drummerian

Good afternoon all,

First time poster to the forum though I have been lurking around the tandem section for a while. After this years L2B bike ride a friend and I decided we HAD to do the event next year on a tandem bicycle. The idea has lay dormant for a few weeks until I saw a stunning tandem bicycle come up on ebay for a reasonable price and close to my house. A quick bid later and I am now the proud owner of a Globetrotter Tandem bicycle.

<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/75990087@N02/9384976058/" title="Globetrotter tandem by ircooper, on Flickr"><img src="https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2877/9384976058_6fbd884ac7_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Globetrotter tandem"></a>

The bike is in need of some work but hey, I wouldn't enjoy riding it as much unless I had built some bits of it myself. So the project begins.

I have started by completely stripping the bike down. It will be sandblasted then I can give it a quick lick of paint. In doing this I have noticed that I am going to start having some problems dragging this tandem in to the 21st century. Both bottom brackets are in poor condition as is the headset. The worry now is that everything on the bike seems to be strange old French standards, unlike the classic 1" threaded headsets and cartridge bottom brackets I have become used to.

If anyone could offer some infomation on sourcing new parts that would be fanstastic. Now the frame is steel, and I have considered replacing the BB shell with one from a bike of a known quantity (I have all the equipment to do this at home). Has anyone tried this before? The front BB may be easier as it is held within a concentric shell.

Thanks for the help guys, hopefully I can get riding soon!

Ritterview

The pic

drummerian

oops, thanks!

Philly Tandem

Velo Orange has a good selection of French-spec components available. https://store.velo-orange.com/index.php/components.html

If the paint isn't in bad shape, I'd keep it for the "cool old French" look. Otherwise, consider spending a few bucks to get it powdercoated. Probably won't cost too much.

One of the issues with these old French tandems is that the stoker's top tube is generally really short and makes the rear cockpit very cramped for all but the smallest riders. It looks like your tandem has a stoker seatpost with a lot of setback, so that should help some. But, if your potential stoker is much over 5'2" or so, make sure you do some shorter rides before you commit to doing a longer ride on it.

drummerian

thanks for the advice! I will check it out.

Ideally I want to drag this thing kicking and screaming in to the modern world. Ideally this would mean english threaded BBs just for ease of future maintenance. Perhaps I am asking too much...

brons2

What's the rear hub spacing?

Thankfully on this bike it won't be as narrow as the old singles. Those are very difficult to upgrade to modern drivetrains because the spacing is just too narrow. 126 can be cold set to 130 and use modern road hubs but 120 is tough to work with.

In your case hopefully the spacing is at least 135 and hopefully not some oddball French standard.

drummerian

late reply! (other projects have been getting in the way).

Still haven't worked out my course of action on this frame yet.

The good news however is that the spacing is around 132mm so should be OK on that.

Still having problems with Bottom brackets and headtubes. I am sorely tempted to carefully cut the tubes out and weld in new steel...

brons2

135 will probably work fine IMO...

Bezalel

I'd suggest the Velo Orange bottom bracket and headset, with a quill stem machined down to 22mm.

jnbrown

From the pic the paint doesn't look bad. I think it looks cool and classic and would keep it.
the frame looks a lot like my first tandem which was a custom built Andy Gilmour.
It can be difficult to work on these old bikes but in this case I think worthwhile.

Good luck

Tom the tank

I too am in the midst of a French tandem rebuild. Personally, I wouldn't star chopping up the frame and fork unless absolutely necessary. As mentioned before, VO has French BBs/headsets for $30 and will continue to stock these parts so I wouldn't worry about future replacements. Two new BBs and a new headset is $90 well spent IMO. Also, if you don't want to sand down an alloy quill stem BLB makes a threadless adaptor for French 22mm steartubes. youtu.be/FuVi170R3cs

Also wondering what size wheel those are. They look small for 700c. Are they 650b? It may just be that the fat fenders are warping my perception. Grand bois tires would be very nice, either way. I noticed that you are set up with four brakes. That's awesome. But how to engage them all is another question. You could use dual pull levers, which may have come with the bike, but that has it's disadvantages and makes braking control problematic and perfect adjustment a must. Or you could give the stoker control of the drag brakes, but then you need to have telepathic communication. Or just a rim brake up front and a hub brake in the back, which is an old school racy option, but with reduced stopping power. You want the drum brake(s) in order to prevent the rims from overheating on long downhills etc. The best option in my opinion would be to use regular brake levers for the rim brakes, and use bar end shifters to actuate the drum brakes. Best of both worlds. You would then shift with the down tube or STI type shifters.

Check out peugeottandem.com for more info about French tandems and ideas about updating them to modern components.

That looks like a great bike and I wish you lots of luck with the refurbish. It is easy to let french incompatibility to bog you down and stall the process, so just go for it and don't look back, but don't chop it up!

All the best.