Tandem Cycling - Newb here... Co-motion or Santana?

Hey All,

I know it's a very personal choice. Right now, we have an older Cannondale RT2000. We've decided to take the plunge and get either a Co-motion Speedster or Santana Arriva or Sovereign. I do want steel instead of aluminum. We will do a test ride soon and I have the catalogs but I thought I'd throw this out...

So, opins on my choices?

Thanks

Why steel instead of AL?

If it's for the ride quality, note that tire selection and a carbon fork will have a huge impact on that.

I see you are in the Bay Area. My suggestion is to visit Crank2 in Pleasanton (Bryon is the owner, he is a great guy!), and also visit Bicycle Outfitter in Los Altos. Both of these shops are in the area, and have tandems to test ride.
-- Crank2 has many different tandems IN STOCK to try out: Santana, Co-Motion, KHS, DaVinci, etc, and has great customer service. They specialized in tandems over solo bikes, which is very rare.
-- Bicycle Outfitter only has Co-Motions and Treks, but has quite a few of them (good selection of Co-Motions).

So I would go to those shops and test ride them, for long enough to get used to the handling of each. Go over some bumps, and see how it feels, take some corners, etc, etc...

Good luck :)

Marco

Ultimate answer is ride them both, and pick the one that fits best and feels the best to the two of you.

That said, my 2 cents as a Co-Motion owner,

1) don't get wrapped up in the Santana marketing literature. When I first started looking for a higher end tandem, I started with the mindset that Santana was pretty much the gold standard, and was pretty much convinced after reading all their marketing literature that I really needed to get a Santana for all their proprietary features (such as 160mm spacing).

After more research I came to the conclusion that a lot of the unique things Santana does are way overhyped in their marketing literature, and 145mm spacing and 1 1/8" steerers work just fine.

2) Co-Motions and Santana's handle different. Co-Motion tend to be "racier" in their handling, quick steering, and give a feel closer to a single road bike. Whereas Sanatana's tend to be slower handling, but more stable. Which one your team prefers may depend in part on houw you intend to use the bike.

Hey All,
We've decided to take the plunge and get either a Co-motion Speedster or Santana Arriva or Sovereign. I do want steel instead of aluminum.

The Sovereign is aluminum.

So you're really talking Co-motion Speedster (4825) or Santana Arriva (4600).

As for your question, it depends.

If you are buying it new (and therefore carefully and correctly sized) with no intention of ever changing anything, get whichever feels better when you ride it. They're both good bikes.

If you might some day want to change the stem, wheels, crank set, front derailleur, or... (what have I forgotten?), the Co-motion is a better choice. For most couples, the extra 1.5 cm of stoker top tube length is a plus for the Co-motion as well.

To elaborate: the stem is 1 1/4 inch. Almost nobody but Santana seems to have compatible stems these days. The hubs are 160mm wide, which is fine, but reduces your choices on wheel sets - although custom wheel builders do make pretty well anything that makes sense for a tandem on a 160mm hub. The hubs are 160mm, which motivates a wider bottom bracket, which, for some reason known to Santana uses an unusual standard, limiting your choice of cranksets. And the FD is modified to be further out from the seat tube. And if you want a (rear) rack, you're best off just getting a Santana rack, so you don't have to stretch the legs so far.

I speak from the experience of having updated an older (large) Santana to fit my (very tall) son; getting the replacement stem was almost a show-stopper.

Thanks Marco. Yep, Crank-2 is where I'm shopping. Bryan's (or is it Bryon?) a great guy. I love the feel of steel, that's the only reason. Not sure if that translates to tandems but the aluminum bikes I've owned in the past have been rather harsh. Not so with my steel bikes (currently have two with one CF frame).

Thanks

Santana's proprietery parts turn me off: I would go with Co Motion or most any other brand first.

Can a Comotion be fitted with a fork that matches the rake on a Santana? Will that change the handling qualities?

Being a happy Santana owner I would go with Co-motion based on the statements here of Santana's use of proprietary non standard size parts, it does limit your options. If you test ride them (which you should) and like the Santana better then no reason not to go with it. I would also consider the aluminum frames because they are lighter and stiffer than the steel and having put years on the Sovereign it rides pretty smooth, unlike a lot of aluminum single bikes.

Another two cents: We test rode Co-motion, Santana and daVinci @ Crank-2 (Bryon's place). My newb take (and we only have 800 miles on our tandem) is that when you first jump on one they all feel a bit twitchy as you get the feel of the bike and tandems in general. Maybe the Co-motion felt a bit quicker, but not in a bad way. We didn't choose Co-motion, but these are fine tandems from what I've seen; the one we test rode didn't have a CF fork and did seem to transmit a good deal of the rode vibration, but I'm sure the Santana and daVinci would have done the same with a steel fork.

One of the many things we haven't mastered yet are sharper turns at speed. This is an area where handling differences will be accentuated, but I don't know that you'll explore this portion of the envelope on a test ride. Merlinextraligh and stoker purport to go fast downhill and seem to be still with us which says something about the handling of the Co-motion. Ride them all buy what you like.

I absolutely agree with the recommendations to spend some time with Bryon at Crank2 in Pleasanton. Over a number of days we test rode a half dozen bikes and Bryon was very patient and a big help in assisting us in honing in on what worked best for us. We ended up choosing a Santana primarily because it felt the most comfortable to my wife...she gets two votes to my one when it comes to the tandem. I'm already plenty motivated but I want her to have the best riding experience she can have.

"""........primarily because it felt the most comfortable to my wife...she gets two votes to my one when it comes to the tandem. I'm already plenty motivated but I want her to have the best riding experience she can have..... """

e-motions got it!!!!
This is the single best piece of advice anyone can offer. The brand you choose is less important...CoMo and Santanna are excellent..there is no bad choice here unless you are going it to race it exclusively. Certainly test ride as many as you can ....give aluminum a try, you may be surprised just how good of a tandem it can make. Let us know what you buy
Good luck!

Bill J.

Another thing to consider is the rear seatpost.
The right shock post could make a big difference.
We use the Thudbuster ST.
Maybe they have one you could use on your test ride.

Another thing to consider is the rear seatpost.
The right shock post could make a big difference.
We use the Thudbuster ST.

+1 we use a Thudbuster LT (my wife's post) and ST (my daughter). Many on this forum (dare I say most?) use one form of suspension seatpost or another.

It changes the feel for both the captain and the stoker, and ideally you want to keep that part constant across rides.

That said, there are a few (Rudy's Kay being an example of a stoker with more years of experience than some of us have years riding singles) who don't like suspension seatposts.

We tried both the CoMo and Santana Arriva as well. Both excellent, but they did have different riding characteristics. We went with the Santana because we both felt the ride was more comfortable.

We were making the same decision last year - between a Co-motion Speedster and a Santana Arriva. The difference in handling is one of the things that made us choose the Co-motion. We were both already riding single road bikes, so something more similar to the feel of those sounded like a good idea, so we went with the quicker steering of the Co-motion instead of the stability of the Santana. My impression of it after having done a few thousand miles is that on the flats and especially the descents, the co-motion is way more slow steering and stable than a single bike; given this, the Santana must have incredibly slow steering and so I'm very pleased that we didn't get it. We do a lot of long, steep climbs, and may ride at just 5-7 mph for some sections. It does require a bit of practice and concentration on the part of the captain to keep the Co-motion going straight at those speeds, but it is not bad. In those situations, the Santana might be better and could allow the captain to work less at keeping the bike straight, but once you get back up to a reasonable speed (10+ mph) then the handling is as good as I think it could be given the huge wheel-base.

If you just do a couple of short test-rides, and these are your first tandem experiences, you are likely to struggle to ride straight or smoothly, and may therefore enjoy the Santana more. However, after a few good-length rides, you'll learn a lot about riding more smoothly, and then you probably won't need the slow handling of the Santana any more.

One of the other things that made us choose the Co-motion over the Santana was the placement of the couplers is better on the co-motion - you can quickly remove the front end of the co-motion without disconnecting the timing chain/belt. However, you're probably not interested in the couplers. One more thing that I didn't realize at the time of making our decision was just how many parts of the Santanas are non-standard. I have been even more pleased with our decision as time has gone on and I have learned how many modifications are easier to do with a Co-motion than a Santana.

I cannot say that I've ridden a Santana, I can only say that nothing that I've learned since getting our Co-motion has made me regret the decision.

We also wanted a steel frame partly for reasons of comfort. I'm amazed by how smooth the ride is of our Speedster compared to our single bikes, but I've learned that, as mentioned above, this is only partly due to the frame material, but also largely due to the 28mm tires, non-deep-dish rims, carbon fork, and long wheelbase; which are all things that are independent of frame material. I think we would have been perfectly happy with the comfort of an aluminium frame too, but I'm not regretting our choice for steel.

We have a Thudbuster seatpost for the stoker and also a lightweight carbon fibre post - the stoker gets the choice between them for major rides or trips depending on the road conditions we're expecting (for shorter rides, she just uses whatever is currently on there). She only occasionally opts for the carbon post, despite the beautifully smooth roads in Switzerland. Although she likes the Thudbuster, she does report that it doesn't perform well when going over speed-bumps in the road - the suspension compresses as it hits them, then kicks back up at the same time as the wheel is lifting up to climb over the bump, throwing her up off the seat a lot more than happens with a solid seatpost. With normal bumps / cracks / holes in the road, the Thudbuster performs very well and smooths out the road quite nicely, but it is not well tuned for Swiss speed-bumps, which seem to be much more common than we ever realized before. I've now learnt that I need to warn her of any except the very biggest cracks / holes in the road when she's using the Thudbuster, but I must warn her about speed-bumps and railroads (something else that we have lots of here, but most of which are fortunately much smoother to ride over than the ones in N. America).

I don't see how you can go wrong with either brand.

I'm a died in the wool Santana guy but they sure don't handle like a single race bike. Never had a problem with finding parts for our Santanas (I am on #5 in 30+ years).

We have a fair amount of miles on other brands too and one thing we have learned is that my stoker (wife) hates aluminum tandem frames. They just ride too harshly for her. So to me your choice of steel for a frame material is probably a good idea.

In 34+ years of tandeming have ridden 30+ brands/models of tandems (including C'dale, Co-Mo, 'tana, etc.).
Own a Co-Motion (custom) and put 67,000 miles on it.
Our choice, our opnion.
Pedal on TWOgether!
Rudy and Kay/zonatandem