Originally Posted by mrfish
I'm surprised by TG's strategy - that's certainly what was needed in the bad old days of cup and cone bottom brackets, but in my view it's not necessary to take the bike to bits every time it gets wet. I personally don't bother as it's far too time consuming...
- Bear in mind, our road tandems are somewhat expensive, one-of-a-kind custom steel-framed tandems.
- Getting "wet" doesn't qualify: it's after the hours-long, soaked-to-the-bone rides where experience tells me that special attention is required. If someone has never bothered to pull their bottom brackets or headset then they're just assuming everything's OK. Having checked those nether-regions on all of my bikes, I know now that when ridden in the rain for prolonged periods of time, water will collect in the rear bottom brackets of our tandem's frames. I also know that there will be a large pool of water in the boom tube of our S&S tandem, which necessitates its disassembly. The eccentrics used on all of our tandems have openings and cavities that allow water to pool so it's actually the eccentric that gets pulled and not the bottom bracket from the eccentric. Chris King headset bearings are sealed, but the headsets themselves aren't... so while our carbon steerers don't rust, it doesn't bode well to have water sitting inside of a steel headtube.
- As for the time required, pulling the chains (done by hand), three cranks (with self-extracting bolts), the rear bottom bracket, the eccentric, and fork takes a little under 10 minutes, with reinstallation after air-drying for a day taking another 10 minutes: YRMV. Breaking the travel tandem down does take an extra few minutes since three couplers must be unscrewed. If we rode our tandems in the rain on a regular basis I would do what I've done to address the water and grime issue with my single bikes: I'd build up a non-coupled titanium "mud bike" for use on cruddy days.
Sorry if I wasn't clear and, yes, this may still seem like a bit of excessive maintenance to a lot of folks. However, I guess it's like many things with bicycling... to each their own. I have no plans to replace our two road tandems for the forseeable future so an ounce of prevention... don't you know.