Tandem pictures

[Bonefishblues]

from the interweb; vintage French 'Reyhand' tandem



Circa 1938, with some later additions.

Within two years of this machine being constructed, it's builder André Reiss was a casualty in WWII. You can read more about this machine here;

https://vintagebicycle.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/reyhand-tandem-type-speciale-c-19389/

cheers

I think that's lovely as-is. That has so much attention to detail from the builder, clearly.

[mig]

Very good, how big is the back chainwheel? Was the steerer (pilot?) smaller than the stoker? Is that normal?

Pretty sure the drive wheel was a 62 on a 12-28 8sp cassette

Of all the tandems i raced on, and i was always the stoker, only one had a pilot taller than my 178cm, Eric wasn't just shorter than me but had short legs too

There isn't really any convention on size front to back, you might think so looking at off the peg machines. The pilot needs a lot of upper body strength to control the machine, most often in mixed couples that will be the male and their partners are very often shorter too (i do know of mixed teams where the fairer sex is pilot but its less common). When its a same sex pairing it could go either way. Apart from being strong enough, the pilot is usually in charge of gears and brakes and so is wearing several hats, by contrast, the stoker will just be concentrating on putting out the watts!

Of course, things may be a bit more relaxed on leisure rides / touring although one couple i knew wouldn't talk to each other at all on the tandem!

decent times those. on which courses did you do them? from sheffield i'm guessing you went on the A1 courses at ranby...??

i used to be a stoker for a smaller pilot. the beack was never quite long enough for me although we adapted the 'bars so i could reach forward and around the pilot quite a way. we had a 61T chainring x 8spd and sometimes used an 11 up cassette although that top gear was bonkers really. we could sometimes need a bit of an extra shove to get going especially if the start was a touch uphill.

i never did quite get to grips with the science of tandem frames - marathon tubes and shaped tubes between the BBs. we spoke to a well known framebuilder once to build us one but he pretty much flat refused saying that they were a nightmare to get straight enough.

[Brucey]

simply because we (the then GF and I) had one, I modified our Dawes Super Gal tandem to do a few time trials. Mods consisted of 46T timing chainrings, much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the rear bottom bracket (which failed with monotonous regularity), some bigger chainrings (most often a 50-57 setup), some smaller sprockets (a 12-up 7s freewheel), and some sprint wheels built with 36h LF campag Nuovo record hubs (with special long axle and skewer) and Mavic Monthlery 'Route' rims. AFAICT the Monthlery Route rim used the same extrusion that, once heat treated and anodised, became the fabled Mavic SSC rim. No drag brake of course.

With the GF on board we managed 20'-30" in a club '10' and with one of my chums (who was about as quick as me on a solo) stoking it, it was a minute faster than that. Both partners -fortunately- had a pedalling style that was close enough to my own that we meshed well. Had we more often ridden hiller courses, bigger chainrings would have been a good idea; we were quite often spun out on 57/12 on downhill sections. I dunno how fast that would have been, I have not worked it out, but that would have been at least 110rpm on that gear, so 'quite fast' then. Thinking about it, maybe I wouldn't have been happy going any faster than that; it always seemed to me that the tubs were mere seconds away from letting go, which they occasionally did....

cheers

[tatanab]

The regular stoker on the tandem trike (pictured on page 1) also stoked for time trials on my tandem bicycle - a similar vintage Sun Wasp. No great big gears because both machines were general purpose. We had the same pedalling style and saddle height so could swap back and front on the trike but never on the bike where I always rode the front. Because we both often rode fixed we had a habit of pedalling through bends. After one event on the tandem bike he said he thought we were close to losing it on a fast offset roundabout because he could feel the end of the toestrap brushing the ground; I told him it was closer than he thought because I was weighing up the field gate.

[roubaixtuesday]

simply because we (the then GF and I) had one, I modified our Dawes Super Gal tandem to do a few time trials. Mods consisted of 46T timing chainrings, much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the rear bottom bracket (which failed with monotonous regularity), some bigger chainrings (most often a 50-57 setup), some smaller sprockets (a 12-up 7s freewheel), and some sprint wheels built with 36h LF campag Nuovo record hubs (with special long axle and skewer) and Mavic Monthlery 'Route' rims. AFAICT the Monthlery Route rim used the same extrusion that, once heat treated and anodised, became the fabled Mavic SSC rim. No drag brake of course.

With the GF on board we managed 20'-30" in a club '10' and with one of my chums (who was about as quick as me on a solo) stoking it, it was a minute faster than that. Both partners -fortunately- had a pedalling style that was close enough to my own that we meshed well. Had we more often ridden hiller courses, bigger chainrings would have been a good idea; we were quite often spun out on 57/12 on downhill sections. I dunno how fast that would have been, I have not worked it out, but that would have been at least 110rpm on that gear, so 'quite fast' then. Thinking about it, maybe I wouldn't have been happy going any faster than that; it always seemed to me that the tubs were mere seconds away from letting go, which they occasionally did....

cheers

We'd not get anywhere near you on the flat, but before getting our drag brake fitted, long descents worried me, so I'd always leave braking as late as possible.

On one memorable occasion on the Rosneath peninsula, we recorded 57mph...

[mig]

the speeds can feel crazy sometimes can't they? i remember barreling up the A1 towards a turn in a 10 doing 46 mph on a slight downhill and considering just how much rubber was on the road and just how flimsy it felt when we fitted it the day before!

[tatanab]

If you want a seriously fast tandem, try this one - especially with the pair of seriously quick riders on it. The tandem got banned by CTT pretty quickly.

[SimonCelsa]

That seems an unusual drivetrain set up. Is it a super long chain from the pilot triple crankset (?) to the rear cassette, or has someone cocked up the installation? Can't quite make it out. Maybe I'm having a 'dense' moment.....

edit: sorry, referring to the French 'Reyhand' tandem picture

[tatanab]

That seems an unusual drivetrain set up. Is it a super long chain from the pilot triple crankset
edit: sorry, referring to the French 'Reyhand' tandem picture

That is a perfectly reasonable way of running the chain, especially on a machine with a triple chainset and short chainstays. No chainline problems at all I've seen it done many times, often with kiddy cranke on the back connected directly to the left hand chainring on the front.

[gaz]

Very rarely sees the light of day, no plans to part with it.

[speedsixdave]

If you want a seriously fast tandem, try this one - especially with the pair of seriously quick riders on it. The tandem got banned by CTT pretty quickly.
GL tandem.jpg

Tatanab, you have saved my sanity! I remember seeing that in the Comic in (I'm guessing from the outfits about) 1991 and then have found no record of it anywhere, so have spent much of the last 30 years thinking I imagined it.

Any idea who built it? It's a brilliant bit of lateral thinking for a stupid world that wants to go as fast as humanly possible but won't allow fairings!

[MikeDee]

If you want a seriously fast tandem, try this one - especially with the pair of seriously quick riders on it. The tandem got banned by CTT pretty quickly.

GL tandem.jpg

Riding that, you wouldn't know whether you're coming or going.

[philvantwo]

Its Glenn longland, lovely bloke. He's on Twitter so you could ask him about it.

[foxyrider]

low
decent times those. on which courses did you do them? from sheffield i'm guessing you went on the A1 courses at ranby...??

i used to be a stoker for a smaller pilot. the beack was never quite long enough for me although we adapted the 'bars so i could reach forward and around the pilot quite a way. we had a 61T chainring x 8spd and sometimes used an 11 up cassette although that top gear was bonkers really. we could sometimes need a bit of an extra shove to get going especially if the start was a touch uphill.

i never did quite get to grips with the science of tandem frames - marathon tubes and shaped tubes between the BBs. we spoke to a well known framebuilder once to build us one but he pretty much flat refused saying that they were a nightmare to get straight enough.

I think most of the rides on that machine were on A and C courses, tended to ride with another chap on the O and V's. If i can find the pic of that machine i'll put it up but we did some seriously fast times, 17,45 for 10 and 47,45 for 25, we even got within a nats of an 18 on a lane course in Lincolnshire that had a dead turn, remember them? A solid 64 chainring with a 52 inner to get us moving, the frame was a custom build with a long stoker position so i could use tribars on the back. Slowing down could be a bugger, we used a set of Campag Delta's and did actually practice baling off!
Can't remember the year, @ 1990 ish, we had the 10 fastest winning times of the year, the slowest was 19.58 if i recal correctly!

[mig]

low
decent times those. on which courses did you do them? from sheffield i'm guessing you went on the A1 courses at ranby...??

i used to be a stoker for a smaller pilot. the beack was never quite long enough for me although we adapted the 'bars so i could reach forward and around the pilot quite a way. we had a 61T chainring x 8spd and sometimes used an 11 up cassette although that top gear was bonkers really. we could sometimes need a bit of an extra shove to get going especially if the start was a touch uphill.

i never did quite get to grips with the science of tandem frames - marathon tubes and shaped tubes between the BBs. we spoke to a well known framebuilder once to build us one but he pretty much flat refused saying that they were a nightmare to get straight enough.

I think most of the rides on that machine were on A and C courses, tended to ride with another chap on the O and V's. If i can find the pic of that machine i'll put it up but we did some seriously fast times, 17,45 for 10 and 47,45 for 25, we even got within a nats of an 18 on a lane course in Lincolnshire that had a dead turn, remember them? A solid 64 chainring with a 52 inner to get us moving, the frame was a custom build with a long stoker position so i could use tribars on the back. Slowing down could be a bugger, we used a set of Campag Delta's and did actually practice baling off!
Can't remember the year, @ 1990 ish, we had the 10 fastest winning times of the year, the slowest was 19.58 if i recal correctly!

seriously quick!