My daughter and I can be seen on Sunday’s riding around on our 2005 Cannondale Road Tandem. We are planning on using the tandem, training for The Assault on Marion. With such a 2008 goal in mind, we both thought that it would be better if we could help ourselves by lightening to load we would have to carry during that portion of the ride. The eventual goal is to reduce the weight of the Tandem by 5 pounds.To date we have removed 2.2 pounds.
This has been accomplished by removing the Avid BB-7 mechanical disc brakes and replacing them with Avid Single Digit 7 Linear pull brakes. The difference was noticeable. With disc brakes i could never seem to get all the rubbing from pads to rotor out of the equation. It seemed that there always was just a hair bit of drag on some portion of the wheel rotation. Partly my fault since I like to adjust brakes very close in, to minimize lever pull. The SD-7 also are much lighter.
The Tandem Specific Fatty Fork was also replaced with a Nashbar Cyclocross fork. The Nashbar fork is the same fork as the Winwood Muddy Cross Fork and is one of a handful of carbon forks rated for tandem use. I think it looks good on the front of the Cannondale, the Stoker wants it painted to match the old fork.
The next steps are to build up some new wheels, and replace the handlebars with something a little narrower. More pictures to post then.
Tags: Cannondale, cross fork, Nashbar, tandem, upgrades, Winwood
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Hello…Man i love reading your blog, interesting posts ! it was a great Sunday
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Marion, Nicole and I had a great time also. She was very impressed with the fact that you have a cycling club run by women, for women. That is one of the things she misses by spending all her riding time with me, not that I am complaining.
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Hello,
I came across this article in a search for a carbon fork that can use road brake calipers (Shimano 105 long reach) and have eyelets on the dropouts for fenders.
I am hoping that you could help me please. Looking at one of the pictures I see a hole just below the crown race on the Nashbar Cyclocross Fork that appears it may be able to mount a road caliper.
In you opinion, do you think this is possible with this Nashbar Cyclo fork?
Your help would be appreciated.
Thank you!
Doug R. -
I do not think the Nashbar or Winwood (they are supposed to be the same fork) would work with any set of road calipers. I think the hole is only usable as a fender mounting point. The only tandem forks I know that will accept road calipers are Reynolds and Alpha-Q.
Right now you can search eBay and find Reynolds tandem forks pretty cheap. They are getting out of the tandem fork business and seem to have liquidated their stock to dealers at some very good prices.
Alpha-Q tandem forks are expensive no matter where you look.
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Did you notice a loss of braking performance going from disc to Linear Pull(V-brakes?). Also, it doesn’t look like you have a travel agent so do you have to adjust the pads really close to the rims to work with road levers?
Thanks.
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Charles,
I did have to make sure the wheels were very true as I had to adjust the brakes very close to get the necessary stopping power needed for the tandem. I put travel agents on before I sold the tandem just to be on the safe side.
Our new tandem uses Shimano Dura-Ace road calipers and there is more than enough stopping power.
Bud
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