Originally Posted by
CycleBiker
It's always puzzled me about "rigidity" being the key for tandem frames.
When my daughter was 10 years old I bought an old junky Schwinn (I think) tandem. (not the good Schwnn tandem) This thing hand tiny tubes - about 7/8". I inverted the seatpost clamp in back to get the seat low enough. I made some upgrades over the years and we put a few thousand miles on it.
When my daughter was big enough we got a regular tandem. The immediate difference was that going up hills I had to keep a death grip on the handlebars, every movement of the stoker trasmitted through the rigid frame. Every time we had to go up a hill I was wishing for that flexi-frame - it was so much easier going up hills as the frame twisted this way and that as the stoker and captain did their own thing.
This is an interesting perspective. Having ridden both types of frames extensively, I think that the knock on flexible frames is a little overblown. However, I'm not sure what tandem you have, but stoker movement transferred through the frame is really a characteristic of flexible frames not rigid frames. I rarely feel my stoker on the Comotion except for standing to climb, which, for me, was nearly impossible on the flexible frame Motobecane.
One thing I liked about the Moto was running OOP, since we couldn't stand anyway. I would do this on the Como, but I love standing to power over the short hills that we have around here.
Frank and Terry