BashemSmashem

iTrader: (42)

I too have never seen brittle Ti ?

Jonny5

iTrader: (19)

It is possible that brittle is not the correct word, but I stand by my point nonetheless. The usage of the word brittle comes from the observation that where a titanium ballstud or turnbuckle will break, the same part in an alloy steel will bend. In the same fashion, we used both titanium and steel rods in 330 hp Toyota and Nissan 4 cyl motors for ProLite trucks and in the event of an engine failure the titanium rods snapped while alloy steel rods would bend. In this case the engine failure was catastrophic so break vs. bend made little to no difference in the cost to repair the engine, but the point is made.

Titanium can be alloyed to be very useful in spring applications. However, when we tested with them in 1:1 trucks our rebound values were 20-30% less than with conventional spring steels from Eibach or Hypercoils. The loss in unsprung weight is significant, and provided you have the budget (very expensive to have custom length titanium coils made) and again the means to independly adjust your rebound settings from your compression settings, I.e. customizable valving stacks, it can be advantageous. The example you gave of the dirtbike using a titanium rear spring has separate adjustment as is needed, though the factory did the R&D for you already so its pretty much set and only requires some fine tuning for the majority of riders. Rc cars, as you know, have pistons and various oil weights to accomplish dampening, but as of yet there is no method developed to adjust the compression and rebound strokes separate from one another.

EDIT: Bad memory here- the titanium springs actually rebound faster than conventional springs, making for 20-30% higher rebound values.

Its mentioned in the post below this one, but has anyone experimented with the tapered piston holes? May have to come up with a shock dyno for some quanitfiable results. While the 1:1 shocks seem more complex, I actually found them much easier to tune. We had charts and data that we could easily make 5 or 10% adjustments in the valving. Just not the same with the Rc shocks..

rcjunky1

iTrader: (10)

it is extremely easy to have differant compression and rebound, thats what tapered pistons do, the bottom tapers up to have more rebound for rougher tracks, so I'm sure the same priciple could be applied to tune it to the desired effect. HPI also already makes titanium springs for drifting.