Titanium has a pretty bad fatigue life compared with other alloys such as steel. People get confused by the fact it is well known as a metal with a very high strength to weight ratio, but it is actually pretty crappy in reality and is rather prone to catastrophic failure.
Titanium has a pretty bad fatigue life compared with other alloys such as steel. People get confused by the fact it is well known as a metal with a very high strength to weight ratio, but it is actually pretty crappy in reality and is rather prone to catastrophic failure.
Check out these stem fatigue tests on Sheldon's site. Low-quality titanium can be pretty bad for fatigue.
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/rinard/stemtesting.htm