Tandem Build

Hi all!

As some of you know, I ride a recumbent bike. My partner rides a Specialized Ruby, and when we ride together, it's hard for us to stay together as I am a stronger rider.

Tandem recumbent bikes are great, but the issue with many of them is that the seat heights are very high at 25" or more. The most important thing with a recumbent bike is to be securely flat footed at stops and starts. With that high a seat height, that is not possible.

Longbikes in Colorado builds both traditional and recumbent tandems: www.longbikes.com So, I am looking at having him build a tandem with a seat height of about 17", and perhaps a monotube frame. Greg is a great guy to chat with, an engineer, and strangley enough, not a bicyclist. He designs some very different recumbents with underseat steering, but his welds look beautiful on his bikes.

So, I am hoping to model the tandem much like my Bacchetta Ti Aero, similar monotube and seat design. Then we can do the Tour de Tucson together, what a blast!

Hi Lisa,

My husband and I used to have a Ryan recumbent tandem with USS. Ryan, which was based in Boston, was bought out by Longbikes. In any event, the bike was great! We were plenty low to the ground and could easily put our feet down flat footed. We loved the bike, but one drawback was its 10' length. We did have S&S couplers on it, but the turning radius was huge. Another drawback was how slow it was on climbs. We screamed downhill and were fairly fast on flats, but very slow on any kind of climb (even gentle ones). We ended up trading it in so we could keep up with folks in the bike club we enjoyed riding with.

One of the best tandem builders in the country is Todd at daVinci Tandems in Colorado. If you aren't dead set on a recumbent style look at a da Vinci tandem with the independent coasting mechanism. These are hand built and Todd is a genius engineer but also an avid cyclist.

Just remembered the Counterpoint Opus, but I don't think it's still made. The captain sat in back on a an upright frame, and the stoker in front, recumbent. I saw a few of them back in the days when we were riding tandem (80s/90s), and I thought they looked like a lot of fun!

Yes, I am dead set on a recumbent tandem, the heck with saddle sores and back and neck pain! We had a recumbent trike but it weighed in at 77lbs, talk about a bear to climb hills with.

The Hase Pino is an odd beast and still available:

http://www.bike123.com/images/Hase%20Pino%203.jpg


Greg can make this tandem come in at under 50lbs, and I think a two wheeled beast will climb so much better than the trike! Carbon hardshell seats too will lighten her up, so we will see what happens.

Neat to hear that others have ridden recumbent! It truly is a blast! But alas, we only represent about 1% of the population.

Bilenky makes a tandem like that. I talked with a guy at the LBS who said he saw one couple doing the (oh Blast! What's that called?) tour from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego on one.

http://www.bilenky.com/viewpnt.html

It probably wouldn't pass your flat-foot test, though.

I've always wanted to try one, but have never had a chance. It's probably just as well, I'm not sure my marriage can survive a divorce cycle.