rdtompki

Wife and I are considering a 1994 Santana Sovereign which is in truly excellent condition. We're planning on having the bike gone through completely, but I don't see any repair issues, just lube, clean, adjust, etc. Derailleurs are Shimano XTR, 8 spd cassette. Brakes are Deore X7 plus drum. Wheels are Araya VX300, 40 spoke and appear to be true. I'll certainly have them tuned up.

From a fit standpoint i'm wondering which components are Santana proprietary sizing. Seat post diameter, stem, handlebars???? Tandem is definitely the right size, but might neet to change the captain's stem length and the stoker position has road bars which also might get replaced. The stoker seat appears to have an unusual suspension seat post with a hexagonal rod coaxial with the actual seat post. I don't know if this works, but I can replace with a conventional suspension post if the diameter is the same.

I'm also test riding some new tandems in the am, but this older Santana is looking pretty good. I'd have to come to grips with barcon shifters hower.

mkane77g

Steerer tube is 1 1/4", wheel spacing is 160mm.

Ritterview

Santana doesn't have proprietary parts, no, not at all. They just build their parts to the Santana standard.

rdtompki

Thanks for the info. I probably should have said "Santana-unique parts and/or sizing. I'm trying to estimate how much I'll be putting into this lightly-used tandem to customize to our requirements. Also, the brakes are Deore LX (of course).

andr0id

I got a '97 Arriva a few months ago and have just about finished upgrades and fit changes.

You can get a nice 1-1/4" threadless stem from Syntace called the F119. The 29.8 seat posts seem fairly standard for tandems, but we have the suspension post you describe and it works just fine. We replaced the stoker stem with an adjustable Co-Motion stoker stem.

The BB is 73mm instead of 68mm, but I successfully installed an FSA Gossamer tandem crank yesterday and it worked just fine.

TandemGeek

For upgrading, the things to be mindful of are:

1. Stock geometry uses a 395mm fork with 55mm rake and as already mentioned 1.25" steerer tube. The only carbon fork upgrades that retain the stock geometry are the Reynolds Ouzo Pro tandem and two others -- a caliper and V-brake model -- that Santana sells.

2. The 160mm rear spacing may require the use of Santana's 'Far-Out', bolt-on front derailleur mount. It corrects the front derailleur off-set for the extra wide chain line used with the 160mm rear spacing. It was not something Santana had developed back when the '94 Sovereign was produced.

3. Santana's non-dimpled chain stays make for a very wide rear bottom bracket area which requires a 73mm bottom bracket and careful attention to the spindle length / chain ring interference with those beefy stays. As andrOid already noted, it would appear the newer FSA tandem cranks have finally be updated with sufficient adjustability to compensate for wider bottom brackets and chain line adjustability, something that was lacking in earlier models.

4. The cantilever brake bosses on the older Santana models don't play well with V-brakes. They were optimized for cantilever brakes and V-brake retrofits (and even some of Santana's late 90's OEM V-brake configurations) end up with the top of the V-brake arms positioned well away from the frame, sometimes far enough to rub against the stoker's thigh on the smaller frames.

I think all of the other things are covered.

rdtompki

Great info guys! Question: if I upgrade (obviously) the stock brake pads how am I likely to feel about the braking? Team weight will normally be 340 lbs. When I ride with one of my sons (infrequent) we'll be just under 200 lbs. The drum brake should help on the downhills. I have no problem changing the brakes out to something else; I'm just inclined to try the existing configuration first.

Anyone have a specific recommendation for a brake change-out?

TandemGeek

Brake squeal, more than anything else short of a lack of brake pad bite or stopping power, is usually a pretty good sign that your brakes need attention. Of course, with used tandems sometimes just a fresh set of OEM pads is all that's needed. I've never had a reason to mess around with anything other than OEM Shimano or Campy brake pads, as they've always worked pretty well for us.

As mentioned in the previous Qs on the '94ish Santana tandems, I changed out the LX cantilevers on our '95/96 Arriva for a set of XT-grade Cantilevers (more for aesthetics than anything else, polished vs black) and installed a set of the longer Shimano XTR replacement pads with holders to get more bite. I could have just as easily installed the XTR pads on the LX canti's and saved a few bucks but, well, XT canti's weren't all that expensive back in the day.

At 280lbs, I never found the XT cantilevers to be lacking with the Shimano XTR compounds, but then again I'm not one to use a lot of emergency brake power. Rear rim brakes aren't all that effective on a tandem to begin with, so it's that front brake that demands the most attention. The rear drum will likely be overkill at your team weight unless you live where there are very steep descents where you want to keep your speed well in check. Just evaluate what you have before you start making too many changes: even an older tandem in good condition will deliver good performance if everything that wears out or needs lubrication had been taken care of, the wheels are true and have good rubber and the transmission is dialed-in.

Back to brakes, for me so long as brakes have a firm bite, seem to have good progressive modulation and don't easily glaze or make noise I'm usually pretty happy. I was able to achieve that with the XT/XTR cantis as well as several other different types of brakes on subsequent tandems.

andr0id

Our tandem came with the disposable 1 piece rubber shoes. I traded them out for the metal replaceable pad type and just that helped a lot with stopping although squealing like a pig was still a problem. SwissStop green pads fixed that part of the problem for me. A good rim cleaning was thrown in for good measure.

WebsterBikeMan

Unless the brakes are really bad, or set up wrong, the choice of pads will make more of a difference than anything else. Cool Stop Salmon or Swiss Stop Green, assuming you have alloy rims.