We are a very heavy team, and nobody probably needs the cooling fins more than we do (~550lbs). However, I've never ever had heat fade from our Arai drum brake, even while riding the Horrible Hilly hundred route in Wisconsin (worse than climbs/descents here in Colorado mountains) in terms of being off catagory.

Tandem hubs are a hard sell, especially when laced to rims/spokes. There isn't a defined tandem spacing. Some use 135mm, others 140mm, modern tandems use 145mm, and Santana uses 160mm. So a given spaced wheelset doesn't fit at least 75% of the tandem market right off the bat. If they are Phil Wood hubs, and single piece shells, they are worth respacing with different end caps. However, the rims have to be exactly what the buyer would want (and could trust in the build) or a built wheel is actually worth considerably less than just the hub. Especially true on eBay where shipping a built complete wheel is much more expensive than just shipping a hub. Spoke technology has come light years in just the past fifteen and five years, so the older the wheel the less likely the possibility that the spokes are stainless and high quality.

The Arai drum brakes are getting scarce. Good examples are fetching north of $200, which is silly as these used to be $80-100 brakes.

I for one think there is a strong opportunity to redesign the Arai drum brake. Only the braking surface of the drum needs to be cast or forged steel. The rest could be aluminum or titanium even, but I'm not convinced that the Arai coulndn't be lightened by possibly even 50%.

Nobody heats up their Arai like we do, and I suspect that even we could go with machining down the heat sinks. Goodness knows that the Arai is a boat anchor and not even close to being aero.