Funny How Things Pop Up
 

Back in 2007, I was working in Phoenix and was able to drive to Tucson for the fall swap. While there, I came across the Lejeune tandem below. I was tempted to snag it, but was leaving later that day for home and had no time to arrange shipping.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...1f47b38d7a.jpg

Perusing fleaBay earlier this month, what should I come across? Same bike, not much changed. Missing front wheel. Tape on rear bar looks unchanged.


https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...67d1f60cb7.jpg

Hope someone can rescue it.

Makes me wonder what they did to the front wheel.

Those are pretty nice tandems. I used to sell them. Shop I worked at imported them raw/unpainted. Pretty sure they were made by Follis, though I wasn't the one dealing with the factory. We'd customize them a bit (e.g. braze-ons), paint and decal them as our house brand.

I see one substantive difference between the Before and After pictures: the custom "lay forward" cap'n seatpost has been replaced with a plain vanilla one.

Take good care of the headsets on those, since they are an obsolete size, 28 mm. That's "OS" but not quite as big as modern 1-1/8" steerers. Some years back, Wayne Bingham of Mel Pinto and Velo Classique said he had some 28 mm headsets, but they might be gone out of the pipeline by now.

The Follis/LeJeune tandem forks used OS blades and steerer, so it's a very confidence-inspiring fork. Workmanship is solid throughout.

There were a number of tandems available last Sunday in Tucson, some of them rather nice. But as is typical for the current market, I don't kow if any changed hands. :/

Speaking of the market, my old boss gave me a Santana Sovereign last year largely because it was taking up too much space in the shop. That's where the market seems to be...
Phil

They do pop up like that sometimes. Not a bike, but a motorcycle that i spotted on my rounds decades ago at a used car lot in Newport News, a Yamaha XV920 similar to the one I owned but elaborately personalized with hard bags and numerous lights all over it. Very distinctive and not likely to be duplicated easily. Cruising FB Marketplace just a couple of years ago and there it was, repainted blue but unmistakably the same machine. Resisted a massive urge to buy it for old time's sake.

2021 was the year of Tandem market collapse around here.
I watched MANY sit on the market for months, some at very reasonable prices.
Spring of '22, I bought two that I recognized from two different "clean out guys" - they had been abandoned.
Santana Arriva and Burley Duet
Both needed cables, tires and tuning.
Fixed them up, managed to sell the Duet, and came out with a "free" Arriva and a profit.
Recumbent market went away about the same time.
Wasn't really until the end of '24 that the entire bike market collapsed.