I Bought a Cheap Titanium Road Bike Frame Online… It Didn’t Go Well…

Oof, where to start.

I bought a cheap titanium road bike frame, site unseen from AliExpress.

I gambled on the sizing.

It cost more than I thought.

It has some fairly fatal defects.

…

But I built it up anyway and here’s the story.

Oh, and it turned out not to be cheap after all.

So stick around for my:

“Top 5 fatal flaws in my mysteriously-cheap-not-cheap titanium bike bought off of China”.

But first…

How Did We Get Into This Mess?

The rationale for buying, building, birthing this bike is convoluted, confusing, illogical. Which coincidentally is the mission statement of this website.

It’s something to do with:

1. needing to get my ‘best bike’ off the indoor trainer;
2. my trusty Dawes advancing towards the great scrapheap in the sky; and
3. needing ‘content’.

You’re welcome.

Dealing with those priorities in order, briefly.

Freeing The Domane

I am a weak man, physically and mentally. I need my lightest, best fitting bike – the Trek Domane – available to do any distance, speed or amount of climbing that is not embarrassing. Also I’ve got some upgrades I want to make.

I can’t really do any of that if I have to remove it from the trainer – and my pain cave – each time I need it. Hassle does not promote regular use.

But I also need a bike permanently attached to the trainer.

A full time job, doggy childcare responsibilities and skyrocketing intolerance for inclement riding conditions requires the KICKR at full pecker 24/7, 52, 365, 5318008. I perhaps see a Zwift RIDE bike in my future. In the meantime we need a not-Domane.

Other Options For A Trainer Bike

I’m not putting my newish Ribble CGR on there. It’s the most all-condition bike I have. I need it for the winter and the Derbyshire shitroads.

I dalianced briefly with putting the trusty Dawes into indoor semi-retirement. The incompatible drivetrain and my inability to extract the bottom bracket put paid to that one.

Which made buying a titanium frame bike from China the only rational option.

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Buying A Titanium Road Bike Frame From AliExpress

Choosing the correct sized frame is fraught at the best of times. Transplant it to the internet and drag it through the hedge of cross-lingual confusion and we have a recipe for ‘much hilarity’.

Presumably I typed ‘road bike frame’ into the Aliexpress search box, saw the word ‘titanium’ in the results and my chimp brain creamed itself. Which I believe Steve Peters will cover in his next book.

So it would be ‘55 Ride’ from whom I’d be purchasing my next frame.

We can assume I wasn’t put off by the underwhelming claim that one unit had been sold before.

Having identified a frame at a price that whispered, ‘too good to be true, question mark?’ I attempted to interpret the sizing chart.

This involved an unscientific comparison with my known-good Ribble CGR frame – both cross-referencing Ribble’s own chart and wrangling the tape measure on the real life article. And good old British guesswork.

Disconcertingly, my pseudo-scientific rando-analysis determined that I needed both the extra large, extra small and somewhere in the middle size. All at the same time.

My big regret with the Trek Domane was going for the larger of the two suitable frames based on my bike fit. I look like a child on their dad’s bike.

Smaller is pro-er, as no one quite puts it.

Anyway, ruing the fact that stack and reach were both marked on the diagram but not mentioned in the accompanying dimension grid, I held my nose and clicked the buy button on the size 50.

A maybe-titanium monkey bike was on the way.

A Run In With The (Import) Tax Man

Delivery followed the usual AliExpress pattern: monitoring a variety of logistics websites, trying to decipher the updates, wondering if the store I’d purchased it from actually existed.

The frame was eventually dispatched and wendled its way around the globe. Then, with the global trade equivalent of a screech of disc brake, it stopped. And remained stopped for a long time.

Finally I discovered why the delivery was held up. I needed to pay customs duties before the frame could be released and delivered.

And – plot twist – the amount was, how you say, massive.

How massive? £171.71 massive.

I’ll give the total costs of the fully built up bike at the end of the video.

In the meantime, safe to say that my import export prowess has moved the project from the ‘worth a gamble’ bucket into the ‘expensive white elephant’ kennel.

Because I assume elephants live in kennels.

The Frame Arrives

The good thing about paying for this stuff with the proceeds of this channel is that it feels like play money and I can hide it from my wife. So the customs cock punch was largely forgotten when the frame turned up. In a remarkably small box.

My initial inspection was satisfactory. It felt light and there were no obvious defects. With ‘obvious’ doing a large job of work in that last sentence.

I was concerned that the featherlight feel was because I really had gone overboard in speccing a smaller frame.

But there was no going back. Someone was going to get a nice titanium road bike, even if it was one of my children.

Building Up The Bike

With the frame potentially being a bit pony, I wasn’t going to shower it with expensive new components.

I’d re-use and re-cycle where I could, harvesting the Dawes seatpost, stem, fork and handlebars.

I had to get a replacement saddle cos the Dawes one looked dreadful. A £36.61 gamble on a 3D printed one happened.

The wheels would be my existing Campagnolo Zondas, demoted from my best bike by a couple of Hunts. I said Hunts.

The groupset also came from AliExpress and was mainly maybe-Shimano Tiagra 10-speed. The idea being that I can share parts with the 10-speed 105 on my Trek – at least until that gets an upgrade.

The only ring-stinging bling came in the form of a shiny blue Hope headset. Because it seems I’m addicted to expensive blue Hope headsets.

The build, which I won’t cover start to finish, was without drama, other than it uncovered basically everything wrong with the frame.

So let’s get into my…

Top 5 Things Wrong With My Cheap But Also Expensive Titanium Bike Frame Bought From AliExpress With Little Or No Thought And More Than a Little Haste

The Head Tube

…is er, cock off.

Well, you can see it. The bottom opening isn’t straight. And no, this isn’t a result of my ham fisted headset installation.

I don’t think it will cause me a problem functionally. The steerer tube isn’t impinged. It looks a bit naff though.

Of more functional concern is issue number…

Downtube Cable Guides

I am 99% sure the cable guide on the underside of the downtube has been welded on the wrong way round.

The incoming cable ends from the shifters have nowhere to seat into. Instead they sit wedged against the back side of the guide. I’ve siliconed in some housing end caps to guide the bare cable coming out the other side and basically keep the drivetrain from exiting the chat.

Hopefully someone in the comments will tell me the guides are in fact correct and that I’m doing something wrong. In the meantime, I’d classify the shifting performance of the bike as ‘precarious with a side of order of impending cable snap’.

Tyre Clearance

There’s very little clearance for the rear tyre against the seat tube.

I think these are 25 or 28 inch tyres and the gap is the diameter of a gnat’s pube. It’s made even more dicey by the chunky front derailleur hanger protruding out to the back. So now it’s a toss up between a tyre blow out and a snapped gear cable as to what will cause the first breakdown.

And if it does puncture, removing the rear wheel is slightly more cumbersome than usual. Due to issue number 4.

The Quick Release

Unless I am in the midst of a months-long brainfart, I can’t seem to extract the wheel without taking out the quick release skewer entirely.

The nubnub – yes, that’s what it’s called – on the quick release can’t get around the rear derailleur, no matter how I massage it.

Maybe I can get a mini nubnub. Until then it’s an average speed release skewer.

Finally, in this rogue’s gallery of defects and confusions, number 5.

Brake Cable Guides

The guides for the rear brake cable, which occupies cable housing all the way along (okay…), require zip ties.

Which seems a bit naff. Maybe there are dedicated clips that look tidier but I’ve never heard of. But then neither have the people taking the promotional shots on the listing.

It’s functional but – how you say – a bit shit.

AliExpress Titanium Bike Build Costs

So how much has this white, kennel-dwelling elephant cost me?

I’ll whistle through the math…s. This isn’t Good Will Hunting.

Excluding the wheels and the fork, which I already had, but including my taxual pleasuring of His Majesty’s Govt, the cost of this project was £908.49.

If we call it £150 for those existing parts – mainly the wheels – we’re talking £1,060.

Which is … quite a lot for a shitbucket.

Let’s see. If the frame issues don’t turn out to be fatal, and it’s still riding in a couple of years, maybe I’ll upgrade it to bargain status.

But talking of riding…

How Does The Titanium AliExpress Bike Perform?

Answer: surprisingly well.

I’m no bike reviewer. I’ve not ridden a lot of different models. Or bikes.

But I like it. It feels nimble and responsive. And fast, although that might be my quadri-cannons on full chat.

I’m sure this performance is partly down to weight.

Without trying to save grams on the groupset and other components, the Ti Little Pony comes in at 8.98 kg. Which compares favourably to my carbon-framed Trek Domane (8.75kg), although less so since I upgraded to carbon wheels.

Incredibly, despite subverting the laws of physics and morality, the gear changes are precise, the indexing is ‘lob-on’ and it all sounds disconcertingly quiet.

Obviously I’m concerned about longevity. The cable guide bodge is a broken cable in waiting. The proximity of the front derailleur band bolt surely risks rubbing, and blowing, the tyre.

Goddamnit it though, I like the way it looks.

To the untrained eye, preferably without their glasses… standing 10 yards away… facing the opposite direction, it looks like a very smart bike.

What’s next for this mighty steed?

I’d consider switching to a one-by setup. Losing the front derailleur reduces cable snap risk by 50% and negates the need for the band from which to hang it.

With unlimited funds I could look to a fully electronic drivetrain and eschew use of the downtube guides entirely. But even using internet funny money and with the promise of ‘great content’, it feels weird to spend a lot more money on this Cleveland steamer.

So maybe, whilst I onanate, I’ll moor the bike to my KICKR indoor trainer, where ERG mode reduces the need to change gear and catastrophic cable failures won’t be quite so catastrophic.

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Monty is an enthusiastic road cyclist with only moderate talent. He started Sportive Cyclist in 2013 to record the journey to his first 100 mile ride, the RideLondon 100. Over time the blog has expanded to include training advice, gear reviews and road cycling tales, all from the perspective of a not-very-fit MAMIL. Since you're here, Monty would also like you to check out his YouTube channel. Also, Monty really needs to stop referring to himself in the third person.