Tandem Wheel Set

Our Cannondale Road Tandem is going to get new wheels. I have looked around for something that will be durable yet provide a significant performance boost by shedding a considerable amount of weight. Not wanting to spend the kind of money Rolf wants for their Vigor Tandem Wheel Set or Topolino’s AX3.0 Wheel Set, I have looked for other options. I finally settled on building my own set of wheels.

The first thing I needed to consider was what components I was going to use, I had some great success with DT Swiss R1.1 rims. Not the original R1.1 but the newer model with dual eyelets. My other choice was to use something like the Velocity Fusion or Deep V rims. I made a decision that the DT rims would be my choice.

Now with the rim choice made it was time to look at other components. unfortunately in the tandem hub world there are few choices, especially if you are looking for reasonable spoke counts. When I mean reasonable, I do not consider 40 or 48 spoke wheels if the intended use of the bike is club type of rides. If you are into loaded touring, then maybe. My stoker and I do not ride our tandem like that so something in a 32 spoke wheel will suffice and provide a nice balance between durability of a high spoke count wheel and the performance of a lighter, lower spoke count wheel. The problem was, there just isn’t a single Tandem hub in a 32 hole option.

So here I have got to think outside the box. I examined several higher spoke count hubs, to see how they were constructed. I also looked at mountain bike downhill hubs (DH hubs had an OLD measurement of 150mm, the tandem is 145mm, MTB hubs are 135mm). In nearly every case what I saw was that the difference between a MTB hub and a DH hub was simply a longer axle with the appropriate change in spacers to match.

With that knowledge in hand, the options appear to widen. I was now looking to see how to take either a DH hub or a MTB hub and convert it into a Tandem hub. The biggest concern is the availability of an axle in the 155mm range. I wanted to use off the shelf parts, to avoid the high cost of having something machined. Wheels Manufacturing has two such items available.

So now with a replacement axle I needed to find a hub to fit it in. It had to accept a 10mm quick release axle that was threaded for cones. There really is just one choice and that was Shimano. Looking over their technical documents I learned that nearly their entire MTB line of hubs, with the exception of the newest XT and XTR hubs all use 10mm axles. So the most readily available and cost effective hub to use was the 2007 Shimano XT non-disc Freehub model FH-M760.

The only thing left to decide on is spokes. Right now I am leaning toward either DT Competition DB Spokes or Wheelsmith DB-14 spokes. Either way brass nipples will be used to increase reliability. Since I still have to perform the hub conversion (see upcoming post), I have some time before this selection needs to be made.

All things said and done, I am hoping to have a bulletproof high-performance custom wheel set for the tandem. With a weight savings of nearly two pounds over the OEM supplied 40 spoke disc wheel set. It will be one of the easier weight loses I have ever done.