Tandem compatible trainers?
 

Hi everyone,
spring has sprung and with it the outdoor tandeming season - we have been long waiting for it. It also seems to be a season where quite a few people are thinking of getting rid of their used indoor trainers. For various reasons, we are trying to find out whether an indoor trainer might be the answer to the lack of winter training and related problems arising for a lack of muscle strength in our team.
I have never felt attracted to indoor trainers, so I have extremely limited experience with them. Winter biking is still much better. The only scenario I can imagine it being somewhat nice is to train together on a tandem.

Before we try out anything (used), I was wondering if:
1. all trainers are compatible with a tandem (2012 Cannondale Road Tandem 2, to be specific) or if there is anything we need to look out for? Are the mounts universal? Is weight, rocking, higher output power levels or frame loading an issue?
2. there are any tandem-specfic aspects with using trainers that we should look out for to have them working well and "fun"?

Thanks a lot in helping me exploring this unfamiliar terrain.

A friend is selling a fluid one (CycleOps Fluid Pro), so dumb - progressive resistance. I will contact her to try first for compatibility. (Sold already). Smart trainers seem crazy expensive. Almost so expensive that I could just ride a tandem through winter and replace all rusted through components as we go (aaaargh!).

Our tandem will work just fine with our smart trainer (Wahoo Kickr), but needs me to swap in a 9-speed cassette.

Unless you have absolutely no space whatsoever I would be using single bikes on a smart trainer. Your individual training requirements would be completely different. It would be nearly impossible to judge how hard you were both working so the benefits would be unequal.
We both use Zwift with an Elite Direto direct drive trainer. You can buy a direct drive trainer from about $500 and they are way more fun to use than a basic dumb trainer.
If you want to improve then each of you doing a plan like this will get you fit. An hour a day should be manageable

I don't disagree with your general message, but I do disagree with it as blanket advice. Generally, we use separate trainers on single bikes. But, to keep our hands in with the tandem, and to keep our communication style going, it's a nice thing, I think, in a climate such as ours (cold and wet most of the year, discouraging outside cycling for months at a time), to be able to hook up the tandem to a trainer. Also, we have individual power meters (Garmin pedals) on the tandem, so we do get individual feedback with our head units connected to our power meters. Using Zwift on a smart trainer, it can be a very useful exercise.

Mark

This.

Stoker and I have our half-bikes on Elite Qubo smart trainers. I enjoy Zwift quite a bit, my stoker, not so much. One drawback to putting the tandem in a trainer is the stoker can't easily watch TV. Time passes very slowly on the trainer unless you have something to watch. This is where Zwift can be handy since you can do workouts of 30 minutes or so and be absolutely spent at the end of it.

Thanks for your feedback. Our goals are basically two-fold:
1. (and foremost) to maintain basic muscle strength of the stoker's knee due to an injury (and avoid super competitive environments, because this does not sit well with her). Maintain regular exercise that survives our regularly happening uprooting of basic day-to-day routines (grad students among you might know this) - we have failed at this before. Working out together is a trial run for us to maintain more inertia in this department (currently outdoors! :) ) - thus the thoughts to use the tandem. Once we have a trainer, swapping for a single bike on there shouldn't be an issue.
2. I generally prefer winter biking over indoor training - but sometimes it's just really hard to get my legs worked out enough before winter issues (cold, snow mess...) kick in. I prefer cycling/touring with friends over cycling/touring alone - and so our tandem has worked out well so far.
None of us have competitive ambitions and spin classes are a no-go for us as a team (I am open to that on a single and have been contemplating it). Geoffs, thank you for the link, this does look interesting.

Our thought so far was to try cycling while watching a series or two (currently we are going through entire Star Trek - why not while sitting on a bike?). I was hoping that we could find a position where we can both watch with a bit of an angle. Is this realistic?

That is what we do (funny--the first series we did that with was Star Trek TNG). As to whether it's realistic on a tandem, you'll have to try it to see, I suspect.

Haha! We started with the original and are now somewhere in the end of season 2 of TNG, plenty of episodes left. Energize!

We use an older "giant" trainer, works well enough, beefy enough to handle the tandem.
R&J

Hey guys,
thank you for all your feedback. Encouraged by the reports that a CycleOps fluid works on a 145mm spaced tandem, I got a used one today. Still need to find a matching skewer to really try things out, but it's looking good so far and I have had my road bike on it already. Now, I have an entire season to figure out the best approaches to make a regular indoor cycling exercise as most fun as it can be - while soaking up the wonderful May sun, outdoors!
There was an older 'smart' trainer for sale within our price range, but things didn't work out and some hacking would have been required to match it up with Zwift & Co. Hence: let's turn to Star Trek. Energize!

Updated Thoughts?
 

Hi there, I’m new to this forum. I read some of the comments on trainers for tandems but none of them are recent. I’m wondering if anybody has any additional thoughts or recommendations for smart trainers for a tandem. We’re looking for a smart trainer for our KHS tandem

Hi and Welcome,
Most likely the idea foundered on the inability to find a QR skewer with a head of the right shape to engage the trainer mount but long enough to go through a 145 mm tandem wheel. All you can find long enough now are the Salsa-type exposed-cam things. The skewer provided with the trainer will be too short.

On these forums you’ll often hear a lot of brilliant ideas followed by total silence when they don’t pan out.

Our tandem has a 145mm quick release rear hub, like yours, and we've used it successfully on both trainers that we currently own.

One trainer is the very popular, non-smart, wheel-on Cyclops Fluid 2. Ours is ~20 years old FWIW. The tandem fits in that trainer like any other bike with a quick-release skewer. We have a Shimano XT tandem skewer that works well. Today you could buy a Shimano skewer meant for 141mm QR hubs. It looks like there's a smart version of the current model Fluid 2. I can't guarantee that it works with a tandem, but it certainly looks promising.

We also have a fully modern wheel-off Minoura Kagura LSD9200. It came with adapters for 130mm QR, 135mm QR, 12x142mm thru axle, and 12x148mm thru axle hubs. To fit the 145mm QR tandem, we use the QR adapter on the right side and the 148mm thru axle adapter on the left side. The left side also needs a 12mm to QR adapter. We use one that looks like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/351748855293 The "over locknut dimension" with those spacers works out to 144.5mm, which works seamlessly with the tandem. This same approach should work on any other wheel-off smart trainer that includes adapters for QR hubs and 148mm thru axle hubs.

Thank you for that feedback.

A retailer in Germany is selling 173 mm Shimano skewers on eBay for the equivalent of a few dollars (intended for internal gear hubs, it looks like.) This is OK for a tandem, although 178 would be better. But courier shipping is like $100 ! Since COVID, many European retailers have shifted to couriers for their North American deliveries owing to mysterious "losses" in the mail and demands for refunds, especially early when flights were full of travelers trying to get home and then stopped altogether. But at that price, it seems they don't want to be bothered with North America at all, since it's about double the charge I've paid for other couriered orders from other places. Actually ordinary tracked Royal Mail and French Post are fast and cheap but it's still hit or miss as to whether a seller will use the mail or not across the ocean.
The other thing you could try is contacting the seller (through eBay) to ask if the shipping charge is correct. Sometimes the automated shipping calculator gets it way off and the seller will say, "Goodness, no, not nearly that much."
I bought two 173 mm XT skewers from a guy in Taiwan a few months ago, gave one to a friend. Haven't seen any on eBay since, other than these from Germany, which aren't XT, by the price. I've had a search for the better 178 mm skewers on for the past year, not a single hit.
Sometimes a bike shop will have some long skewers with internal cams sitting around in a drawer. Can't hurt to ask.

Are you watching the original Star Trek series?