Any idea what this is? A friend of mine was recently given this old Tandem. It had some Schwinn decals on it but he doesn't believe it is really a Schwinn. But, we're unsure of what it really is. It came to him in an Indian red color but has a more cherry red underneath.


TR1 448 double stamped. Crimped stays.

Monostay

Three badge holes, middle one hasn't been used.

Took a hit

Captain's seat tube

Solid fork

Not a Schwinn

Interesting seat clamp

Inside head tube

Mos def not a Schwinn. Maybe a Columbia?
Columbia Tandem

Another one, more similar frame style to yours:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Columbia-Tw...-/133151740242

BTW, looks like yours (your friend's) has a bent TT & DT from a front-end collision.

Mark B in Seattle

Thanks Mark! Many similarities to those Columbia bikes. And yeah, we knew it took a frontal hit.

I concur. It appears to be a Columbia Twosome tandem, model 7620.

Thank you!

Thanks Chuck. We're going to go with Columbia.

He's going to have some fun with refurbishing it. Custom repaint it himself, make his own headbadge and frame stickers. This will be his 5th or 6th tandem.

As everyone has said - it's a Columbia - but that's a Schwinn/Ashtabula fork on it. Likely sourced due to the front-end damage.

Have him put it together and ride it first. Besides the bent front end and obviously reinforced captain's seatpost/stoker stem, these were about as whippy as any ladies' single-rider Columbia Tourist. That may not be such a problem for a 3-speed to toodle around on, but it can ruin the enjoyment of a tandem.

There are better old tandems to sink time into. This isn't one of them. If weight isn't an issue, a cruise ship anchor Schwinn Twinn would be a fairly good starting point and probably easily accessible.

Granted, if he's throwing Ashtabula forks in vises without anything to keep the jaws from biting into the steel, maybe he is better off fooling with this Columbia.

-Kurt

I'm not very conversant on Schwinn tandems but that looks like the OEM fork used on the Columbia Twosome.

Kurt, this is just a fun winter project for my friend and something to have fun riding around the neighborhood on. He is a retired mechanic who now works part time in a bike shop. He knows his way around a bike just fine. That fork will be okay. By the way, he has about 5 or 6 tandems that are for longer and harder riding.

Sometimes, you should just keep your opinion to yourself.

Understood - though I still have a hard time understanding why someone knowledgeable would want to spend time with a frame that's been in a front-ender.

Perhaps I'm doing him an injustice - and perhaps he's got a Park FFS-1 *HTS-1 waiting in the wings (I'd actually really love to see that tool go to work on this frame).

Just goes to show that I should keep my mouth shut when it comes to Columbias

I'm pretty sure that's still an Ashtabula Forge fork though. Makes sense to have such a thing as original spec though, and it also makes sense that a fork of this design would have transferred a front-end hit to the frame.

By comparison, the Columbia forks I've worked with in the past would have probably have reverse-bent from the weight of two riders.

-Kurt

Yeah, Ashtabula sold the forks to Schwinn, so they could have sold them to Columbia too, right? I don't know but it seems plausible.

Man those are bad forks though. On my Schwinn Twinn, I could get the rim to rub the brakes easily by standing to pedal, or just taking a sharp turn like a U-turn in the street. The axle was not slipping in the dropouts, it was just the fork flexing sideways. The fork is super heavy and way too flexible side-to-side. Many of you know this, but for those who don't: the blades are not tubular, they are solid steel. But too narrow to have much lateral stiffness.

I put an '80s MTB fork (from a Schwinn MTB at least) on the Twinn, because we actually ride it a lot, and historical accuracy is not high on my list of requirements for that bike. The bike was totally transformed by the fork, and the cantilever brake it also allowed. The previous "brake" has to have scare-quotes around it because it hardly qualified as a brake. Almost as weak as the rear brake on that bike, an Atom drum brake.

We have steep hills here, so tandems need brakes.

Mark B in Seattle

That is what the plan is.

Did you get this in Key West? Looks like Margaritaville to me.

Should be super easy on the relatively soft tubing, and the curves will help hide the flaws.

Any chance he can capture video of the task when it happens?

-Kurt

I'll try.

It was local.

So my friend borrowed a Park HTS-1 from another LBS. He put it to work this afternoon. Here is a couple pics, before and after. While not perfect, the HTS-1 worked out quite well.

HTS-1

Had this been lugged construction, there probably would would have been a crease in the underside of the tubes, that would have made salvage more risky. In this case, the lugless construction and heaver, plain gauge tubes resulted in a more gradual bend, without creasing, that was easily repairable.