Tandem Cycling - child stoker question

I recently bought an older tandem (Early 90's Yokota) to ride around casually with my 5 year old son. I plan on purchasing a child stoker kit since his legs are too short to reach. The problem is that the bike has a top pull front derailleur. It looks like the cable will be in the way of the bottom bracket shell of the child stoker kit. Has anyone else run into this? Could I just run the cable through some housing and around the bottom bracket shell without too much trouble? Any help is appreciated.

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/9213/yokotabackwj0.jpg

How close is he? you might try crank shorteners instead. i've got a stoker kit which i no longer need, but i think it would clamp on your derailleur cable. or take of the pedals and let him "free load" with some pegs!

+1 on crank shorteners at 5 years old it would be the best choice, cranks will be a little to much and will out grow them very quickly. If you have a seat post with shock try one with out it and lower seat as far as it will go if thats an option.

I recently bought an older tandem (Early 90's Yokota) to ride around casually with my 5 year old son. I plan on purchasing a child stoker kit since his legs are too short to reach. The problem is that the bike has a top pull front derailleur. It looks like the cable will be in the way of the bottom bracket shell of the child stoker kit. Has anyone else run into this? Could I just run the cable through some housing and around the bottom bracket shell without too much trouble? Any help is appreciated.

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/9213/yokotabackwj0.jpg

?

I don't think it would work to try to run the cable under the stoker (real stoker, not kid stoker) BB shell. You would need a bottom-pull derailleur, and you would still need a cable stop somewhere.

BUT, I think if you used a slightly longer section of cable housing in the corner there, you could attach the kid stoker BB shell to the seat tube above the cable stop, and it would work OK. The pedals might end up so high that balance would be affected, but that's the only problem I can see.

For a 5-year-old to be able to ride with crank shorteners would require a pretty small frame and a pretty tall kid.

Theres so little room on that frame. I found the shortening system required a minimum distance to let the upper crank arm clear the center of the crank. Might squeeze one in above the boss for the FD cable stop. Then the derailleur wouldn't be a problem. The shorteners are OK, but give an awkward Q.

Fortunately mine can now stoke with a normal setup!

You could probably get a child stoker kit to clear the cable or housing, but no guarantees.

I've got child stoker kits on my 2 tandems. One is a burley child stoker kit (not made anymore) on our road tandem with bottom pull front derailluer. The other is the Chucksbikes.com child stoker kit on our mtb tandem which has a top pull front derailluer (sorry no pictures of either).

Since the child stoker bottom bracket shell sits in front of the seat tube, and the part of the clamp that sits behind the seat tube is fairly thin, it slides between the seat tube and the cable housing above the cable stop.

The only real issue I have, is that I have to run the child stoker kit higher than I might like, which means that you have to extend the seatpost more to get the proper saddle height for the child stoker. For now, this is fine with both my 4 y.o. and 7 y.o. sons. The child cranks being higher means its harder for them to get on/off the bike and raises their center of gravity. It may become an issue later on as their legs grow, but mayby by that point I can move to crank shortners. Luckily, I have very long legs, which means that I have a lot of captains seatpost showing in order to adjust the stoker bars higher up to compensate for the higher child seat height.

It's also possible, that you could install the child bb shell below the cable stop so long as the bare cable doesn't rub on the back of the bb shell clamp and the BB shell width of the child stoker kit is wide enough to clear the front derailluer and lower crank.

I'd bet you could get it to work, but, at $250+ for most child stoker kits it is a gamble.

The Chucksbike.com child stoker kit was much cheaper at $85 (http://www.chucksbikes.com/store/cr034.htm), but there some tradeoff with that kit that you should be aware of.

First off, the cranks I recieved aren't actually child stoker cranks (and aren't the same ones pictured on their website), they are standard kids BMX cranks. That means, that the pedal threads are not correct since the drive crank arm for the child stoker arms goes on the non-drive side of the tandem. This could lead to the pedals unscrewing. Easily solved with some blue loctite, but not ideal, and no warning from chuck's.

Second. the only provided one set of chainring bolts, so I had to come up with the second set of longer chainring bolts and spacers to properly set up the chainrings on the timing crank of the tandem. Luckily, I had anticipated this and already ordered what I needed elsewhere.

Last, the mounting bolts on the BB shell are cheap steal and rust like crazy. Not a huge deal, but annoying.

Hope that helps.

Excellent summary on the chucksbikes.com child stoker kit. And all this time, I thought I had accidently thrown away the 2nd set of chainring bolts!

I have the chuckbikes kit on my Cannondale, and I am very pleased with it. I did know that it had standard BMX cranks before I bought it, and I had to swap spindles in my kid's pedals for the toe clips to be on the right side of the pedal. Blue Loctite works fine, no problems.

I had to shim my kit because chuck was out of the 1-1/8" ID size, but that's probably better for my paint job anyway.

Looks like he wouldn't have room to install the child stoker kit below the stop anyways with the der in the way of the crank arms if it was much further down.
I've got a 5 year old stoker and a Chuck's Bikes kit. As has been said, Blue Loctite was a must. The shortest cranks Chuck's had was 135 so I ended up getting a set of 115 instead from a BMX site...it made a big difference for my son. I didn't want to use shorteners because I didn't want to push his legs any further apart. Don't know why I didn't have problems with the pedals and toe clips (a must), though.
Only pic I've really got of the stoker kit...That's my mtb bike seatpost for the stem and an old set of handlebars....The back bolt-on part sticks out less than a centimeter. Sorry I don't have better pics of it.
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y141/smcr/DSC_4424.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y141/smcr/179-7912_IMG.jpg

Excellent summary on the chucksbikes.com child stoker kit. And all this time, I thought I had accidently thrown away the 2nd set of chainring bolts!

I have the chuckbikes kit on my Cannondale, and I am very pleased with it. I did know that it had standard BMX cranks before I bought it, and I had to swap spindles in my kid's pedals for the toe clips to be on the right side of the pedal. Blue Loctite works fine, no problems.

I had to shim my kit because chuck was out of the 1-1/8" ID size, but that's probably better for my paint job anyway.

I was planning on doing the same thing with the pedal spidles and toe clips, until I noticed the screws on the pedal cage. I took out the 4 screws and swapped the cage from one pedal over to the other.

I shimmed my Chuck's kit as well, and I think you are correct, it's probably much better on the paint.

Considering the price, I'm fairly pleased with the Chuck's kit, and would do it again if I had to.

Thanks for all the great info. I will report how things go when I get the bike up and running again.