Originally Posted by
waynesulak
I believe that Also Calfee's design uses a stiff front and stoker section with small flexible seatstays. Notice there are no Calfee tandems with V-Brakes or Canti's. Craig Calfee has written that while he could design and build seatstays stiff enough for V-brakes it would defeat his design goal of a very compliant ride. It appears that the flexible seatstays can effectively shorten and this allows some small amount of suspension effect on the rear triangle. From all accounts this has been a very successful formula.
This is an interesting point. After seeing so many oversized (overbuilt?) single bike rear triangles in recent years, I was surprised how "elegant" (ie: small) the Calfee chainstays and seatstays were. With the trend in many builder's designs going for huge oversized BB interfaces and chainstay interfaces, Calfee remains on the lean side in this area at least with their standard frame spec. During discussions with Michael Moore about the BB30 option, he did not mention any diffs in tubing layup but I suppose that does not preclude the possibilty.
To the OP - Merlin, if you haven't yet test rode these tandems you are missing out on a huge feedback point in your descision process. Some people may think it's just a brandname or ego decision, but saddling up on a well setup Calfee is a guarantee to emote "oh my god - nice" expressions.