The Tandem Corner

[NickJHP]

My wife and I have been riding tandems for almost 40 years, and have toured Australia fairly extensively on them. Here's our original tandem (which I put together in 1982) during a tour of Tasmania a couple of years later. Kuwahara tandem tubing set built by a friend, 48-spoke wheels on Bullseye hubs, Sugino AT tandem crankset, brakes were Mafac canitlever plus Arai drum brake, Bruce Gordon CrMo racks front and rear:



That tandem frame was never quite stiff enough when fully loaded front and rear for cycle camping, and would behave somewhat disconvertingly, so when MTBs arrived a few years later, I had the same friend build us a heavier duty tandem frame around 26" wheels. On this second frame, I got him to use a continuous length of 1-3/8" CrMo for the top tube and the same size for the down tube, and it was much better as a fully loaded touring machine. Here it is in far north Queensland, about to cross the Daintree River and continue heading north:



At about the turn of the century, I got around to building up a lightweight tandem for day riding and the occasional race. I purchased a Co-Motion Robusta frame directly from Co-Motion, and when built up, it weighs about 17kg (37lbs) complete with pedals and pump and four full water bottles. We take that out on some of the faster local bunch training rides and have some fun.

[t3racing]

Hi, as another Tandem riding married couple we get on very well when out on the bike having done a 205mile ride this year in 15hrs we had plenty of time to talk.
We run a triple setup with custom length cranks 175 [C] and 165[S] and quite a large range of 50/39/26 front then 12-34 rear so this allows us to climb most hills and we don't run out of gears on the flat. The best update we have done was going from 48 spoke touring wheels to a set of 32 spoke A-Force rims running tubeless. The bike accelerates quicker and holds onto it's speed easier making rolling terrain much more enjoyable.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk