Vaaru Octane 64 review

If you’re into titanium bikes, the Octane 64 is a headline grabber, made almost exclusively from seamless 6Al/4V titanium tubes. If not, just know the Octane 64 will be one of the better titanium frames you’ll ever ride, and almost certainly the most rewarding.

The ‘Al’ in 6Al/4V refers to the aluminium content, the ‘V’ to vanadium, and the numbers are the percentage of each in the titanium alloy. Traditionally, titanium bikes are made from the slightly ‘softer’ 3Al/2.5V alloy, with 6/4 reserved for features such as BBs, dropouts and head tubes.

I am no metallurgist, but Vaaru founder James Beresford assures me that ‘6Al/4V is about 10% stiffer and 10% lighter than 3Al/2.5V, which helps handling and sprinting but makes for a frame weight around 1.4kg.’ Hence it is used throughout the Octane, save for the stays, which Beresford says he specced at 3/2.5 to aid compliance.

For a titanium frame 1.4kg is very good – I’d expect a decent 3/2.5 frame to come in at 1.6kg – and I’d agree that the handling is precise. Yet I wouldn’t call it overtly stiff; it does have a tendency to feel a tad sluggish out of the blocks. That said, once past around 20kmh it rewards pedalling effort and feels every bit the weaponry racer.

This is understandable because at just over 8kg the Octane isn’t going to be as zingy as a bike a kilo lighter, but once up to speed that weight manifests in the supercharged bulldozer feeling.

I do wonder what it might be like if the Octane’s rear stays were 6/4 titanium too and not 3/2.5, as stiff chainstays are crucial for efficient power transfer. Yet perhaps it’s a happy trade off, because if there’s one thing the Octane is, it’s smooth. 

All in the ingredients

On the road the Chris King freehub sounds like kittens purring in front of an Aga, and the aero-tuned Enve rims part the air like velvet curtains. Downstairs, Sram’s AXS whirs away like a kitchen of tiny robots serving up perfect shifts, while the voluminous and supple Vittoria tyres fizz like spilt champagne. Cobbles, scarred tarmac, potholes and even some gravel are dispatched by the Octane with ease.             

The wishlist-level components help but I’ve ridden these before on other bikes and, while they’re all superb, the Octane frameset ties them together in a way that feels like the bike has been designed as a homogenous system as opposed to being a series of nice things bolted together.

Is the secret the 6/4 tubing? Well, that must surely have something to do with it, as the Octane stands at least head if not shoulders above most other 3/2.5 titanium bikes I’ve ridden (for the record, Moots titanium bikes are 3/2.5 and very good). So why, then, aren’t other titanium bikes made out of seamless 6/4 tubing?

The answer, says Beresford, is that 6/4 tubing is difficult to work. Titanium alloy is a very hard material that gets harder as heat builds up during the manipulation process. This increases wear on tooling and takes more time (you have to machine titanium at slower speeds to avoid excessive heat build up, for example), which increases cost.

It’s why, he says, if 6/4 appears at all it’s as seam-welded tubes (where a metal sheet is rolled and welded along its length), which are easier to make. But to save weight tubes must have very thin walls, and seam-welded tubes cannot be easily butted at the ends. With such thin walls it’s easy to compromise the material with too much heat during fabrication, which can lead to failure down the line.

The Octane’s drawn tubes (seamless) are butted, offering up thicker ends to weld while thinning to 0.5mm wall thickness in the middle to save weight.

That has further advantages in that the down tube diameter for the Octane has been made 4mm wider – so stiffer again – than one might expect. So the use of seamless 6/4 tubes all comes down to economics.

It’s interesting, then, that Vaaru is charging such a competitive price. Cheaper titanium frames exist, but if you’re comparing top-tier brands – a tier in which Vaaru belongs – £3,100 for a frameset stacks up favourably. And Vaaru hasn’t just made a ‘nice’ titanium bike. There are flourishes here that show it has gone the extra mile. Not least the paint.

Hey, good lookin’

As one friend observed, the paint ‘looks like a pillar from a 1930s New York bank’, as if turned marble has been inserted into polished metal and offset with satin-finished bands. It’s a work of art, and the artist is FatCreations.

But unless you’re a garage in Port Talbot and you awake to find a Banksy painted on your side, works of art ain’t free, and this paintjob will cost you £750 plus £405 for the matching components.

Pricy but arguably worth it, and that does include £80 on what must be the most beautiful bottle cages in the world. Yet while the paint is an indulgence, it shouldn’t distract from some smart details.

Up top Vaaru has custom-machined spacers so the one-piece bars segue neatly into the head tube. Hoses run unfussily into frame and fork and, thanks to a chunky T47 bottom bracket, the rear hose enters at the down tube and re-emerges at the left chainstay, as opposed to coming awkwardly out of the frame and under the BB, as per many titanium bikes. Elsewhere are hidden eyelets for mudguards and, best of all, clearance for up to 32mm tyres.

This last point really seals the deal. Being able to fit such wide rubber, or slightly narrower but with mudguards, brings a whole new dimension to any bike, so long as the frame can cope.

And that’s key, because there are top-end carbon bikes into which fatter rubber will fit but that I’d be reticent to ride on anything but the road in pleasant weather. But being titanium and thus so robust, with the right tyres the Octane can happily stray into gravel territory if needed and will laugh in the face of salty roads and winter rain. 

None of this is to say the Octane 64 is a gravel bike or a winter hack. It is neither. But it is a highly refined mile-muncher, comfortable to a tee and genuinely racy. It’s a bike that will be as rewarding to ride in 10 years’ time as it was when you first threw a leg over. Even without the paint.

Spec

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