hey, cudak, that is one great toolkit. that was on my xmas list this year but i was a bad boy (buying that phoney 70s cinelli) so i guess santa didnt give it to me. do you have an extra?

Well you did great this time Joe, that's a beautiful tandem! No problem I can see with removing the spindles from a pair of pedals and putting them back in the opposite pedal bodies from the ones they came from. Good Karma after that dodgy Cinelli!

well, thank you very much!! i feel good about that tandem, but you know, my two best bike buys lately were due in large thanks to cudak for that helpful advice on the paramount tandem and picchio special, for his helpful advice on the purple picchio special bike i picked up several months ago. love the tandem very much but now my main problem is finding some nice lady to ride it with since i am currently a single guy with a beutiful tandem.

i guess you could ride around town with a distraught look on your face. you never know what you may run across

or better yet, imagine the look on a girls face when you say, "wanna pedal back to my place"

ha! what can i say to that? i was thinking also, i could be "sweep" at the local bike club ride and ride the tandem and be a type of "broom wagon"

i love it. keep us posted.

Unfortunately, that one isn't mine, but it is one of two. The second one is in pretty poor shape, I hear, and only half of the tools are present. Still, I think the second set might be available at the right price. Send an email if its of interest.

-Kurt

Those are tandem cranks alright, you can tell from the chainring adaptors. Up until 1977 Paramount tandems came with TA 10 speed tandem cranksets with the timing chain on the right. Someone needed room for a 3rd chainring so they got another right front arm and installed it on the rear on the left side, and swapped the front arms left for right.

Our '77 had a straight sloping top tube and a Campi crossover triple. Even though it was a piece of crap, there's something about them that still makes my heart race. At least our fork crown didn't fail. (Not while we owned it anyway.)

BTW The OPs is an earlier model and should be OK. Almost every '78 and '79 fork failed due to inadequate penetration of brass between crown and steerer.

BTW2 Wouldn't work with Look, but I've known people with SPDs who just turned their cleats 180 instead of swapping axles.

clipping in heal first would suck when you could just swap axles and be done with it.

wow, now that is very cool!! my freind thought those cranks were NOT tandem cranks so this is news to me. thanks so much. say, mnhpva guy, why cant you switch axles on look pedals? do they have some mechanism that is not workable? is my tandem a 78? i cant tell from the serial number>

!

Well, that's a surprise. Looks like I haven't been around the tandems fast enough to have caught onto that immidiately. Now that I see that reversed Look pedal on the captain's RH crankarm, it makes sense.

Looks as if your job will be a lot easier, Joe - all you need to find is a standard TA left arm for the stoker, and swap the captain's crankset around, along with the timing chain, and possibly the captain's BB too, depending on how the bike was converted.

-Kurt

P.S.: What's the serial, Joe? It isn't newer then '76 - the decals don't match. Waterford has the tandem serials listed on their site:

https://www.waterfordbikes.com/site/c...ara_dating.php

The fact that Schwinn mounted everything on the right side does not make them tandem cranks. Tandem cranks according to TA foresaw left cranks fitted with chainrings and reverse pedal threading. Using standard cranks was an expediency that worked perfectly well as long as you were OK having two usable chainrings for the drive chain. On track tandems, it is commonplace to have both the drive and timing chains on the right.

??? what? kurt , i dont have a clue what your talking about? that sounds complicated to do. switching what to what? oh well, im totally inept at fixing bikes. by the way, thanks so much for the serial number infor. i will check that out asap.

The cranksets came from TA in boxes marked "Tandem". (Years ago I bought 6 sets)
In the boxes were;
2 standard left arms

1 short front and 1 long rear BB. I'd have to do some measuring, but I believe the rear BB was longer than the standard triple. If so it was probably also used to make the TA 26-36-46-56 quad shown in Paris in the early '70s.

1 standard right arm with 32-36-52 chainrings. The bolts connecting the middle and inner ring to the outer ring were longer than normal. This was because 2 sets of spacers were needed between the inner and middle ring so the two chains would clear.

1 standard right arm with the tandem specific "Etoile" adapter allowing a middle/inner ring to be mounted without an outer ring.

I would wager that, over all the years of production, these were the more common "TA Tandem" configuration, as opposed to the "Crossover" versions which became popular later.

The crankarms and timing chain that's on the left side of the bike is supposed to be on the right - along with the captain's cranks:



Someone flipped the front (captain's) cranks, and added an additional right-hand crank arm on the left side.

All you need the shop to do is put the captain's left crankarm on the right side, and vise versa (and possibly flip the bottom bracket around), and find another left-hand arm to put in the back. The shop can re-install the proper rings for the timing chain on the right side.

Do you follow me now? If not, come on down here to Miami (when it warms up!) and bring the tandem with you

Take care,

-Kurt

that sounds complicated to do. switching what to what? oh well, im totally inept at fixing bikes. by the way, thanks so much for the serial number infor. i will check that out asap.[/QUOTE]

wow! so thats what its supposed to look like. thanks a million kurt. i didnt have a clue that was supposed to be on the other side. shows you how ignorant i am of tandem set up. i see now that it looks pretty easy to correct. i wonder if i can do this myself. anyway, if i get to miami ill bring my tandem and we can take a spin on it. i guess i need to get rid of the triple, right? by the way, thanks for that great link to the serial number info. now i need a couple of brooks saddles to put on this so it looks better.