South Salem Cycleworks Museum:
Teledyne Titan Frameset & Brochure
It's hard to believe that Teledyne Linair produced fewer than 2,000 of its famed Titan titanium framesets. At the time of their production, they seemed to be everywhere. Titans were made from 1973 through 1976. Along with the titanium Speedwells made in the U.K. and the Flemas in Germany, the Titan was part of the modern move from nonferrous frames as riders and makers searched for faster machines.
Titans were light, at about 4.5 pounds for the frame and fork, a little over 3 pounds for the frame alone (lugged steel frames of the era were a little under four pounds). They were made from Grade 3 CP Titanium straight gauge tubing in Gardena California. Fork crown and dropouts were investment-cast.
The first frames had problems, notably the front fork tips broke easily. Until they could produce a beefier set that wouldn't break, the fork tips on early frames had extra titanium added by the welders building the frames.
Because the frame had oversized downtubes and top tubes to make up for titanium's lower rigidity, the down tubes were swaged down for the era's clamp-on downtube shifters and cable guide (see picture below). Later production had internal sleeves at the necked-down sections to reinforce those areas. Teledyne supplied special oversize top tube brake cable clamps with each frame.
A 22-inch frameset had a 39 3/8" wheelbase, 21 7/8" top tube
Geometry: 74-degree head tube and 74.5-degree seat tube.
Our unfortunate Titan (note bent downtube) was an early frameset. It has the orginal, unreinforced front fork tips.
Teledyne Titan brochure:
This brochure should bring back memories to riders of a certain age.
Here's the inside of the brochure.
Close-up of page 2
Close-up of page 3
The back of the brochure. Somehow we ended up with a brochure from a Flemish distributor. Witberg is still in the metalworking and metallurgy business.
Here are the specs in Flemish.