Searching for Our Ultimate Tandem – Part 2

Selection Criteria

After much reading and asking questions Nicole and I are confident in the choices that we are making with regard to a custom tandem. We started with the premise that we could improve on our current set up and what we think it would take to do exactly that.

One of the first things that we noted about our Dale is that Nicole seemed to need just a little more room in the stoker top tube to get in a real good position. We determined this fact by the comfort level that she had with her single bike. There are a few things with regard to single bike riding that are universal to all bikes you ride.

There are three basic contact points on a bike, the handlebars, pedals and saddle. They are in a fixed relationship rotating around the bottom bracket. Once you have established that relationship, it should remain constant from bike to bike to bike. We feel exactly the same way about the tandem.

For me getting in the proper position is relatively easy, I don’t have someone’s butt in my face. I can play with stem length and spacer height and bar width without regard for interfering with anyone or anything else. Nicole is not so fortunate. So after doing some research it seemed that Cannondale designs their tandem frames to be ridden very upright in the stoker compartment or by very short stokers. In order to get a top tube length that would allow Nicole to get in a good position we would have to get something in a Medium size. Problem is that Cannondale Medium Stoker size only come in a Jumbo Captain, it is simply too big and tall for me.

With this requirement we start looking at tandems with longer rear top tubes. This eliminates a lot of choices in stock tandems and almost forces us to go custom exclusively.

Our next criteria is stoker comfort. We are not a big fan of suspension seat posts and the inefficiency that it brings. I am also not a big fan of carbon seat posts although I do own one or two (only my TT bike has a carbon post, all others have alloy posts). I don’t feel that a sufficiently strong carbon seat post provides any measure of additional comfort that lowering your tire pressure a couple of PSI wouldn’t do better. Besides that there is very little or no weight savings either.

Cannondale’s aluminum tandem frame is stiff, well made and very road worthy, but to say it is comfortable would be a disservice to anyone buying a tandem. A better description might be that it is a bit chatty, in that every little nuance in the road surface is announced to the stoker by means of chatter. After many miles on the road the chatter tends to wear you out. This meant that we were going to look at other frame materials, in particular composites!

The third criteria for us is that I wanted something that was easy to upgrade. I was not looking for proprietary tandem only parts and I wanted something that was based on Shimano components as most of my tool collection was Shimano compatible. So out goes 145 mm or 160 mm rear axle spacing, in is the road standard 130 mm or mountain standard 135 mm. Out goes the disk brakes and in come standard road double pivot brakes. Components easily available at any bicycle shop around the country.

Our forth criteria, handling. It has to handle like our single bikes. Basically that means staying away from forks like the Cannondale Tandem Fatty with it’s overly large fork offset and something more road like instead. Some tandem tourists might say our requirement here would make a tandem more twitchy or unstable at some speeds, but when you ride your road single in the morning and then jump on the tandem in the afternoon you don’t want to be spending the first few miles getting used to the steering and handling.

Lastly, we are both weight weenies, we are looking to save weight any way we can. We try to do it where it makes sense. We also try to do it where it doesn’t cost us a lot of money too. Again that leads us right back to wheels and component selections, with frame weight being a secondary consideration. A few grams saved here or there soon adds up and you come from a 35 – 40 pound tandem into the sub-30 pound tandem in no time. With my previous upgrades I was able to shave off nearly 5 pounds off our Cannondale. This time around I don’t want to have to do that much upgrading or part swapping to get nearer my goal of a 30 pound tandem.

Next up, who are we looking at.