Is it worth upgrades?

[Ashen]

My wife and I got our first tandem a couple years ago for cheap, and really enjoy it. However it's a pretty low end bike, a Motiv Duet mountain bike from the mid 90s sometime. Altus drivetrain and all. Whenever I think about upgrading though, I wonder if my money would be better saved toward something new. There are aspects of this bike we like a lot. For one thing, the fat 26" wheels make for a very comfortable ride. Actually... thats about the only specific thing about this bike that is really nice. I suspect we're going to start wearing things out soon though. The drivetrain is in pretty good shape, but the wheels are just 32 spoke, like might have come on any single Motiv mountain bike of that era. We're not a light team, at closer to 400 than 350, and never will be (we're both rather fit actually), and I worry that the wheels in particular are going to have a hard time holding up too much longer.

Here are the issues:

The rear triangle is spaced at 130mm. Its a steel (Tange MTB tubing) frame, so would respacing it be practical? Or would it be better to use a road hub on a 26" rim? Either way I'd want to jump up to 36 spoke.

Braking is suspect at times. The cantilever brakes are set up fine, they work pretty well, but we just have some rather large hills on our regular rides and sometimes I worry. This is a cheap bike, so I cant thread on a drum brake. Am I likely to be able to get a disc compatible threaded fork for a bike this age?

In looking around I really can't help but think that a Co-Motion Mocha would nicely address everything, and be a much nicer bike, but when I'm only $150 into this bike it's hard to consider spending $3800. Still, maybe I just need to save my pennies and upgrade. What would you all do?

[brewer45]

My stoker and I started on a $750.0 Diamondback hybrid. We only rode occasionally until about this time last year, when we started training for our first organized ride. Shortly after that ride, we realized that we were hooked and needed a better bike. We got extremely lucky and found a 1994 Burley Duet for less than $1k. The 1000 miles on that bike helped us decide that we needed an even better ride. We just upgraded to a new Co-Mo Speedster. It's an ongoing obsession...

Cheers!

[moleman76]

Watch Craigslist for Seattle Tacoma - search within Bikes for "tandem" and occasionally you may find something worth following up on. (There are a couple of bikes there now which look better than yours sounds.)
Recycled Cycles, just southwest of the UW, often has a used tandem or two in stock.
Either approach would get you a better frame than you have now, and less expensive components than you'd have to buy to upgrade. And, you can sell the tandem that you have to recoup some of the cost.

[swc7916]

PM sent

[merlinextraligh]

upgrading piece by piece usually gets expensive. So I'd tend to favor saving for a new (or newer) bike.

If you want more robust wheels, you should be able to coldset the rear spacing to 135mm, which would at least get you to current MTB wheels. But again, I'd save my money.

[specbill]

I don't know anything about a Motiv Duet but since you have described it as a "a low end frame", I would suggest not spending any money to upgrade it because you are not starting from a quality foundation. You will be miles ahead by looking for a nice quality pre owned tandem if you don't want to step up for a new high dollar one at this time. With a little patience you can find a good used, slightly older, but solid framed Co Motion, C'dale or Santana that will exceed anything you could upgrade your existing bike to and posssibly for like or less money. Craig's list, Ebay, or your LBS are all good places to look. Have fun with the process and good luck on whatever you do.
Bill J

[Ashen]

Sounds like I should probably just save my money for either a nicer used tandem, or a new one entirely. Thanks all.