S & S Couplers

Hi Forum members,

I'm considering having a frame built with S & S couplers for ease in traveling. Currently I'm riding a 7 year old carbon frame and am primarily thinking of replacing it with a titanium frame. I feel this frame type will work well with couplers. This new bike will become my primary bike for riding, hopefully. For those of you with S & S couplers, how do you like them? Can you feel the couplers flex at all? How well do they hold up over time? Any info you can provide on the couplers will be helpful.

Thanks so much!!

There are several of us with coupled bikes on the forum. I have a Waterford Steel with couplers. After a few trips, DH bought one for himself. If we putter and take our time, it still takes less than 2 hours to pack the two bikes up and get them into their boxes.

Ride-wise, you'll not know that the couplers are on the bike. There is no flex (unless you forgot to tighten down the coupler).

My bike has travelled now about 6 times. The couplers show nothing worse for the wear, but the frame has a multitude of "character developing" chips. Nekkid titanium would be a good choice.

For me, the S&S bike was the best investment I ever made. We travel by bike 2-3 times a year and having your own bike with its own quirks is priceless. And, while the suitcase always gets weighed and grumbled about, it flies for standard rates and cab drivers don't balk.

If you go with the S&S, I'll gladly send you my packing tutorial.

We have a Co-Motion tandem with S&S couplers. According to Co-Motion, they actually make the frame stronger than a non coupled frame. We travel with the bike several times a year, and disassemble and reassemble it in about 60-90 minutes each. They are very common on tandems because otherwise the bike won't breakdown small enough for the airlines.

The ti couplers in a ti frame combination works very well. You'll save money having your new ti bike built with the couplers, but it is usually possible to have it retrofitted. I started the process of having one of my ti bikes (Carl Strong) retrofitted with S&S couplers at Bilenky in Philadelphia. Unfortunately my top tube was 1 inch and the smallest couplers are 1-1/4 in diameter.

Another happy coupled tandem couple here. ;)

Some friends of ours (tomorrowhillfarm.com) have 2 sets of Seven bikes with S&S couplers. First they had steel road bikes made. They took them to Europe a few times.

This spring they had ti bikes made with wider tire clearance. They just took them to France for 5 weeks and rode some nasty gravel roads with them.

The road bikes have carbon forks and the ti bikes have steel Waterford forks. They prefer the ride of the steel forks now.

Some other people I know wanted S&S coupled bikes to take to Italy this year. They got Surly Travelers Check frames. These are about $1200 retail, but they found some for $900 each. I have seen some come up on ebay from time to time.

I had a steel terry isis retrofitted by bilenky. They do not flex, but actually increase frame stiffness. I thought it was the perfect travel solution. Much prefer it to my previous bike friday PRP. Beware though, that a titanium bike with s/s couplers will be heavier than a carbon bike.