I might have ruined our tandem but I had to make an effort to make splittable. It’ll improve was I get some red spray paint on it. I was able to test the fit and the thing rests perfectly in the back of our Mk 1 TT without removing the rear wheel. This is big for our summer trip, but more importantly we’ll be able to go multimodal on trains.
The construction is is just some 5mm stainless I picked up from a junkyard, an M10 bolt and two 28.7mm ID sleeves with three binders each. Bike Friday seem to use these sleeves on their 20" tandems so the must work!
I took off the rear and made a new one from a junked Pelago Hanko. It now has all the binders needed for a rear rack as well as proper disc brake tabs. I changed the 24.5mm seat tube so that Nina can have some modern 27.2mm flexy post for her delicate butt cheeks.
And there is it: Full size tandem with fenders, racks and whatnot in the back of our late nineties sports car. Tomorrow we’ll head on our summer vacation.
car picture in the process. I painted the tandem and the fenders. it’s been megahot in Finland, like 82F/28C, which reaaally helps with the paint drying.
The bike works great. Now I can scrap it and start building a new frame from scratch The splits have caused no trouble, no annoying noises or wobbles.
We rode the bike some 80km in +30°C/86F heat and were overtaking roadies (until we had to take an icecream break). Our average moving speed was over 29km/h which I couldn’t even have dreamed of when riding on our separate bikes. So all and all pretty successfull project.
size 54 bike usually fits with the handlebar sticking between front seats, front wheel removed and back seats folded. we’ve been traveling with this car around ten years with two bikes and our bags in the back. sometimes two and a half bikes. I’m not saying it’s smart or handy, but works for us.
I added some canti posts on a frame I built to a long time ago. Winters on the salted Helsinki bike paths had really taken a toll on the frame, but nothing disastrous yet. Apparently Paragon stopped making these posts, making this bike an instant rarity.
I noticed my local industrial supplier had started stocking Tesa 4287 at 25mm width. One roll is 66 meters and costs 7€/$8.25. In my experience this is the best bang for buck for any tubeless tape.
We’ve got tickets booked to Milan for May and the tandem needed some attention. I had add elevated cable stops for cable splitters and I started working on a new lighter front rack. Making a rack is so pleasant when you sketch it out in CAD first and print a drawing
I continued working on the front rack till I ran out of argon. I planned using Ortlieb sport rollers as panniers - light, water proof a seriously unaesthetic. I have been thinking of modifying swedish Kånken schoolbags as front panniers for a while. I just like the look.
Oh, I forgot to mention - Stan’s (as are other brands) tape is an off-the-shelf Tesa part number. I can’t recall which it is, but it’s not hard to figure out.
I finished my quickie pannier rack build. All 10mm stainless tig welded with a few braze-ons. The front rack is all mine weighing 1.1 kg. For the rear I chopped and lowered a Pelago rack and added wings for low-riding pannier bags. I brazed some bottle cage mounts at the ends of the horizontal bars for storing spare M5 bolts.
We’ll be running a ragtag party of Ortlieb and Fjällräven bägs because, why not. The next tandem will have everything color coordinated
We did a test packing and ride with the new pannier racks and the bike rides superb, not wobbly at all. We’re not packing that much since there is no camping gear needed.
I used LOXX-type quick releases to attach the rear of the handlebar bag to the front rack. I have seen some builders use them on framebags as well as you can get them in M5.
First time packing the tandem for a flight. Got a bicycle box from a shop for the frame, another box holds the front fork, tire and handlebar + front bag and all the tools.
Norwegian has 23kg (50 pounds) max weight for bike boxes and ours are tipping the scale at 22 + 19. About 10 will be left at the Bounce luggage storage by the airport.
The splits have caused no trouble, no annoying noises or wobbles.
