)
John, operating a tow engine to pull the SR-71 into a hanger is not "working on". You were very close to the town idiot in the Air Force. Get over it.

On Monday, May 17, 2021 at 7:56:26 AM UTC-7, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 7:53:15 PM UTC-7, wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 11:01:00 AM UTC-5, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 8:43:31 AM UTC-7, Steve Weeks wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 9:08:51 AM UTC-5, jbeattie wrote:

How does the current Airborne fit into all of this? https://airbornebicycles.com/ It's all BMX and MTB, and in fact, I bought my son an Airborne Goblin hard-tail for a birthday present when he was in high school.
I'm pretty sure the current bikes are "Airborne in name only". Someone got the rights to the name.


The thing breaks, and it's land fill.
I'd hope that it would be recycled. Ti would probably worth a few bucks. :-)
And to be fair, you could get it fixed. That is the one good thing about Portland, you can get anything fixed, from Ti: https://www.ticycles.com/repair#:~:t...can%20fix%20it.

To CF: https://ruckuscomp.com/?gclid=CjwKCA...BoCNagQAvD_BwE

The repair cost, however, would be high -- but at least you wouldn't need paint.

-- Jay Beattie.
Well................yes anything and everything can be fixed. But is it worth it to fix it? I broke my Don Walker custom, track frame. Car-bike wreck. Busted down and top tubes. I talked to Don Walker and it would be $800 to fillet braze in new tubes and then a few hundred more for a new paint job. He was not going to have his frames with a rattle can paint job. New factory paint was required. So it was $12-1500 to get the frame fixed. Too rich for me. I bought the bike used for cheap and made it a single speed. I also contacted another frame maker, builder, repair place in St. Louis and sent him pictures. He replied back that the tubing was too thin for him to guarantee anything and was not interested in trying to fix it. Price from him was just a couple hundred dollars. So to get it fixed it had to be done by the man who made it originally.
Just a first class paint job can make tube replacement economically unfeasible -- but if you really love a bike, it is at least possible to fix Ti and CF. Its fun to look through the Ruckus repair gallery. https://ruckuscomp.com/news/category/featured-repair

Unless you have a full custom, bikes are now so cheap and available on Ebay, that I can't imagine spending a couple of thousand to repair one.

On Sun, 16 May 2021 16:48:33 -0700 (PDT), Tom Kunich
wrote:
(...)

The SR-71 weighs 67,500 lbs empty. My guess(tm) is at least 80% of
that is titanium or 54,000 lbs of Ti. A Ti bicycle frame weighs about
3.5 lbs. Therefore, one can build:
54,000 / 3.5 = 15,400
Ti bicycle frames from one recycled SR-71.

Each SR-71 cost $34 million. Therefore, each bicycle frame would
cost:
$34 million / 15,400 = $2,200
which is quite close to the $2,000 to $4,000 charged by the better Ti
frame builders.

We return you now to our regularly scheduled program of verbal abuse
and misinformation.


--
Jeff Liebermann
PO Box 272 http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond CA 95005-0272
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On 5/17/2021 10:19 AM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Sun, 16 May 2021 16:48:33 -0700 (PDT), Tom Kunich
wrote:
(...)

The SR-71 weighs 67,500 lbs empty. My guess(tm) is at least 80% of
that is titanium or 54,000 lbs of Ti. A Ti bicycle frame weighs about
3.5 lbs. Therefore, one can build:
54,000 / 3.5 = 15,400
Ti bicycle frames from one recycled SR-71.

Each SR-71 cost $34 million. Therefore, each bicycle frame would
cost:
$34 million / 15,400 = $2,200
which is quite close to the $2,000 to $4,000 charged by the better Ti
frame builders.

We return you now to our regularly scheduled program of verbal abuse
and misinformation.

The mass produced titanium frames are mostly from ORA Engineering Co. in
Taiwan https://www.oraeng-tw.com/. Most of the non-custom titanium
frames come from Ora, regardless of the brand of the bicycle. Even Bikes
Direct Motobecane brand uses Ora frames, Ora even mentions Motobecane on
their web site.

One annoying thing I see on titanium bikes is that many have carbon
forks. Aargh. When you're going the titanium route, one reason is for
safety and longevity. I don't want to buy a titanium bicycle and then
have to change the fork.

On 5/16/2021 10:02 PM, wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 9:26:05 PM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 16 May 2021 10:50:46 -0500, AMuzi wrote:

On 5/16/2021 9:30 AM, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 7:08:51 AM UTC-7, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 6:03:41 AM UTC-7, Steve Weeks wrote:
On Saturday, May 15, 2021 at 7:45:40 PM UTC-5, Steve Weeks wrote:

IIRC, Airborne morphed into "Flyte", and then "Van Nicholas" (https://www.vannicholas.com/)
More on the Airborne=Flyte=Van Nicholas history. I found this from 2007:

Airborne Europe and Airborne USA were different companies. Huffy purchased Airborne USA. Huffy decided to no longer offer Airborne bike so the old Airborne USA owner, Jamie Raddin, decided to keep producing Airborne bikes and license the name from Huffy. Huffy then decided to not renew that agreement so Jamie started Flyte. As to the status Flyte (take note that the link wasn't working in December, recently it has been fine), you'll have to contact Flyte. I believe Van Nicholas is what has become of Airborne Europe.

That is the story as I know it. I may be wrong on some of the details, but that is more or less it. Definitely a bummer to see Airborne go down like it did, I loved that company, their products and their customer service were all top notch. C'est la vie!
(Source: https://www.mtbr.com/threads/flyte-b...siness.250019/)

This is from the same source in 2008:

How sad this is. I started working for Airborne in October of 2001, while they were still owned by Huffy. Those were the glory days. Jamie Raddin ran Airborne at the time, and we had plenty of money because of Huffy's recent success with scooter sales... seriously.
Customer service was incredibly important to Jamie. Every bike heading out the door had to be perfect. I eventually became the production manager. I built over two thousand bicycles between 2001 and June of 2004. I received only one legit complaint from a customer during that time.
Huffy sold the company back to Jamie at some point in 2003, I think. There was no real change for a while. We remained in the Huffy building in Springboro, Ohio until April of 2004. We moved about a mile away to the Hiawatha address and were known as Flyte. The quality and mission remained the same. The deep Huffy money was no longer with us, unfortunately. In June of 2004, a few of us were permanently laid off. I left on very good terms and was very, very sad to go. It was a dream job for a bicycle mechanic.
I went back to visit my former coworkers about a year later, and things were the same. I stopped there again in the spring of 2007, and everything was gone. I tried to get in touch with Jamie and the former VP of the company, but had no success. I heard that Jamie moved back to Texas.
For those who think he is a crook, please let me tell you about him. Jamie Raddin is a family man (wife and three kids, last time I checked) who has a deep faith in God and his fellow man. He would NEVER knowingly rip off a customer. He had an incredible commitment to customer satisfaction during my time with his company. If his website continued to accept credit card payments after he went out of business, it was certainly an oversight. He is a man of integrity and passion.
-Craig
How does the current Airborne fit into all of this? https://airbornebicycles.com/ It's all BMX and MTB, and in fact, I bought my son an Airborne Goblin hard-tail for a birthday present when he was in high school.

My impression of the Goblin was that it was a good Chinese aluminum frame with bang-for-the-buck components with some corners cut (hubs/wheels). Certainly worth the price, but my son broke the rear axle within weeks, and I had to build a quick replacement wheel. Customer service sent me a replacement axle later -- which was a bitch to press-in. The hub itself was a Chinese commodity part that looked like every other alloy Chinese cartridge bearing hub and weighed a ton.

I recall that the Airborne Ti frames had QC issues but that you could get a good one (or a bad one). I wouldn't bother buying one in the used market to flip it. Zero warranty. Zero customer support. The thing breaks, and its land fill. And it was a bargain brand to start. Even if I were in the market for a Ti frame, a nearly 20 year old budget Ti frame would be at the bottom of my wish list.

Remember, we had this conversation before. If a Ti frame doesn't fail immediately it doesn't fail. The reasons for these failures have to do with poor coverage of the Argon or Nitrogen blanket that has to be around the titanium during welding to prevent oxidation. This occurred in a friend's brand new Litespeed so it isn't a case of poor technique but likely someone opening a door causing a breeze to wash away the blanket.

The reports on the Airborne Ti was almost entirely good, two people had the seat tube crack immediately and no customer service to replace the frame. Another thought it road too soft. He thought it was a noodle, But 210 lb racers said that it handled and cornered perfectly and was a top notch racer. They all thought that straight gauge tubing made for a heavier than necessary frame. But it is still light. I'll give you a report. The customer service problems appear to be when Huffy was running the show.


"If a Ti frame doesn't fail immediately it doesn't fail."
That is demonstrably not true.
The problem with saying "Titanium Bicycle" is that the designation is
essentially meaningless as "titanium" is manufactured in a great
number of alloys with a very wide range of physical properties. For
example ASTM grade 1 (which is basically the unalloyed metal) has a
tensile strength of 240 MPa and a 2% yield strength of 170 MPa while a
Ti-10V-2Fe-3Al(a)(c) titanium alloy has a tensile strength of 1170 MPa
and a 2% yield strength of 1100 MPa

Note: 1 MPa = 145.03 PSI

As an aside I see 10v-2fe-3al UNS R56410 tubes, which is described as
"provides the best combination of strength and toughness of the
commercially available titanium alloys" priced at $100 - $25 per
kilogram range in quantities of 300 kg or more (larger quantity =
lower price) China product.

John B.

Are your titanium prices in bicycle tubing or ingot form? I'm guessing there is quite a bit of difference in price. After all, steel is currently at $211 per ton per Google. So a pick em up truck should cost about $422 since its about two tons of steel. But new fancy dandy pick em up trucks are about $80,000 today. So the steel must get shaped a little bit in between. Kind of like titanium from the raw material maker has to get rolled and shaped a bit before it can be welded into a bicycle frame.


Good observation.
Certified composition, dimensions, special shapes (such as
butted tubes or stays), and finish add serious expense,
therefore price.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971