Originally Posted by
dfcas
When I was at Calfee a few years back Craig said at our team weight he would built up the stiffness somewhat from the normal level. I have no doubt Calfee can build your frame as stiff as you like. No experience with Paketa.
That fact has me leaning Calfee. I'm pretty sure it's pretty much a matter of the right layup to meet our desired riding charecteristics. Mind telling us your team wieght?
For the Paketa, I read their literature regrding stiffness, that the Paketa is "more efficient" than a stiff chrome moly frame:
We’ve compared the Paketa compact geometry to several other designs. One of the comparisons I made early on was against a conventional cromoly steel tandem frame with a lateral tube—one that scored highly in a Santana Tandems comparison test published in their catalog several years ago. Compared to the cromoly frame, the Paketa compact frame recorded about 1/3 less deflection in the front triangle, nearly identical deflection in the stoker compartment, slightly more deflection in the rear triangle…and weighs slightly less than one half as much as the cromoly frame. So, by my own “efficiency index” (a concept promoted by Santana) if you add up the three stiffness numbers and divide by the frame weight, the compact-geometry Paketa is more than twice as high as the cromoly frame and at least as high as any other tandem on the market today. What separates the Paketa from all the others is the ride quality, which is unequaled due to the special properties of magnesium.
The slight more deflection in the rear triangle concerns me.