Revisiting an old tandem

With our usual favoured tandem out of action pending the removal of the sheared seatpost, I dusted off the spare tandem and we went out for a rather nice ride on a sunny day. I also replaced the seemingly perished tyres with new 28mm Continental GP5000 tyres. That was a struggle in its own right.

Longstaff tandem

While cleaning this tandem up, I was struck by its elegant classic appearance! In part this is due to the old-fashioned kit with which it's fitted out. The marathon frame was built in the mid-1990s, made to measure by George Longstaff for light fast riding, with a lovely flam Kingfisher Blue paint jon with gold lug lining. It has braze-ons for mudguards but not panniers. The tubing is 531 Special, which I think means it's a mixture of tubing types. The 'drainpipe' tube is a very elegant elliptical tube. As a consequence, the bike builds up into a pretty light tandem.

I bought a Campagnolo tandem chainset (which seem rare as hen's teeth these days) which seems to have been based on the Centaur MTB group then marketed by Campagnolo. I replaced the big ring with a 57 tooth one for time trialling. Unfortunately I seem to have mislaid the original chainring over the last three decades, which is a shame since I'd quite like to revert to a more normal ring which should make front shifting a bit more predictable.

I built the 40 spoke wheels with Mavic Module 3 CD rims and Sapim tandem spokes on a pair of Campagnolo tandem hubs (the rear has a screw-on 7-speed freewheel block). I originally built the wheels with 14G double butted spokes, but these weren't really strong enough and on one famous occasion, we broke several rear spokes on a day ride in the Scottish borders! Since I rebuilt the wheels with 13G butted tandem spokes, they've been fine. I have a Campagnolo triple fronth mech and a Chorus medium cage rear mech operated by old 8-speed Ergopower levers.

The Cinelli bars are mounted on an old style Cinelli quill stem. The stoker bars are actually cut down Cinelli drop bars mounted upside down. These don't offer a great deal of space for the stoker's hands. The stoker stem is a Longstaff one.

Since we moved south in 1999, we've not really used this bike a great deal, and probably not at all since 2013 when we started riding the Thorn tandem (see below).

So, how did our ride go?

I was initially a bit apprehensive, for a number of reasons. How would the ride 'feel'? Were the narrow tyres going to be an issue? How would the transmission behave, particularly the gear shifting on a triple chainset? Would the stoker be comfortable enough?

As it turned out, this was a lovely ride. We rode out on a loop into Bedfordshire, stopping at the Harrold country park for tea/coffee and bacon and egg rolls. I didn't have any issues with the gearing (though we didn't trouble the big 57 tooth chainring), the tyres were fine, and I estimate we were riding about 40% faster than on the Thorn tandem. While I found the ride very comfortable, the stoker position was a fair bit more cramped than on the Thorn tandem, and I doubt we'd be keen to spend a long day on this tandem (unless we can modify things a bit). The rear seat post does have an elastomer suspension, but I don't think it matches the Thudbuster post on the Thorn. 

We're quite keen to use the Longstaff tandem a bit more over the summer, but at the very least I plan to replace the current stoker bars with a wider tandem stoker bar from Satori. These are 48cm centre to centre, and should offer a bit more space than the existing 42cm cut down Cinelli bars. Whether any further modifications are on the cards depends on whether we actually use the bike much.

Over the 30 or so years we've been tandem cycling, we've had three tandems:

Our first tandem, and the one we learnt the subtle arts of tandem cycling, was a secondhand Dawes Super Galaxy. Here's a photo taken in 2012, on one of our summer tours in Scotland.

Dawes Super Galaxy tandem, resprayed in red.

This was a nice touring tandem, pretty much old school, with a marathon frame design. Over the years we had the frame repaired and resprayed, the gearing updated (always with a triple chainset, but eventually with a 9 speed cassette hub), and numerous other modifications. By the time we passed it on to friends, not much of the original tandem remained! It had an Arai rear drum brake and cantilever brakes front and rear. This tandem was a solid performer, but after two front tyre blowouts on steep descents, we bought a Thorn tandem for touring. We have fond memories of this bike, it was the one which enabled us to start off cycle touring.

The Longstaff tandem. After a few years of riding the Dawes, I decided to add to the growing stable of bikes by ordering a new frame from reknowned frame builder George Longstaff. 

Thorn Discovery Raven Twin. I bought this in 2013 and it has been our favoured tandem since. It's a double marathon design, with S&S couplings, so the frame can be split for convenient transport inside a car. I gave this a review over a series of articles. This frame offers a lot of space for the stoker and this, along with the fat tyres and Thudbuster rear seatpost, makes it the most comfortable of our tandems for the stoker. In use, it's a bit of a behemoth and while we trundle quite slowly, we always get there in the end. Except for the last day of our 2024 tour! While not a custom-built frame, this bike was built to my specifications (though I didn't deviate much from Thorn's recommendations).