Originally Posted by budhaslug

I'm not too worried if it is off by a bit. Within half a pound and I'll just round it .

Estimates are just that and I'm not really concerned if they are off by a bit. Leaving aside the probability that manufacturers bias their numbers toward the low end (or selectively list the lowest measured weight assuming a good deal of variance due to manufacturing/material inconsistencies), all the random differences are most likely to cancel each other out anyway. Of course in truth this should just produce a gaussian distribution of real bike weights centered around the unbiased estimated weight, and I'm fully willing to accept that that happens and it isn't worth figuring out which parts were under/over as it isn't too likely to be consistent if I were to build the bike again. That is the nature of random variance.

This is only our second tandem, the first lasted us nearly 10 years (used 2000 Burley Paso Doble, about 39lbs) and aside from a couple part switches for fit aspects, it is still mostly stock. This bike will hopefully last us just as long with few changes which means that none of the parts I'm using on this one will be available/relevant when I figure out the next tandem build. So where the differences lay is purely academic to me and of questionable valuable to others because it is impossible to tell if they are biased or randomly varying from just 1 data point.

Given all of these discussions, maybe I should just change the title of this thread to 'Building an "Affordable" approximately 25lb tandem'.