I have a stock Cannondale pre-'98 J/L made from 6061-T6 aluminum, and a custom Meridian made from 7005 T7 (?) aluminum. Aluminum is not necessarily harsh. It depends on the thickness of the material and the shapes of the tubes and how it is used. So the Cannondale with it's thick walls and round bottom tube has a pretty stiff ride, and the Meridian with it's very long wheelbase and ovalized bottom tube and thinwall tubing has a marvelous magic carpet ride.

The ZR-9000 aluminum tubeset used by Trek has a weight close to 7005 straight-gauge aluminum tubing, and my recollection is that the bottom tube is ovalized. I would expect a comfortable ride.

Trek has been building tandems for nearly twenty years. Some of the twenty-year-old steel T200's are still seeing regular use. Trek has enough experience to produce a great bike. Don't be concerned about a few pounds of extra weight if it has them. Believe me, it's the motors.

Have you ever known anybody who couldn't understand how something worked and therefore couldn't fix it? If you find on test ride that the tandem you are riding has firm and non-spongy lever feel and lots of lever travel left after the pads contact the rim, I wouldn't worry about the brakes.

Standard tandem sizing warning:

Beware of short stoker compartments. You first have to know your stoker's horizontal single bike fit (center of seatpost to center of handlebars, parallel to the ground), and then set it on the tandem. Anything less than six inches of horizontal space between the center of the handlebars and the center of the captain's seatpost is a badly compromised fit, and your stoker MAY NOT BE HAPPY.

Tandem fit is comprised of the captain's and stoker's single bike fits, and the space in between. The "space in between" is the great "black hole" of tandem fit. Nobody who sells tandems really wants to talk about it (lots of them don't know enough to think about it, and that is even worse), because there is not much variation in production tandems. Little can be done without ordering a custom dimension tandem (the custom dimension upgrade may be your best-spent money ever).

Space in between is best defined as, with exact stoker single bike fit set, the horizontal stoker stem dimension, with that defined as the horizontal distance between the center of the stoker handlebars and the center of the captain's seatpost.

So the one thing you have to take with you when you go tandem shopping is transferable measurements. You need the aforementioned horizontal single bike fit dimension, and the measurement between the center of the bottom bracket spindle, parallel to the seat tube, to the top of the saddle, for both riders. You also need some kind of handlebar height dimension, which you can get off the ground plane if the bottom bracket heights are the same. Santana BB heights were a little bit lower.

The "space in between" is a variable requirement depending on stoker size and use preferences. Six inches is getting close to the minimum for a stoker of 5'2-3". If she wants to go low without interference from your butt being in the way, or risking taking a butt in the top of the helmet if you back up on the saddle, or if she wants to stand up and move forward, she's going to need more. If she wants aerobars, she's going to want WAY more. "Sit up and beg," with your nose pasted into the captain's jersey, is a very limiting position for a stoker.

My advice is to raise these issues with your wife so she will think about them, and if she believes she can be comfortable with the space provided, either short or long term, go ahead and buy the bike with the shared idea that sometime in the future you might order a custom and upgrade the fit, and consider the money very well spent. It is a wonderful feeling to be able to load out your "clunker" tandem (after you get the custom) and introduce other couples to tandeming. A loaner or a spare is a great thing to have.

Best way to measure a stoker compartment length (some manufacturers are so sensitive about this that they won't even release frame dimensions)? With identical bottom bracket heights so the line is parallel to the ground, measure between the bottom bracket spindle centers, though of course with a front bottom bracket eccentric shell, you are better off measuring to the center of the shell. That keeps you away from that hard-to-measure sloping rear top tube. You have to get horizontal measurements.

My recollection is that the average female height in this country is 5'4". Tolerable fit would require a horizontal rear top tube measurement in the neighborhood of 29". This may sound okay at first if your primary stoker is 5'2", but by placing the maximum fit so close to the minimum for the population as a whole, you are essentially rejecting 75% of your potential stoker population. You would never buy a car so small everywhere except the driver's seat that everyone over 5'2" could only come if they were tied to the roof.....

Witness for the defense: I've talked to Bill McCready (Santana CEO) about this. He's sold tens of thousands of tandems and he knows all of the issues. He does not agree with me. He says longer tandems are less aerodynamically efficient, and he sees higher heart rates at the same speed on longer tandems. He says his stoker compartments are made longer with those "cowhorn" time trial bars that put the stoker's hands alongside the captain's hips, and that very little extra drag results from having the stoker's hands out in the slipstream, and that the extra handlebar width required by the captain's hips is not a fit issue for the stoker, because mountain bike handlebars are that wide anyway. And the extra length degrades the handling.

I didn't agree with any of that. I thing a long-wheelbase tandem with aerobars is more efficient on average, and that is the way custom tandems intended to win national time trial championships are built, and guess what, they win. Cowhorn handlebars do not make tandem stoker compartments longer if your requirement is for more space along the centerline for the stoker's head and room to stand up. Georgena Terry fits female stokers with her products for living, and SHE thinks handlebar width matters, and she makes narrow handlebars, which of course you couldn't use on a short-wheelbase tandem because they wouldn't provide stoker single bike fit and clear the captain's hips....and tandems that won't move because the stoker won't get on it because there isn't room for her to be comfortable in back have VERY bad handling.

Hopefully Mark Livingood will get by Mon/Tue and fix any mistakes I've made and add his own opinions. Right now he's probably wishing he had pontoon outriggers at the tandem rally in New Braunfels.....