Quote:
Originally Posted by Tandem Rider
Tandems are notoriously hard on parts. I have always tried to err on the side of durability within reason. I run aluminum bars and stems on the front, my reasoning is I can steer a single just fine and compensate for broken parts quite well without catastrophe, been there done that. A tandem is a whole 'nother creature, try riding it "no hands" and get back to me.
As far as road bars on the stoker side Mrs TR refuses to ride bullhorns, I have found that it takes pretty wide bars to miss my thighs (at least 45 c-c bars) and I'm no big thighed sprinter in anyone's imagination. I have found that a road stem with a shim (Problemsolvers is your pal here) to fit the seatpost is the lightest and most economical way to set up the rear cockpit. I have been able to pretty easily duplicate Mrs TR's road bike position this way (other than bar width).
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+1. ^^^This is great advice^^^ My ex and I had our tandem set up almost exactly as described above. The only delta was an adjustable stoker stem since I sometimes rode with my daughter and piloted a blind person who was training for the Paralympics.
My ex and I are sprinter types who often stood while climbing the tandem. The amount of stress we put on tandem components was pretty significant. Muscling a tandem up a 15% grade, out of the saddle, made me replace bars and stems fairly often. We even broke a dropout on a tandem-specific carbon fork. Reliability was the number one consideration in my tandem component purchases.
Greg