Tandems of the forum

Ahh yours is actually a grey one! I could only find one example of the colour on the internets, but loads of bluey ones (as mine was). Any idea what year?

No idea I'm afraid.... looks like roughly the same vintage as yours... Certainly recognise the super flexy description!

Went up to Yorkshire to pick this little baby up this weekend....

Roll on the Surrey 100!

by coincidence i was having a little picnic by the canal on sunday and saw one of those whizz by exactly the same colour, that wasnt you was it steve?

Not this time...unless it was a canal near Gargrave or Bolton Abbey! We'll definitely be whizzing along the towpaths soon tho!

Went up to Yorkshire to pick this little baby up this weekend....

Roll on the Surrey 100!

As I said in the London 100 thread, it looks great!

I have yet to see the Orbit Bob Jackson frameset in the flesh, but it looks lovely.

I am having trouble counting the brakes - disc and V up front (operated by the captain?) and what's at the rear? (the stoker looks to have a lever?).

Great colour as well.

Yep, 4 brakes in total F+R discs operated as normal, front V on a bar end lever (parking brake/backup), rear V operated by stoker (extra/backup). The plan is to use it for some tours in undeveloped areas, hence all the backups and 26" wheels.... Took a lot of deciding on the colour, but I reckon we got it right in the end - "Flamboyant Amber"

Cool setup. We had a rear V on the old tandem - we used it occasionally in the big mountains.

Looks like a serious machine Steves! I'm jealous of all the modern wizardry.

I never upload our tandem onto here, so here it is as of a few weeks ago on a short camping trip.

Have since acquired a ortlieb handlebar bag... in yellow.

spam alert

Forum tandem ride is coming

http://www.lfgss.com/events/345/

Hi there, my girlfriend and I have been pondering a tandem for a while and, having now got our own place nr Wembley (with garden space - winner!) I've been keeping my eyes skinned on ebay.

I was wondering if anyone could volunteer some advice on frames/builders to aim for/avoid? There's an 80s Motobecane (here) that could be a good frame to start with but I don't want to end up investing loads of time/money in a fundamentally poor frame...

There's a couple ready-to-go tandems I've seen second hand (here and here), would they be a better starting place?

Looking forward to the tandem experience!

What do you want to be doing with it? Novelty pootling, serious pootling, touring? I'd avoid anything that says vintage in the title if you're after anything but the first one... That Burley looks good and serious with some sensible gear on it, and the Dawes is a good price for a loved example. The fact that they've got the timing cranks in antiphase is curious though - it shows they either definitely knew what they were doing with it or totally didn't....

If you end up driving out somewhere to pick one up, I think I've got a special tandem roofrack thing somewhere that you're welcome to borrow, the previous owner of mine threw it in for an extra tenner but I've never used it. (though with some minor disassembling they're quite easy to fit into a reasonably normal sized car)

Serious pootling to start and working towards touring.
The plan was either going to get just a frame and build around that or try and get something that's a good place to start with. There's a second Dawes (here) that looks like it could give lots of flexibility, has the advantage of racks already and a disc rather than a drum for a third brake.
It's mostly a question over whether to get a newer frame (with newer frame advantages, like disc mounts and more lugs) or an older one (cheaper, but lots of new parts needed). I'm a little worried that that Dawes Super Galaxy has no third brake - how hard is it to track down a decent drum brake?

The arai ones are pretty tricky to source now. I'm not sure if a drum is worth the hassle - we did mountains heavily laden with only two rim brakes with no issues, and @Hovis has scrapped his, I think. We also met a couple with a beautiful custom co-motion (couplers and all) and they were solely doing mountains – their holiday was playing in the picos –with just ultegra rim brakes. Not too heavily laden though.
If I was doing everything from scratch I'd try and start with discs and a modern 145 spaced frame because it offers the greatest variety of modern tandem bits, as opposed to my cobbled together collection of hard-wearing touring bits and tandem-specific where I could fit them. The in-between option is to get a middling frame, go threadless, stick a wound-up fork with disc mounts in there and have a disc on the front and rim on the back (do wound ups come in 1inch? Who knows).

how hard is it to track down a decent drum brake?

Not that hard, as I have one that I am no longer using.

Do you really need a third brake though? Both myself and 6pt have done tours with two rim brakes only and nothing catastrophic has happened. I did run the drum brake for a bit but didn't ever use it other than for novelty purposes.

Discs are awesome though

^ Yeah, what he said.

Yeah, that's where that Dawes Galaxy Twin is winning as it has disc mounts. I've got discs on my commuter and they are just great, whatever the weather. The Burley has a drum but no disc mount on the rear, so an upgrade would be tricky. Otherwise it looks spot on.

Thanks for the advice, I think something that's compatible with modern gear is a good shout too.

Edit: tandem wound up forks do come in 1", but not with disc mounts. 1 1/8" headtube is a big plus of new frames!

We did Dartmoor in the rain a few years back and just couldn't stop. It wasn't fun.

If anyone does know of a nice 1inch touring fork with disc mounts, do tell.

My faithful 1979 Pashley Ladyback Tandem now has a crack on the head tube. My 7yo daughter loves it so I now need a new set up. The Dolan tandem framesets look like great value and have a rear disc brake brazeons. Anyone got one or heard anything about them? Google doesn't seem to come up with much.

I saw one in the flesh the other day, looked quick

speaking of looking quick, from the tandem ride:
https://vimeo.com/106097204

The track ones don't seem to like to stay straight for very long, that said though they haven't cracked like a lot of the other brand tandems I've seen have.

Chap on Peugeot have saddle too high.

#pedant