You guys are costing me plenty $$$

[R900]

Well, since single rides are few and far between and tandem rides totally off the radar, I thought I would do a little tinkering. Base on my tandem experience and plenty of input from the forum I added or changed a few items on our new Trek.

First Colorado Cyclist had Flight Deck computers on sale, so I figured why not. It's nice not to look back to double check what gear I'm in and seems very well built. Installation was fairly simple and everything seems to work just fine.

http://www.weberwoodworking.com/bikes/tandemcockpit.jpg

Second I wanted to add a couple brake boosters. On the front I added a nice Salsa booster, but the Moose rack didn't have enough clearance in the rear so I had to use a generic booster. Hopefully that will firm up the braking. I'm also ordering a shaved Arai drag brake as soon as Mel from TandemsEast returns from vacation. That should take care of all my braking needs.

http://www.weberwoodworking.com/bikes/tandemboosterfr.jpg

http://www.weberwoodworking.com/bikes/tandemboosterrr.jpg

Not to be left out I've also added a childs stoker kit to our older Fuji tandem so our daughter can ride it. Sorry no pics.

So here I am riding very little, spending plenty of money, and still enjoying tinkering and the working on the bikes.

John

[mrfish]

My T2000 also took up about half of Saturday. Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate, so I put in some quality riding time on the trainer watching the trainrite climbing DVD while looking at the rain and snow outside.

I did the following:
1. Cut down steerer tube. No more spacers apart from the cable hanger. I kept the angled tube that fits in the cable hanger, though I see on the cyclo cross bike on cyclingnews today that you can run cable directly to it. Maybe I'll try that as the cable hanger touches the stem, meaning the hanger needs to be angled slightly to fit. Ideally I'd prefer to get rid of the cable hanger from the frame to get the bars lower still and have one that mounts to the stem, or ideally get a stem with internal cable routing. Is such a hanger available? Alternatively a stem (custom?) with an angled hole and internal noodle would do the trick.

2. Taped up the stoker bars. Now the 42cm ITM Milleniums have cable outers in the rear grooves for comfy hands (Trek doesn't do this, which is another nasty short cut IMO) on an ITM carbon wrapped stem. Losing the adjustable stem probably saved a nice amount of weight, but I have far more to lose myself, so no counting yet.

3. Shortened the rear brake cable. Now the rear cable outer is as short as it can be, the hanger beside the captain's seat tube has a bit of cable outer in it and the front bit of outer is a more reasonable length. The rear cable hanger really is a nasty kludge. Are there better ones that give a bigger separation to the seat clamp as the wire kinks badly no matter how much or little cable outer you run, or should I replace the cable with a piece of noodle shaped to fit?

4. Added a shift indicator to the right hand shifter. It looks good and was much cheap (free). Seems to work on the stand, so I'll have to see how it goes when we're riding. I was also tempted to get a left hand shifter indicator, but I don't really think its necessary.

5. Swore regularly about the fact that the Avid cantis don't have in-line cable adjustment, which makes taking out the wheels a real pain. Campag shifters are much better in this respect!

6. Noticed that the Bontrager wheels have a really draggy freewheel which makes tha chain go slack. Is this normal, temperature related (+4 deg c), or will it loosen up as once I get a few hundred miles in?

Hopefully all these changes will add up towards tandem nirvana on the next dryish weekend.