Maiden voyage

Although it was time consuming and I had a couple of little setbacks, I managed to work round them and get the tandem reasonably roadworthy. All I've got left to do is get new seatposts (So I can fit them and the San Marco Rolls saddles rather than the fairly horrid saddles currently there) and a little bar mounted friction lever for controlling the Arai drum/drag brake.

We ordered two different sizes of seatposts and both were too small. Therefore, we ended up returning them and it's too much of a pain to keep doing that. We'll get the posts or inside of the tubes measured and try to order the right size this time. That will be good as I dislike both the seatposts on it now and the saddles attached to them. All being well, we'll have it totally refurbished by this time next week. It's all very exciting for me.

Today was our tandem test ride and what a day to pick. The weather was fantastic, probably the best this year. In bib-shorts and a longsleeve jersey I was very warm indeed, bald head uncovered and everything. Despite some nerves, we got a little ten miles of scooting about on our tandem (Although the first four were me alone testing the gears, brakes etc.) and it seemed okay. Sure it wasn't perfect and we've both quite a bit to get accustomed to but we will with time and it'll be great once we're more comfortable on it. Long may our tandem cycling continue.

What a difference three days makes

I'm just off the phone with SJS Cycles and am pleased to say the girl I was speaking to this time was very pleasant. Hoorah! Being the fickle and short memoried beast I am, I can now like them a bit more. Anyway, the reason I was ringing them was to see about getting something to control the tandem's Arai drag brake. The first item I saw was this which, so long as it's the right size, would definitely do the job. However, I'm a tight-fisted miser and didn't want to shell out £40 [GBP] for it when I've already got a spare set of decent downtube shifters. In phoning SJS, I was pointed in the direction of these. Again it all depends on the diameter of my handlebars but I could get them (And a barrel adjuster) and use one of the shifters I've already got. I know it'll probably only be a couple of pounds less than the unit I linked to above but somehow it seems like I'm getting more for my money. I guess it would give me a spare if anything happens to the drag brake lever I would be attaching.

In other progress, I've got my new brakes, brake levers, grips (Which will have to come off and back on again once I get a drag brake lever), shifters, cabling, cable stops and cable housing attached and ready to be adjusted and my wheels are both in for rebuilding with shiny new spokes. Hopefully they be with me sometime around the weekend and I can get adjusting the components/swearing profusely at how mechanically inept I am. I've also got my wheels, tubes, rim tape, saddles and computer ready to go once everything else is in place. I got the seatposts I had ordered but, alas, I had ordered the wrong size so back they went and another order was placed. Hopefully these seatposts will fit or it'll be the same all over again. In the meantime, I guess I could use the crappy seatposts on it but I'm not fond of them at all. Oh, just remembered, I could do with sticking a pannier rack on it too.

Just totalling up the stuff I bought specifically for the tandem (And that doesn't include the £350 [GBP] we paid for it or the saddles, pedals, pannier rack, wheel rebuilding or bits we already had) we've already spent£250.94 [GBP]. That's turning out less cheap than I may have hoped. Still, hopefully it'll be semi-decent and equivalent to a tandem at least twice that combined price.

There you go. I hope you're as suitably excited to read all that as I imagine you would be.

Cursed?

I don't know whether I'll be doing as much cursing as I thought in assembling some of our tandem parts or whether I'm just cursed when it comes to tandems.

When buying our tandem, the guy selling it gave us a pair of what I would call 'cable stops'. I'm not sure if that's the correct name or not but they're the bits which screw on near the top, at each side of the downtube for the gears' (I think. I'll be sure to check before running the cabling through) cable housing to 'finish off' in. I know I should have checked when we were getting them but it turns out he gave me two right-sided 'cable stops' rather than one of each.

I phoned the surly customer 'service' buggers at SJS Cycles this morning and they were able to add these to my existing order but it was an unpleasant experience speaking to them and I'll not be going there again in a hurry unless I've no other options (Which may well be the case with tandem parts). Don't get me wrong. It's not the shop SJS Cycles which is the problem. It appears to be good and stocks some great stuff difficult to find elsewhere but, to say the least, their telephone operators could be a little more civil. They definitely don't entice one to wish to ring them again with their unfriendly surly attitude. It's a shame really as the shop itself, as I mentioned, is good. Maybe I just caught them on an off day.

It seems also that Wiggle doesn't have one of the cheap seatposts we ordered in stock and will have to put in an order for it. That means my poor Stoker, Kirby Girl, is going to have to make do with an old seatpost for a while, unless Wiggle hurries on with getting the other one in. I know that sounds selfish, with me getting the new seatpost, but it makes more sense doing it that way. The Captain's seatpost is going to have the Stoker's bars and a bottle cage mount on it and I can't be assed taking them off and putting them on again.

On further inspection of the tandem, it seems there's a bit of undesirable motion in both bottom brackets. I think it's not enough to worry hugely about at the moment but it's certainly something to prepare for in the future. I've never changed the bottom bracket on a solo bike let alone a tandem. I hope it's easy. By the way, does anyone know if a tandem uses standard chains and what 'speed' of chain should be used for the left side?

Post 100: Tandem riding here we come

Well, there it is, our new tandem (If you left-click on the picture I think it'll show you a bigger version) in our messy garage. It's new to us but it sure as hell ain't new to the world. We just picked it up today and discovered the brakes aren't working (They just need adjusted) and three of the spokes in the rear wheel are broken so it was out with the wheel, over to our local wheelbuilder's (Who is a marvellous man for such things in all ways; speed, pleasantness, quality and price). He's going to completely respoke the rear wheel for us for a mere twelve pounds and hopes to have it done within four days. That's pretty bloomin' great service!

The frame and rims on the tandem seem pretty good and I reckon the wheels will be fine once they're respoked. At the moment, the front wheel seems okay so we'll not get new spokes on it until they start snapping. Hopefully that will be later rather than sooner.

The seatposts were of that variety where the bit the saddle connects to is a separate part held on by friction, rather than the sort I'm used to. I'm probably not describing it very well but I hope you know what I mean. Anyway, I didn't like them so I've ordered two new seatposts for it. Hopefully they'll be just dandy and I'll find I've ordered the right size. I did measure them but only with a steel rule so I'm not likely to be spot on to tenths of a millimetre.

I felt a bit bad slicing off the old bar grips. There was nothing actually wrong with them and they seemed in perfect condition but we have bought new ones and they're better. Four perfectly good grips chucked in the bin (Which was a cardboard box rather than a proper bin).

The tyres on the tandem were only 28mm thick (And the flipping inner tubes said 20/23mm on them!) so I've ordered some 32mm Schwalbe Marathon Pluses (As mentioned in my previous post). I've read some online tandem nerds rate the Marathon Pluses, so I hope we'll find them good too. Isn't it a bugger trying to get tyres off a tandem? I cut my knuckle open attempting to do so. Funnily enough, it wasn't terrible getting the first side of the tyre off the rim but the 'following' side wouldn't come easily. I imagine it'll be a nightmare trying to get the new tyres on when we get them. Hopefully that means they'll stay on well.

Earlier this evening I ordered some V-brakes and a 7 speed 'shifter pod'. I'm sure I'll be doing some swearing trying to get everything working when it all arrives. After much anger and frustration, everything should eventually come together and we'll have a reasonably pleasant tandem to ride.

So I don't forget, here's a list of the stuff we're changing:

• San Marco Rolls saddles instead of the saddles already there (Euch! Sweaty arses!)
• Respoke wheel(s)
• SRAM brake levers
  
• New seatposts (I can't be sure of the manufacturer but I think it was Push. They were cheap anyway)
• Avid V-brakes
• Replace gear and brake cabling and cable housing
  
• New bottle cages (Highly important obviously. Strangely, there's only a single cage on it) and funny wee bottle cage holder which fits onto a seatpost
  
• Shimano STX shifters
• Ergon bar grips
• TorTec pannier rack
• New pedals (Can't remember what makes)
• Sigma Sport BC1600 computer (Hopefully I'll be able to get the cadence to work with it)

I think that's it. That probably pushes it to about my limit when it comes to bicycle maintenance and that sort of gubbins. The only other thing I had thought of was getting some sort of cable disc brake for it but I need to know what would be suitable for the rear hub currently on the bike. Hopefully I'll find the drum brake currently on it is better than I imagine it might be.

All being well, we should have the tandem ready to use by this time next week. Wish me luck!

Tandem boredom update

As with all blogs on th'internet, this one ain't especially interesting to anyone other than the bugger who wrote it. It's just as well I'm the only person who ever looks near it then I guess.

After having to return our wonky tandem, we've agreed to buy a second-hand one from a bloke who owns a bike shop vaguely locally and should be collecting it towards the end of next week.

Our tandem to be is not a new bike by any stretch of the imagination and is a triple (Of course) seven speed with a Reynolds 531 (Hurrah!) frame (With a 'ladies' bit at the back, which seems slightly pointless as most woman aren't likely to be wearing dresses or skirts whilst cycling), downtube shifters and flat bars with a quill 'rising' stem. It's got an Arai drum brake at the back (Which I might change sometime in the future if I find it's not particularly good) and those cantilevers most touring bikes seem to have. I'm not especially enamoured with such brakes in my experiences with them and may stick some V-brakes on it instead. I'm hopefully (Naively?) assuming they will simply slot into the same holes on the frame currently resided within by the calipers. Obviously we'll stick new saddles on it immediately too. We've no desire to get other people's bum sweat stinking us up.

I've bought some new Ergon bar grips and SRAM brake levers for the tandem already (Presumptuously, as we don't have it yet), all from Chain Reaction. Just on that subject, I recommend Chain Reaction very highly. I know we live within about thirty miles of them and that must help but I seem to get nearly all my stuff the day after I've ordered it and that can include ordering in the afternoon. Their customer services is excellent too and I can't say enough in their favour. By the way, they're not paying me. This is all purely 'satisfied customer gushing'. Now where was I? Oh, that's right, I was going to mention about the downtube shifters et al. I've not used a downtube shifter on a bike for quite some years now. I think I was about thirteen the last time I used a bike with downtube shifters for any longer than a few minutes. To be honest, I'm not a great fan of them and hope I can put little 'stops' in where they are and use some mountain bike shifters instead. There seems to be quite a range of seven speed (Well, twenty-one speed I guess) mountain bike shifters out there and it should work with the low gearing of the tandem. That's the theory anyway. Wish me luck!

I reckon the quill stem might get changed with an Ahead type converter at some point too and the tyres could find themselves making way for some Schwalbe Marathon 32mm efforts as I've only heard good things about them and the Continentals (Which we use on our solo bikes and I rate very highly) currently on it look a bit on the skinny side for tandem usage. I'm sure they can find a home on one of our other bikes. Eventually, I've got an inkling the (700c) wheels might get changed to a different, newer model too but that's all for thought in the future. If everything works well and safely as is, not much will be getting changed at all. I'll stick up a photo of the tandem when we get it. It's not exactly a glamorous bike to look at but it should function.

Hopefully we will find everything to our satisfaction and get many many hours of happy tandeming. Here goes tandem experiment part 2...

Update

I know this is of no interest to anyone but I feel I hadn't finished off the previous post very well. It turned out the tandem we had bought was a bit buggered so we returned it and got our money back. We should be going to look at a, considerably cheaper, second-hand tandem sometime this week. Keep your fingers crossed for us please.