djedgar

We have had a Beyond for two years. In the first six months it sat as a living room decoration for 4 months due to a medical issue that precluded riding. We also have a Vision tandem with ICS (recumbent with underseat steering) and had an aluminum Santana with 26" wheels (our 1st tandem purchased over 10 years ago).

So far everything on the Beyond has held up except the stoker seatpost and the rear rim. The seatpost was replaced relatively easy (our LBS gave us a replacement post to use during the wait) and after receiving the new one, I decided to go with a straight post.

We have talked to people that have used the Beyond as a touring bike and loved it. They are a very light team, take the Sweet 16 wheels in to have the spoke tension adjusted every 600-700 miles and only had about 3200 miles on it when we communicated.

About six weeks ago we notified Santana that our rear rim broke 1 yr and 51 weeks into the 2 yr warranty. We were told if we wanted to continue riding we'd best buy a new wheel, as the rims were back ordered. This week we were called and told to send both wheels to Santana to be inspected and if they decide to warranty replace the rear, they'll charge us $100 to build the new wheel. I am very unhappy about the service and expectation for us to pay for the wheel build especially after we have to buy a new wheel to use the bike at all. They advertise the Sweet-16 as being stronger than their 40 spoke wheels (which we had on our previous Santana). We are a heavy team and specifically questioned whether they aero wheels would be appropriate, and we were told it was not a problem. We wore out rims on our old bike where the brake pads rubbed, but they were years older. I sure didn't expect to pay a premium price for a Beyond to find out that the rim with no brake rub was either of a defective design or a defective manufacturer and that I was expected to do without it for extended period of time AND pay to have the new parts reassembled. This bike only had 20 months of use, its wheels should last a substantial time longer than that.

It pains me, as a Santana owner for over a decade, to caution you about considering to buy one of their products. I can't speak to what kind of service other manufacturers give, but I am not pleased with the cavalier treatment from Santana.

As far as the ICS, it was great on the recumbent tandem, which we rode for years and will be riding again while the Beyond is waiting for Santana to return our wheels. I would only consider ICS on a straight up tandem if I had expected to have stokers that could not ride very well or very strong, such as children or someone with a physical disability. One of the reasons we replaced the "bent" was to recapture the speed and sense of being in-sync with each other (even though we do keep our cranks offset).

Just a stoker's point of view...