Tandem Cycling - Older Santana Sovereign

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rdtompki
04-25-09, 10:02 PM
I've got a line on a 1994 Alumininum Santana Sovereign. Original owner, but wife (ex-wife?) really knows nothing about the bike as it's been sitting in the garage for more than a decade. What equipment would be expected on this particular bike? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I did find the following information on the web. Seems well equipped for the time.
TandemGeek
04-26-09, 07:48 AM
Aside from the tire info which is wrong, what Bikepedia has listed (http://www.bikepedia.com/QuickBike/BikeSpecs.aspx?Year=1994&Brand=Santana&Model=Sovereign&Type=bike) is probably about right. Shimano's mountain bike components + bar-end shifters and Diacompe 287 brake levers were the norm. Even though the mountain bike front derailleurs weren't really designed to work with the larger chain rings, they actually shifted quite well.
By '94 Santana would have also been using 1.25" headsets and 160mm rear spacing and you may have also had a stoker suspension seat post from Tamer.
[ADDED]: We bought a NOS '95/96 Santana Arriva in Aug 97 that we owned for about 16 months. The components on the '94 Arriva and Sovereign were nearly the same as the ones on the '95/96 Arriva and Sovereign. We changed out the bar-ends and DiaCompe brake levers for integrated Sachs Ergo shifters, dumped the Tamer for a rigid post, changed out the LX cantilever brakes for XT models and XTR pads and also changed out the Arraya rims for MAVIC T217s. It was a nice package that worked well out of the box, but I do not like bar-end shifters and was a sucker for MAVIC rims.
rdtompki
04-26-09, 08:29 AM
Anyone out there riding this generation of Santana care to comment?
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