Back to the Tandem

Talking to my lovely wife the other evening we decided sod it, let’s get on with the tandem. I have been holding off buying the rims on the (extremely, stupidly, remote)  offchance that I’d find some cheaper on eBay. Yeah, like you find 48 hole 650b rims kicking around on eBay every other week…

Anyway we agreed to go ahead and buy those old stock 650b Wolber rims I saw on SJS cycles. At £50 each they were pricey, but they are also good quality, strong classics. Trouble is, they are all sold now. Moral: never hesitate.

Hmm back to the drawing board. A few disconsolate trawls of eBay and Google with no luck. Saw a few tandems going cheap, but none like what I have in mind.

In my trawls however I was reminded of an earlier search which had turned up Velocity as a manufacturer of 650b rims. I decided again to try and find a distributor in the UK. Anyone who is interested in 650b mountain bikes will have heard of Velocity rims. They are an Australian manufacturer and have gained quite a reputation for excellent cycle rims, with a fair sized following in the USA. What is more they make all sorts of sizes including 650b. They even do 650A (590 mm) but even I have to agree that’s pretty obscure, although one of our old 3-speed town bikes does have them and they look great with white wall tyres.

So, I found Velocity’s US web site easily enough, but a UK site was nonexistent. And finding Velocity’s Australian web site wasn’t easy either until I found a link on the US site. Anyway having found them I dropped them an email and asked if they’d do a Velocity Synergy 650b 48 hole version. After a few days I had a friendly email saying they are going to do a batch in silver soon and I could buy them via a reseller.

Now as luck would have it, I’m an ex-pat Aussie so I looked up their list of resellers and found one near my parents’ place, Ken Self Cycles. By a coincidence my first 10 speed in the 1970’s was a beautiful silver Ken Self with 27 x 1 1/4″ wheels . I did a load of cycle tours on that bike in my teens and sadly it was stolen when I was about 20.

Anyway, enough on that. I’m sitting up waiting until midnight so I can give Ken Self’s a call to ask about ordering the rims. Not a lot else to do so may as well update the blog. I did email them but I’m not sure how often they check their email as there hasn’t been a response. Probably as often as they update their blogs, bless ’em.

From what I remember they were a brilliant local bike shop and there is something nice about going back to them from the other side of the world to buy a part some 30 years after they sold me my first decent bike.

How will I get them to the UK? Easy – my parents are coming to London later this year. Hope they’re travelling light!

Tandem Musings : Part 2

Not a lot of movement on the tandem front lately, but I picked up a front hub now – a 48 hole Quando disc hub with a solid bolt-through axle. So I am now kind of committed to the 48 spoke format. I have read mixed reviews on the Quandos at MTBR.com but these seem to have nice smooth bearings and look well made so I’m prepared to take the risk. As ever the negative comments seem to come from people with minimal mechanical knowledge, I am sure a lot rests on setup and maintenance.

I have not yet had a proper look at these ones so I don’t know if they are sealed or cup and cone. They look like sealed to me but the online reviews suggest cup and cone. Anyway they run smooth so that’s the main thing.

I am still planning on 650B rims and a generally retro look apart from the drivetrain. It will have modern disc brakes and probably modern gears although I may yet be tempted to go for retro friction gears – for a start I can get top end kit way cheaper and secondly I’m quite happy using friction shift.

I must take a few photos, my blog is looking a bit dull…

Just found this article on DIY tandem drivetrains by John S Allen, one of the posthumous torchbearers for Sheldon Brown. I am now convinced to build my own single sided drivetrain for the tandem.

And an interesting discussion on the pros and cons of disc brakes on tandems – I am still going to use discs, but I’ll take some pointers as to which discs to use.

Tandem Musings

In the background to getting the Falcon sorted out, I’m thinking about what components we’re going to need for the tandem. Being an old track frame of unknown origins we have a sort of free hand. I think it’d be good to retain some integrity with the original frame geometry and setup, but some stuff can be cheerfully modernised.

For example it does not appear to have had brakes fitted originally, clearly to use it on the road we need these. Being a tandem we’d need good brakes so why not fit the best – hydraulic discs?

Second, we need good strong wheels. 48 spokes is very strong, and could even be used off road. I could therefore build up a set of 26″ MTB wheels with 48 spoke hubs and discs quite easily. But the frame was built for old school 26″ x 1 3/8 road wheels, a.k.a. 650B and now enjoying a fringe resurgence in the USA as the 27.5″ MTB format (in between 26″ and 29er).

Now I have an eccentric streak and I sort of like that idea. First, the 650B rim size is actually true to the frame. Second, I can get MTB or road tyres for it. Third it would result in stronger wheels than 700c or 29er due to the slightly smaller diameter. Fourth it retains better ground clearance and possibly speed than could be achieved using 26″ MTB wheels.

So I have been digging about. I scored a Halo 48 spoke rear disc hub on eBay a while ago for £19. Absolute bargain, these are well over £100 new. And amazingly it fits in the rear dropouts with only a bit of stretching. I’m looking for a 48 spoke front disc hub now. I’ll lace whatever rims I decide on with Sapim strong single butted 2.3mm spokes. That should result in a seriously strong wheel, suitable for on and off road touring.

More recently I have found some new old stock 48 spoke 650B rims. They are pricey at £50 each, but probably well worth it and being a classic road rim, very true to the look of the tandem. They are also top quality from a now defunct european manufacturer. So I am very tempted but it will have to wait till I can spare the cash I suspect.

I have found in the UK that 650B old stock road tyres are not hard to find, as this was a very common town bike or 3-speed size, so I can shoe it for a very reasonable price. The last bit was to find suitable off road tyres, which seem nonexistent in the UK. Knowing of the 650B MTB movement in the States I looked there and have now found some excellent ones available so I’d probably buy some in. I want the option of on or off road tyres, not that we’d go seriously hard core off road but some moderate XC is easily on the cards with a strong steel frame and a suitably rugged setup. Maybe we could build her up as a tandem cyclocrosser!

I just found this blog about 650B MTBs, it’s got lots of useful information on 650B tyres and rims.

The perils of eBay and wine

Vintage Tandem frame

On Saturday my wife and I had several glasses of wine and browsed eBay looking for a road frame for her to do up, possibly as a tourer (note to self, I haven’t got a tourer either – yet). In the process we stumbled across some tandems and joked about building up a classic tandem as a really beefy tourer. We saw a few tatty old tandems and a lovely vintage one at a pretty huge price. None really appealed.

Not that we were seriously looking anyway, mind.

Our next discovery was quite interesting – a 1930’s or 40’s track tandem frame built with either Reynolds or Accles & Pollock tubing according to the seller. It was much more attractive to my inexperienced eye with lots of parallel lines and quite a vintage racing look to it. It reminded me a lot of this image at Classic Lightweights UK. It is a singlespeed track racer – built for two.

Ugly Tandem Frame

So then we got into the aesthetics of tandems… many have a really wonky look with a front crossbar in traditional format then a wierdly dropped rear crossbar to allow for the often smaller female “stoker”. Some frames do this well but many seem to have been thrown together at random, like the image on the left. No two tubes seem to be parallel which to me looks ugly.

We kept looking around but few others stood out. We found a lovely frame for my wife (a Graham Weigh) of about 20 years old and small size, but in the end we missed out as the bidding went mental.

Tandem Side View

Missing a few bits…

In the meantime, we looked again at the old red tandem frame. It really was frame only, the wheels and bars were just as a demonstration of how it could look (they worked). The seller had it on at £39.99 starting bid which seemed insanely cheap. There were no bids yet so, on a whim, I put a bid of £40.00 on using my wife’s account. It wasn’t much and it was listed as being not far from here so a pity not to have a go. Anyway I knew at least one chancer would bid more than that. Or so I thought…

By sunday night we were nervously checking the eBay stats. Nobody – absolutely nobody – appeared to be interested in the tandem. All someone needed to do was bid £41 and we’d be off the hook. Nobody ever wins something on eBay at a penny over the asking price except in last minute snipes.

Well the time came and nobody did bid. We are now the slightly startled owners of a classic racing tandem frame and forks. It might double as a useful girder in the roof of the house.

We’ve now been in touch with the seller, who sounds like a lovely old bike nut called Stan. It’s growing on us…