Calfee Adventure tandem
 

Here is a pic of our new adventure frame we recently commissioned and just got delivered. Will post pics of final build in a week or so. Drop bar ,Xtr Di2 triple full hydraulic. Ability to run 700c or 650 b with large tires. Custom frame bags being built now. Ability to tow a Bob trailer or panniers or put in go fast mode with our Zipp carbon wheels. Modular cranks to go to 2x if we want although since we have a regular tetra it will likely stay in adventure mode to allow rough road , gravel or touring.

Looking forward to reading about the build. I need to find out whether Seven are willing to build a similar frame as I would like to do something similar. I am waiting for SRAM E-tap hydraulic that will manage a 10-40 cassette

Looks cool!

i'm in the market for a thru-axle disc fork. What are you using?

Your rear brake adapter seems to be a new design. Is it for a 180mm rear rotor?

How do you attach the rear hydraulic hose so that it can be easily removed from the frame during transport?

Looks great akexpress! Looking forward to seeing this built up!

House of Tandems do a conversion on etap rear derailleur that will handle a 10-40 cassette.

You said that adding pannier bags will be an option, so are there traditional rear rack mounting points, or is there an alternative solution?

Its been a long winter so I was very slow on the build of this bike as we had snow all winter and still do. Here are some pics of the build so far. These pictures are with the gravel wheel set 650 B wheels with WTB + 47mm tires so the overall diameter is the same as a 700c wheel set. We can use our Zipp 404 event wheels or our set of Velocity Aileron wheels with 38mm tires for rough payment tours as they all interchange. Calfee designed the the chain stay yoke around this idea. Here are some of the specs of the build. I will post pics of the bike with other wheels shortly. Still to come a tubus ti rear rack and custom frame bags. This bike is as close to a do it all tandem as I could come up with. We plan to do loaded touring and some supported tours with it also. We have a go fast Calfee already for just fast riding but it has a nice paint job and no room for bigger tires so it would not make a great touring tandem.


Calfee Tetra frame with couplers, nude, custom head tube extension
Di2 XTR triple with 785 drop bar hydraulic shifters and XT bluetooth wireless display
r785 brakes with Goodridge hose and fittings, metallic pads
203/180 mm Hope V2 rotors all hubs are CLD so we can use Shimano rotors if desired
Middleburn modular cranks
Gates belt drive
Ti eggbeater pedals
Thomson compact Carbon bars
Thomson masterpiece seat posts
Trail tech fixed length stoker stem and Cane Creek stoker levers
Sella Anatomica seats
Enve stem
Chris King bottom brackets and headset
Bushnell featherweight eccentric
Praxis chainrings 44/32/22
Xt cassette 11-32 11 speed
this wheel set Nextie 30mm carbon rims with DT swiss 350 hubs CLD with adapters,Sapin bladed spokes
142 x 12 rear thru axle and 100/15 front thru axle
WTB Horizon tires tubeless
Robert axle project thru axle to allow towing a Bob trailer
Problem Solvers Rear seat post collar for rear rack mounting and Calfee rack attachment seat stay bolts
fender mounts
Whisky cyclocross carbon fork with fender mounts

Wow - just wow!!!


:love:

:beer:

:tandem:

Awesome looking build up Alex. I'm impressed that you managed to get the V2 rotors to fit the 785 calipers. Any filing required?? Clearance looks a smidge tight for the rear tyre. What size is the WTB tyre ??

Beautiful bike! Can. I ask, did you use the middleburn rs7 square taper or the rs8?

The Hope rotors are the round not sawtooth version and I think the rivets are in a smaller diameter circle spider. I have used these rotors extensively and they work great. So therefore no filing necessary. The clearance is not quite as tight as the picture looked. the WTB Horizon tire is 47mm wide and is mounted tubeless on a 30mm rim. We should be able to fit a variety of tires on these 650 B wheels. Most times we will be running on 700c wheels and tires from 25mm to 42mm on other wheel sets we have. We still have room for fenders.

RS8 so we could use Chris King bottom brackets as they have been bullet proof for us. Also there are a variety of spindle lengths available. I used the length for a standard 73mm BB width as that provided the correct spacing for the front derailleur without modifying the mount. As this crankset is modular I can convert it to a double if we so desire. They are really nice cranks but not as light as the Lighning cranks we have on our other tandem but for this project the BB are not proprietary so that was a prime consideration. We plan some somewhat remote trips with it so I am really out there with component choices as far as availability but our experience with Di2 has been flawless and the mountain stuff seems even more robust. I have not cut every gram off it but just good quality components with a dependable reputation and we want the bike to ride well and be responsive.

Thank you, did you source them from mtbtandems or an alternate source?

Da name ez Mark, not Alex ;)

As Mark replied, these are the older "V2" Hope Floating Disc rotors, not the newer Buzzsaw style. The older rotors have more brake surface and the rivets are mounted further toward the rotor's center where they do not interfere with the calipers like the newer rotors can. Most of the clearance problems with the new rotor rivets are with brake pads that have little tabs sticking downward, solved by trimming them. We have used these same rotors on our road tandem w/rs785 calipers, and now are permanent on our mtb tandem with the M8000 calipers.

One slight downside of floating rotors is that the rivets can be loose and therefore rattle. I hate every little extra noise on the road tandem, but having them on our mtb tandem I don't notice anything.

Here is a picture of the bike with the wheels we will ride this bike most of the time. Velocity Aileron rims on White Industry Hubs. Fitted with Victoria Randoneur II tires in 37mm width. Should be a great pavement tire for rough roads and loaded touring.

Update on this bike after riding it for last 5 months and just completing a 475 mile self supported tour of Vermont. The bike has really exceeded our expectations. We have now ridden it in light weight go fast mode and it is very similar in feel to our dedicated road Tetra with the same wheels etc. It really shines with the ability to do more with different tires and some other swaps. We planned for a couple of months to do a 520 mile gravel self supported tour of Idaho that includes 51 hot springs and is mostly on gravel forest service roads. However wildfires and very poor air quality we deviated to Vermont instead. For the Idaho trip I changed it to a flat bar set up with Shimano 4 piston Saint brakes and DI2 mountain shifters. Also a robertaxle project thru axle to tow a BOB trailer. Utilizing 650B Carbon wheels and WTB 47mm Byway tires the bike is a great gravel grinder. Since the Vermont trip was mostly on pavement but with some gravel roads and a fair amount of rail trails we left the wheels and tires and merely changed to a drop bar setup. I now have two complete bar/shifter and brakes setups and can change from one to the other in about 10 minutes. We are using the DI2 XTR triple setup and this system has been flawless and shifts even under significant load without complaint and never missed a shift with the bike fully loaded and some steep hills greater then 12%. Our gearing works great in that in the lowest gear I can just barely keep the bike up right and any lower it is faster to walk and push the bike. We used only 40% of the battery during the ride and I have never shifted so much per mile ever. Since we had no clue about the riding in Vermont we ended up riding to a number of ski areas and lots of steep climbs. We now understand why Adventure cycling and all the Vermont tour companies avoid the riding thru the green mountains. We climbed over 25,000 ft over the span of 11 days and mostly over 5 of the those days. The bike was extremely stable fully loaded with over 50 lbs in the panniers and various bags we utilized. The R785 brakes did their job and kept our speed in check with an occasional stop for cooling on some of the bigger descents. The rotors got noisy when hot but quickly silenced when they cooled down. Our custom frame bags were not done in time for this trip hence the various bags. We used a Tubus titanium rack and Arkel panniers and both were great. Since we have over 15,000 miles on our other Calfee Tetra I know its ride characteristics and this do it all tandem is very close. If one wants a bike that can do it all then this adventure tandem approach is a very valid one bike quiver. With some simple mods between types of rides you can have it all it seems. Attached is picture of the tandem in loaded mode minus rain gear and camelbacks which we shipped home halfway since the forecast was clear and we lightened the load.

We had done a tour in central Vermont about 8 (?) years ago. We did it through Inn-to-Inn Tours. I contacted them, told them that we wanted to ride about 30 - 60 miles per day. They picked the route, booked the Inns and carried our stuff each day to the next Inn. During the day we were on our own. It worked great. I would highly recommend it as an alternative to a large group ride. I think we rode around 300 miles in the week. We started & finished in Brandon, rode through Middlebury and other small towns. Mostly in the area east of Lake Champlain. Inn-to-Inn Tours would tailor the route to your preferences. We rode it in early October. The leaves were at their peak.

Our Seven Ti will handle 40mm with fenders and rear rack.

Mono,
I'd send a PM but admin won't allow until I have more posts:( At any rate, we are planning a build of a Seven Ti with Rohloff and Gates drive. Would you mind sharing your build with me? your comments on what you like or would do differently?
thank you,l
Rob
Sitka, Alaska

Mono,
I guess Pms don't work either way until I have 10 posts:(

Your couplers are all behind the captain's seatpost. Do you find that easier to pack than having one set in front of the seatpost?
On your frame bags, are they secured by velcro, or frame mounts? The frame mounts would be very clean, but the velcro makes the easy to remove for the night, or packing.
Nice bike!!
EB

Our couplers are behind the captains seat post and I find it very easy to pack in the S&S cases with basically each half of the bike in one case. Also I don't like the fact that with couplers in front of the seat post the front has unsupported top and down tube for packing. With our arrangement the front and rear sections are closed if that makes sense. We then just have two separate tubes that can be packed easily. Between this bike and our other one they have been in the cases at least 25 times and no frame damage ever. The frame bags we recently used were velcro however we are having a set of custom bags made by Jpaks. These are going to be held by frame mounts on the side and bottom but use lacing on the top. Calfee did not want us to add frame mounts on the top tubes so hence we went with lace on which is ideally less abrasion on the finish. Our adventure tandem is nude so it doesn't really matter but we have another Calfee which has a nice paint job and the same frame geometry and we can use the bags on it if we choose. BTW we love the bike ,it has exceeded our expectations and there is not much if anything I would change given a chance.

Late to this thread. Mighty fine ride there. We have also used WTB Byways (though you seem to have Horizons pictured in an earlier post) on our Cannondale. We run those tubeless on Ailerons for gravel in MA, NH, VT. I'm sure a lot of the same roads you've ridden on as we ride a lot in VT. The WTB was our D2R2 tire. More typically we run Compass BSP 42 tires with fenders.

Like it! What's a rough budget for such a bike?

It's a bit like a Rolls Royce. If you need to ask then it's out of your price range :-)