akexpress 

I actually discussed this option with him but he kind of dismissed it as unnecessary. He wasn't particularly helpful and besides I don't want to "make it work" outside of the design parameters. The quest for the perfect tandem disc brake is still underway.

nurse ben

I am not a regular to this forum, but I saw a link to this thread on the MTBR tandem forum, and I thought I'd chime in with my Spyre experience:

I have been running the TRP Spyre on my mountain and road unis since late May 2013. Unis, being a single wheel, are very hard on brakes, esp on long downhills, so I consider them more like a tandem in terms of brake abuse. I have destroyed numerous lesser brakes including the Magura MT series and a couple Shimanos.

Since installing the Spyre I have ridden ~ 50 days in all kinds of weather, hot and dry, high humidity, wet, muddy, and I have not had a single brake fade or had to adjust the brakes, they are that good. I run a variety of rotors from 160 to 203, Shimano, Avid, and Tektro.

After having good success with the Spyre, I had them installed on my Fandango MTB Tandem. We only have a few rides on the Spyres, but so far they stop fine, no fade, they are kinda noisy at low speeds with the Tektro 203 rotors, but not grabby; I think the Tektro rotors have too aggressive of a cut out. We are bigger team, 340# nakid.

The Spyre uses Shimano pads, so there are lots of pad choices. We are using stock pads and they seem to work fine, I'm assuming they are semi metalic. The Spyre's all metal construction is a real plus, as BB7 have a tendency to overheat and melt sensitive parts, it does not appear that the Spyre will suffer this fate.

When setting up the Spyre, the TRP tech guys said that only a road pull lever would work, however we are using the MTB Avid Speed Dial levers and they work very well. The Speed Dials are adjustable for feel, so far I have tended to run them "soft", but they could be run much firmer. Lever pull is higher than some hydraulics, I use two fingers for steep downhills, pulsing the brakes at low speeds, but they are not overly stressful on my hands/fingers.

The only thing I will change is upgrading to a quieter rotor, possibly a Hope floater.

If you are looking for an upgrade to your BB7 or prefer mechanicals and want the best available, the Spyre should be on your short list.

mkane77g

Would this be the cable over unit.

Ritterview

Our Spyre SLC failed on us descending Montebello on Saturday. They started working and then suddenly, weren't working. This was unfortunate as in all the excitement of Low Key Hill Climbs I had neglected to re-engage the front caliper when putting the front wheel on just before the climb. I had to make like Fred Flintstone to come to a stop, dragging my cleats on the ground, before eventually tossing us into a grassy embankment. I took it to the bike shop this morning, and got this photo back. The SLC's carbon arm had cracked.

Team Fab

Holy Cow, first of all I hope you are OK.

Second, rats back to the drawing board for a new tandem brake.

Third has anyone looked into whether a magnetic drag brake could be built for tandem use?

SaddleSoar

Damn Ritter, I'm glad to hear that you made it to a (relatively) safe stop! That looks like a recall worthy failure. I trust that you've been in touch with TRP regarding this. How is the already descent-averse stoker handling the situation?

Stuart

Turbotandem

That's scary! Have you requested from the shop or TRP a response and/or warranty recommendation? A single defect or a faulty design? A warranty replacement with the alum arm version? Let us know what responses you get.
If the brakes goes out in the middle of one of our Rockies endurance events, braking for the rest of the descents would be problem. I'll check mine for signs of cracking (it's off the bike for the race season)

uspspro

Sorry to hear about the mishap, and I am so glad that you two are ok! It seems that the actuating arm may not be the best place to shed a few grams.

So far TRP is batting 0-2 by my count.

TRP has great marketing and product "ideas," but poor execution. It seems like they were determined to bring these products to a ripe market without exhaustive functional testing.

I know they would come here talk about how they did repeated testing on their machines, and provided bikes to journalists... but really that's not enough... Not for braking systems.

Ritterview

I just got the pic back this morning, and have been at work, and haven't had a chance to do these things.

Here is the point on Google Street view of where I realized the rear brake wasn't working, and I had neglected to re-engage the front caliper. "Hey, my brakes aren't working!". Lucky for me that this wasn't on the really steep part of Montebello towards the end.



The ride continues down Montebello only because one of our team mates rode down with our keys and retrieved our car from the parking lot near the reservoir, drove up, we put the tandem in the car and I continued home on my half-bike.

Carbonfiberboy 

Makes my hands sweat just thinking about it. Glad you are OK! Looking at the part photo, yes, carbon is notch-sensitive. If that arm wasn't a real tight fit on the nut . . . that could put a point sheer stress on it, which maybe it wasn't designed to take. Poor design, it seems to me.

Ritterview

Note as well that around the nut the carbon appears degraded and extruded onto the nut surface. I am wondering whether this is a thermal degradation. The brakes had not gotten especially hot this early in the descent, but have certainly gotten hot on previous descents. It appears obvious to me now that the arm attached to a hot nut isn't a good place for carbon. This is similar to the plastic adjustment knobs melting on the BB7. Its no big deal if those plastic BB7 bits melt, but the arm on the Spyre is a different story.

If this arm failure is due to thermal degredation this doesn't bode well for the Spyre SLC version. Tandem brakes famously get hot and are thus the canary in the cage, but neither are clydesdale-laden road bikes immune to heat. If all it takes is to get really hot once, degrade the carbon, and then crack---> failure at an inopportune time, that could make for more exciting Spyre SLC stories.

Carbonfiberboy 

I don't know how this part was made, but ordinary carbon fiber laminate is carbon tows or cloth in an epoxy resin matrix. One would hope they used an autoclave cured heat resistant resin. But what's the spec? How heat resistant? In any case, assuming ordinary laminate, it's the carbon fiber itself that would have failed here. It doesn't look to me like the resin got hot and allowed the part to delaminate. Rather it just cracked and deformed enough to spin on the nut. At least that's what I assume happened from the photo. Carbon's pretty strong, so that's all a little odd. So maybe it's not a carbon part at all, just black.

SaddleSoar

Also strange, is that the arm didn't even crack from the corner of the hex, which would be an inherent stress concentration. It cracked right in the middle of the flat.

WheelsNT

From TRP's specs...

Weight:
Spyre: 154g/wheel, 89g 160mm rotor
Sprye SLC: 146g/wheel, 89g/160mm rotor

So maybe the 8g weight savings isn't worth it.

PMK

The carbon arm does not look to be made from woven carbon fibre, rather it appears to me molded using discontinuous fibres. Not sure what the matrix is but would not be surprised to find out it was some form of thermoplastic injection molding process.

PK

fietsbob

maybe the aluminum version, in retrospective would have been a better choice..

FWIW, had a customer melt the plastic, inner knob on their BB7s on a single mountain bike ,

so some limits to components .. should not be pushed.. too far..

nurse ben

Hermes

Ritterview, OMG, glad you and stoker are okay. My wife and I did the climb but on our road bikes. The 5.1 mile climb has three sections with the bottom being the steepest and the middle more moderate. Amen to having the failure on the less steep section.

And it was fabulous technique to get your feet on the ground and not get hurt. For me to put my feet down, I would have to come off the saddle and then once my feet were on the ground anything could happen.

akexpress 

Wow kind of harsh words for two teams that have taken a chance on better tandem brake options. At this time there are no manufacturers whom rate their disc brakes for tandems that I am aware of. Uspspro, myself and others tried the TRD Hy/Rd and it is not up to the task for tandems probably because of a weak internal return spring that can not pull the extra resistance the long tandem brake cable has and the hydraulic reservoir doesn't refill. TRD says it doesn't rate it for tandems and is not really interested in a solution. A number of teams "take one for the team" and have failures and bring back useful info so the rest can make informed decisions.

rahill

Well there should be a lot of information available in the next year or so with regards to the Spyre and tandem use. All of the 2014 Co-Motion models, with the exception of low-end Primera and Java, are spec'd with front and rear TRP Spyre brakes. The Primera and Java still come with Avid BB7 brakes.

Our Co-Motion Speedster has Spyres both front and rear and, so far, they've been great. Excellent performance, no fade on steep descents (including the same descent that Ritterview nearly met an early end), and only an occasional squeak. Knock on wood, and I'm definitely following this thread closely, but our (limited) experience has been good.

gracehowler

Ah, a satisfied customer, my question, how long in service, how many steep or long hills? In Colorado, we ride lots of long 5-7% grades, but often fairly straight and with good run out. After a 600 mile trip to Washington state, we found our bob laden tandem stretched our avids to sometimes an uncomfortable limit on short steep hills. So more info?
R&J

Ritterview

Oh, the OP did make a poor decision, choosing the Spyre SLC with a carbon arm rather than the aluminum arm. I just didn't think of the heat effect on the carbon. The idea came to me while hurtling down Montebello, but such an experience, like knowing you are to be hanged in a fortnight, concentrates the mind wonderfully. The thing is, the Spyre SLC with the carbon arm was depicted on this thread's original post, and on subsequent multiple posts since this thread started in March, and no one brought up the heat-effect-on-carbon issue until I posted the pic of the cracked arm. You joined BF in September N_Ben, and had a whole month to point this out, but missed your chance.

The Spyre was developed as a mechanical disc brake, and its use is hardly restricted to ultralight CX. There is no weight restriction. With the advent of road disc, 250 lb. clydesdales will ride disc brakes with 160 mm rotors all the way down steep descents and the pads and adjoining axle for the arm will get hot, carbon degrade and failure happen. It happened first on a tandem, but for the more numerous clydesdales it is not if, but when.

TRP sent me a regular TRP Spyre with an aluminum arm, and its installed and ready to go. What I was thinking about just before the Spyre SLC failed was how great the Spyre was. If the arm doesn't crack on you, it is a good brake. Aluminum being more heat resistant than carbon, the TRP Spyre should be fine.

Another thing I learned from this is that if we are going to do 5.1 mile 7.2% grade descents like Montebello, too much braking is just right. The last two miles is 9%, and with a hot, fading rotor, my relief at finally seeing the stop sign at Steven's Canyon Road is great. I want to descend Montebello with confidence in our brakes the whole way down, so that stop sign is just like any other stop sign.

With that in mind, I've been exploring options to convert to a front disc, and so I'll probably end up with two TRP Spyres. Hmmm...the ENVE Road Disc Fork looks robust, but that's because its tapered...

ksisler

RV; Glad you two are ok...getting your witts back may take a bit more time. I had a serious downhill fail when I was a younger rider and given how the young male mind works, I was sure all was well. However on a downhill the next day, I mentally froze up entering a sharp turn and exited by going straight though the guard rail and taking a long slide through a farmers well corn field. The bike was totalled and I had a lot of dents and mud in places I would have not desired. So I guess my feedback is to go a little easy for a while until you are fully sure your psyche is restored and robust...especially on the type of "gonzo" riding you enjoy.

/k

ksisler

RV; Please continue your posts as you work up the alloy arm'd one. Hopefully it will be up to the task. For myself, if I were to use a disk such as this one, I would likely take it apart and mill a new arm out of stainless steel and a new bolt out of chromoly and harden it to at least a Grade-5 standard. But it would no longer be very lightweight item then...and sort of defeats the purpose.

/K

Bad1

Why bother with a Enve fork? Your just setting yourself up over a period of time for a possible failure, after talking to Enve there view as stated was they will not Assume any liability for a failure of fork on a tandem, if Calfee chooses to use a Enve fork then they will be Held the responsible party, per Enve. Co-Motions 2014 new rated tandem fork with disc brake, tapered steer tube is a better choice, on my new Macchiato I approached Co-Motion who are local to my area and this being my 3rd Macchiato in 8 years would not even entertain the thought of using a Enve fork because of Liability! Co-Motion does use Enve forks on there half bikes.