Almost NOS RSP Titanium

[Disco Drive]

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174640984967
Wonder who made these?

 

[My_Teenage_Self]

What do you mean by made these?

It would have been welded from russian Ti in Nottingham, the same as the rest of the Raleigh titaniums... no?

 

[Disco Drive]

Didn’t know Raleigh had Titanium fabrication facilities at Nottingham? A lot of manufacturers outsourced the production of their titanium bikes to Sandvik and the like.

 

[My_Teenage_Self]

Indeed, as far as I'm aware they really did build all their frames in Nottingham, including the Ti stuff, until the late 90s. I remember the advert saying that they were 'plasma arc welded by hand'. I think the tubing they used was supplied by Timet?

One of the old employees was (is? Bikemeister2000...?) a member on here.

 

[velofrog]

Re:

Something weird looking about that to me.... does it look painted?

Maybe it’s the photos but it looks like a gloss lacquer silver finish from some angles!



Yeah found this in an old thread:

"The oracle (aka bikemeister2000) has spoken:

Hi Mike,

IMI were based in Swansea. We worked together with them to design the tubset for our plasma-arc welding at Raleigh Special Products. Timet and IMI merged so it was the same material.
It is not CP grade, but contains aluminium and vanadium to make it more suitable to the welding process.

Best regards"

 

[mheywoo1]

Re:

Definitely Timet titanium sourced from the UK, joined by Raleighs plasma arc welding process in Nottingham.

It’s commercially pure titanium which was used mainly in the chemical industry. It has no intentional alloys like 3/2.5 or 6/4, hence the “pure” bit of the tag. That makes it less resistant to fatigue than the others and the cost of the raw material was about 1/3 of 3/2.5 back in the day.

Nothing wrong with it though. My Raleigh Ti frame weighed less than my Bonty Ti of the same size and had as neat welding as any other Ti frame I’ve seen, just slightly bigger “fish-scales”

 

[onegoodbike]

Re:

I had a Raleigh Ti road bike a few years back and came across this article when doing a bit of interweb surfing trying to nail down tubing specifics. Might be of interest?.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/busi ... 68533.html

Cheers Matt

 

[ibbz]

It’s high polished Mtrax Ti from 96 race bike livery

viewtopic.php?t=236720

In a museum in Wales

https://peoplescollection.wales/items/116

This is the bike in a catalogue as a frame set
viewtopic.php?t=238849
M

http://www.retrobike.co.uk/gallery2/d/1 ... alogue.pdf

Also to be found in Brooklyn’s museum
https://www.brooklandsmuseum.com/explor ... ntain-bike

 

[ibbz]

So rarer than a Torus and probably the rarest non bonded Raleigh Ti.
There were two version according to Steve Perkins (bikemeister) the polished and the normal dull brushed finish
And has some nice race heritage and prestige too.

 

[M-Power]

Re: Re:

Definitely Timet titanium sourced from the UK, joined by Raleighs plasma arc welding process in Nottingham.

It’s commercially pure titanium which was used mainly in the chemical industry. It has no intentional alloys like 3/2.5 or 6/4, hence the “pure” bit of the tag. That makes it less resistant to fatigue than the others and the cost of the raw material was about 1/3 of 3/2.5 back in the day.

Nothing wrong with it though. My Raleigh Ti frame weighed less than my Bonty Ti of the same size and had as neat welding as any other Ti frame I’ve seen, just slightly bigger “fish-scales”

Thats what i remember. There were quite a few failure issues too with Russian sourced Ti but its a lot cheaper and probably won't get hammered these days. Nice looking frame with beautiful welds