-
Given the requirements, I’d focus your search on companies that honour their warranty’s. A friend has had his Van Nicholas replaced twice, in a ten year period, so they’d be top of my list. I think Lynskey offer similar but best to ask someone who has one, like @dancing james or @danstuff .
I’m not sure on Planet-X but know a lot of Pickenflick owners and they’ve all had no issues.
It’s not a given that you’ll have problems, I’m currently on Ti frames 5 and 6 and I’ve never had any frame issues.
andyp-
If Lynskeys distribution in the UK is still hotlines then they can be frustrating to deal with. But I have not had any problems with the actual frames. As @andyp mentions better ti frames tend not to be problematic it tends to be the cheaper ones not made correctly that fail. But if one does go wrong you want to be able to warranty it.
-
I think Lynskey offer similar but best to ask someone who has one, like @dancing james or @danstuff .
I don't actually have a Lynskey. I should have one, as I ordered and paid for a frameset which they had in stock in their sale well over 2 months ago, but they managed to send the frameset to the billing address rather than the shipping address and as a result managed to send it to the wrong country. Since making this rather elementary mistake, they appear to have done the square root of fuck all to sort out the problem, other than sending me the occasional message (only ever in response to an email from me) saying 'we're sorry, we're sorting it out'.
I agree that customer service can be a very useful thing with titanium frames given that they do occasionally have cracking issues, but based on my experience of Lynskey to date, I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. I've asked them to cancel my order and refund my money, but they've gone back to ignoring me and holding onto my cash, which appears to be their default setting.
I do have an Enigma ti frame, which is my favourite bike in the whole wide world. I've done over 10k km on it now, and it's been faultless.
dancing james
Brommers
So I don't know much about ti (other than that it seems I've seen/heard of lots of the cheaper end frames cracking recently) but my brother in law was asking me about ti mtbs tonight.
He's a big guy, 6'3"+ and er...big boned too so comparing him to myself, I'm gonna guess he'll be on the heavy side of 250lb/113kg.
I don't think he has high end Moots type budget but I offered the figure of "around £1k" for a frame and he didn't seem too distressed by that. He has just had a big health insurance payout and the bike would be part of a move to try and live a healthier lifestyle.
I've just had a quick look at what is available from a few places.
The cheap frames on Aliexpress (Skorp, Tito, Pasak and Pipedream) aren't gonna be a worthwhile investment for anyone, never mind someone weighing 250lb+?
Planet X has some Titus frames that look alright and the price is half decent and a mate has a Sonder that seems alright?
The Van Nicholas Zion looks good, keeping it rigid was mentioned so a complete bike that comes with a rigid fork seems like it might fit the bill nicely.
Anywhere else I should be looking?