Titanium cracking? As with all metals, it all depends on the alloy and the fabrication methods.
When I raced bikes, I was one of the first adopters of ti spokes. The early ones would work fine most of the time, not one ever failed during a race, but perversely when I was cooling down after the race more than once I had one or more unexpectedly break, or on an easy weekday training ride they would fail. Later ones did not have that problem and I also used ti nipples with success. The reduction in rotating mass was significant enough to feel and see out of every corner in a fast downtown race. Also ti does flex more and so yields a softer ride which translates to greater reserve left at the end of a hard ride or race. Early on in automotive history coil springs for valves and later suspensions would break. This was solved by 'peening' which was originally done to remove scale, but it was found that the stress relieving greatly increased the reliability of such springs. I knew someone who had a ti rudder shaft on a big race boat which failed, he went to a carbon fiber one which also failed. Maybe not enough engineering, more likely they had run hard aground in the mud and oyster flats on the bay and hit the deep skeg-less rudder. In any case, cracking is not endemic with ti i general and I doubt if it is a problem with these clamps. One thing is for sure, they will not fail due to corrosion! And with the prices shown in the links, it may make more sense dollar wise in some critical applications such as packing glands. The only problem I would be leery of with ti is galling, so if it were me I would use some anti-seize. I can say for sure that if it seizes it will be a real bear to cut it off, although a dremal with a diamond grinder will do the job given some patience.-Ken _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
