Tandem riders - questions about bars & stem

[54ny77]

Couple of questions:

1) Want to swap out stoker bullhorn to reg. road bars w/dummy brake hoods. Bullhorn bar is ~45 or 46. Stoker is petite, 5', so am thinking 40 or 42 bars (hopefully wide enough to not hit my thighs). There's ~11cm of drop from my seat to top of stoker stem/bar top, if that matters. Does that bar sizing sound
about right?

2) Thoughts on carbon stoker bars? Dunno about the forces there if alu. is better or not. Stem is alu, till we dial in fit and then I'll likely get a fixed length stem of carbon or alu (or maybe Da Vinci ti).

3) Am eventually going to swap out captain (me) bar & stem. A little hesitant on doing carbon there, same comment re: forces on a tandem front end. Is that unfounded, or not? On my road bikes I only have one bike that's carbon/carbon stem/bar, everything else is aluminum.

Opinions and esp. experience welcome.

[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).

[54ny77]

Thanks that's helpful. We're still tinkering with fit & position but getting there.

As for carbon on the front (bar/stem), yeah I hear ya.

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).

[robt57]

My wife/stoker has shorter road stem [shim on capt seat post] and upside down bullhorn facing rearward. How's that for outside the box?

[GregL]

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).

+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

[bikinchris]

You will need to have bars as wide as your hips plus at least a fist.
On our Tandem, I found a set of Scott Drop In bars. Just in case we needed to get real aero.

[weisan]

You will be surprised -- a wide handlebar is a lot cheaper these days than you thought, maybe because of the recent "Pogačar" narrower is aero-er trend.

https://www.theproscloset.com/produc...ebar-31-8-48cm

[deluz]

We have 42cm FSA K-Wing bars.
The bars are close to same level as my saddle but I have narrow hips.
I choose those bars because my wife has arthritis in her hands and they have a good shape for her and they are carbon and very flexy so they absorb some road buzz. Being that your saddle is much higher you may be able to use narrower bars. Aluminum is fine unless the shape doesn't work for your stoker.

[54ny77]

thanks folks.

[zap]

Agree tandems are special beasts.

But, having seen mates bust aluminum bars (on singles) during hard efforts I'm not of the aluminum is best thought. I did crack a Thomson X4 stem on our oldest tandem

Both our tandems have carbon bars up front (plus forged stems).....our oldest tandem upgraded back in the early 2000's. We stand a lot (a must when tandeming) and I find the carbon bars to be a tad stiffer than the al bars we had in the past.

Agree going with road setup (stem and bar) for the stoker position. I think the stoker bars on our tandems are one size wider but not certain.