Following is a 14 month / 4400 mile review of our Santana Team Niobium (steel) tandem. To be up front as a reviewer, my wife and I are not long-time tandem riders although we are long-time (30 year) single bike riders. To help celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary and my wife’s 50th birthday we rode our single bikes in a supported tour across America in the summer of 2004. That story is at www.bloomingtoncyclist.blogspot.com A year after that trip we found ourselves exploring tandems.

I posted a 3 month review (in two parts) at tandem@hobbes:
https://hobbes.ucsd.edu/tandem/Hyperm...pr06/0613.html
https://hobbes.ucsd.edu/tandem/Hyperm...pr06/0614.html
and a 6 month / 2500 mile review at tandem@hobbes
https://hobbes.ucsd.edu/tandem/Hyperm...ul06/0319.html

These earlier posts explore how and why we ended up choosing this particular tandem – I’ll just say here that I have a history with steel and from 1973 to 2003 I rode an Italian road bike (called Chiappini) with a Columbus steel frame and Campy friction 10 speed shifting which meant two chainrings 52,42 and five cogs 14 – 28. In anticipation of the cross country trip I jumped to both indexed shifting and carbon fiber with a Kestrel Talon frame built up with primarily Campagnolo components and 10 speed shifting (triple chainrings and 10 speed rear 13 – 29 cassette while my wife moved to a Klein Reve X with aluminum main triangle and a carbon fork and stays and primarily Campagnolo components with the same gearing.

Does our Team Niobium handle like my Kestrel racing bike? No. I didn’t expect it too. With a much longer wheel base and carrying twice as much weight it’s going to be very different. I do occasionally read comments from some tandem owners that their tandem handles like a single bike. I just have to wonder at what kind of single bike they ride. My wife and I love how our tandem handles. My impression is that it is takes little effort to steer / lean through the winding curves of our favorite rides and at the same time it feels rock solid when we are going down 40 to 50 mph down the hills around here. This summer I will have a chance to ride a Calfee Tetra Tetra that friends have just acquired and another colleague has a Co-Motion Speedster with a Wound-Up carbon fork and I will eventually write about my impressions. I am looking forward to the opportunity to try them out.

Back to our tandem: My wife has a lower back / sciatic nerve issue that bothers her from time to time. Some years ago she switched from her old road bike to a hybrid bike with a more upright position and then made the recent switch to the previously mentioned Klein. We changed the stem to get her more upright and changed the bars to a TTT Eva made for smaller hands that put her fingers closer to the brake / shift levers. The Klein has a little rubbery suspension material in the rear mono-seat stay called S.P.A. standing for suspension performance advantage that really helped keep my wife’s lower back / sciatic nerve in good shape. I believe that Klein used this first (but I’m not sure) and Trek (who owns Klein) subsequently used it in some Pilot models and the Trek pros have used it in their Paris-Roubais race bikes.

It was important for us to have some suspension for the stoker. The Niobium comes with the carbon Tamer Pivot Plus https://www.tamerusa.com/pivotplus.htm From reading tandem@hobbes posts, it made some bad impressions early on with some who speak of it sticking and squeaking. However our post has been great after it was set up correctly. It was sticky on our first ride at home because the shop did not understand how to set it up. When we picked up the bike and had the final fitting / adjustment, we were told NOT to lube the piston because it would move too easily and oscillate up and down too much. Having no experience with this seat post, we believed him. Stoker wasn’t getting much movement on the test ride but the road was smooth. When we got home to some rougher roads, it became clear that it wasn’t moving much at all and when it did go down it didn’t come back up....Well… after reading the instructions available online, it was obvious that it should be lubricated. That did make it go up and down too easily because the internal spring tension preload wasn’t set correctly. We set it according to the online instruction sheet and it was still too soft so we ended up riding a little and then stopping to take out the post and tighten the spring a half turn and then do it again, etc. until we got it right. At this point, according to the chart, it was set for a much heavier person so I emailed the company and they replied that the chart was for the mountain post and the stoker tandem post was their road post (with different lengths of links in the parallelogram) and the settings were different but they don’t have a separate chart for it on the website for it (I think they should). https://ekosport.com/tamer_manuals/pivotplus.pdf As the miles went on it did develop a squeak which went away as soon as I put a drop of a wet lube on each of the pins holding the parallelogram linkage together. Since then I put a drop on those and the main piston every couple of weeks – no noise and no sticking whatsoever. Do not use a dry lube for this – dry lubes cannot flow back when they are displaced.

I now have a different captain’s seatpost. The bike comes with a carbon post to match the look of the rear carbon pivot plus. Tamer just makes this captain’s post for Santana. One day, the stoker found that she could rotate my seat with her handlebars and she had not been doing that ever before. It turned out that the seatpost had a crack from the top of the stoker stem down into the seat tube. I believe what I read that most cracked carbon seatposts are from too much pressure which crushes / cracks a carbon seatpost but I’ve been using a torque wrench on this bike all along with 30 to 40 in-lbs on the seatpost. When I looked at the post I think the crack started along the open slit where the stoker stem clamps around the seatpost. I don’t know if one would call our riding aggressive or not but we do stand quite a bit on hills and there is a lot of force put on the ends of the handlebars as we rock a little while pushing it on a hill. Tamer was very good and sent me a free replacement of the post after they looked at my post but it took a while and we wanted to ride immediately. In the meantime I ordered a Thomson Elite aluminum post and I have been using it since. Enough posts have broken that Santana now has online advisory about the care of their carbon seatposts https://www.santanatandem.com/carbonseatpost.pdf

Related to this are two questions, “Does grease damage carbon fiber?” The very common but wrong answer is yes. “Should one lubricate a carbon seatpost?” The very common but wrong answer is no but the slowly spreading correct answer is yes. Read these columns by Leonard Zinn quoting various people on the issue. The first one is really fun because of the differences of opinions between people who should know but don’t and Craig Calfee setting the record straight. The second one is recent and revisits the topic now that some specific lubes for carbon are being marketed. https://www.velonews.com/tech/report/...es/9023.0.html and https://www.velonews.com/tech/report/...s/11799.0.html

I wanted the Shimano Sweet 16 wheels because of the significantly improved aerodynamics of low spoke count wheels and I admit that I like the look of them as well. I am impressed with the design of the spoke crossing over from the hub to the other side of the rim to help with lateral strength given the low number of spokes. I also like that one could use a regular spoke if needed in a pinch (the spoke head is at the rim and the nipple is at the hub) and that is not true for many boutique wheels. It is not the light weight champ by any means but the aerodynamics are far more important than the weight so it was the wheel for me. The wheels made a great first impression followed by a poor second impression followed by a great third and current impression. A great wheel when it’s tensioned correctly. In hindsight, I would say that the tension was probably not as high as it should have been at the beginning but I didn’t check the tension when the wheels were brand new so can’t say for sure. As I described in my earlier reviews many of the spokes on the rear wheel loosened way up by around mile 300 which we noticed first because they started making noise. I’m sure that our going fast (40 to 50 mph) down some hills that had some rough spots which we hit at full speed accelerated the spoke loosening. At that time Santana wasn’t able to give me a Park or Wheelsmith tensiometer reading and advised me to re-tension it to match the tension of the front wheel spokes which were all even at 23 on my Park tensiometer. The literature with the Sweet 16 wheel gives a range of value for the spoke tension of 1000 to 1500 kg force but that was useless because the spokes are not on the spoke chart for the Park tool or a Wheelsmith tool to let one know what the tensiometer reading should be to correspond to that. After re-tensioning the rear wheel to 23 it worked well but the tension slowly dropped unevenly again as the miles went by so I put them to 25 rear and front and they have been fine for the 2500 miles since. Santana finally released a service update that calls for a tension of 26 on the Park tool and 95 on the Wheelsmith and last month I raised the tension from 25 to 26. All owners or shops will now know what tension to put on the spokes. The update is on their website library: https://www.santanatandem.com/sanreup.pdf Santana still advises to keep tabs on the spoke tension in the first 1000 km but I would suppose that if the wheels are shipped at that tension in the first place they will hold it. If the initial spoke tension is high enough and even, then it stays that way.

A while back I was reading some results of some aerodynamic tests done on wheels by a fellow in Vancouver (but I cannot find the reference / link right now – aargh!). He didn’t test any tandem wheels (but he tests wheels that people send to him) but his work is showing that thin-bladed spokes create more drag than more normal cross-sections. It doesn’t matter to me but if true, that is just icing on the cake with these wheels with spokes which have just slightly elliptical cross-sections.

The standard brakes are the Avid Single Digit 7 linear pull front and rear. I come from a past of Campy sidepulls and recently Campy dual pivot brakes on our single bikes and I appreciate good braking and short lever throws but I must say that linear pull brakes are pretty amazing brakes in general. They don’t win the style contest but they are very effective brakes and are stopping a much heavier weight. They are excellent brakes but they were not great on the first day. The front felt mushy. They need a travel agent to use with the Ultegra STI brake-shift levers. When we first picked up our bike, I knew nothing about travel agents. We didn’t get much paperwork from the dealer with the bike but one paper was a warning-installation guide for the travel agent emphasizing that the position of the hole where the cable passes from the small wheel to the large wheel needs to be at the 1:00 or 2:00 position. If it’s further clockwise than that, when the brake is applied the wheel rotates to where the cable is up against the bracket which over time will break the cable and in the short term keep the brake from being fully applied. Our travel agent was about 3:00 and hitting the bracket – someone slipped up. So once I set that up the brake was very good. Whenever I read about a travel agent cable breaking I think it is probably the case that the cable has been hitting the bracket. If you take up slack in the cable with the adjuster, that rotates the wheel around clockwise past the 2:00 position. All riders should inspect their brake cables no matter what kind of brakes they have.
https://www.problemsolversbike.com/im...agent_inst.pdf

We do some riding in the rain and quickly found that the original pads were too abrasive on the wet rims so I switched to a dual compound half-black; half salmon Kool Stop thinline pads. The wheels are too expensive to for us to be wearing out the rims. Later I switched to full salmon thinline – less abrasive, less prone to squeaking (I think). For the riding we’ve done for most of our lives these brakes would have been all we needed but two planned future rides with extended braking requirements have forced us to get a rear disc or drum so we wouldn’t blow-up a tire. We chose to put a Santana / Winzip disc brake with the 255 mm rotor (10 inch). We have about 300 miles with it now and it is performing better and better and I am getting used to the more-than-I-am-used-to amount of lever travel and it is performing well. The performance has increased as the pads have worn to a more parallel position and I am able to keep the pads very close to the rotor. I tried my best to get them parallel in the first place but it was a challenge for me. We have friends who had a Santana with this brake so I was somewhat familiar with its workings. At one point while helping eliminate the wailing moan their brake made I had spoken with a mechanic at Santana about the whole set up procedure. If I had not been familiar with it, I would have found the documentation lacking that came with the brake. The first link following is the link to the instruction sheet on the Santana website; the second is to some pertinent info with images which was helpful to me for the made-by-Winzip IRD Dual Banger which is made by Winzip; the third is the Winzip manufacturer site. For a disc brake novice such as myself, the IRD info is helpful. Our Winzip has been quiet – no squeals.
https://www.santanatandem.com/WinzipDiscInst.pdf
https://www.interlocracing.com/mech_instr2.pdf
https://www.winzip-diskbrake.com/ and chose products and chose winzip
To see the patent go to https://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html and search patent number 6382365

When I made this change, I also came across a good deal on some new Shimano XTR V-brakes. I like the parallelogram linkage design that keeps the pad in the same alignment to the rim even as the pad wears and I put them on the front. I installed Kool Stop salmon Mountain Pads. They are a larger pad than the regular thinline pad and it’s curved so that fills up more of the rim surface and I am very happy with the results. Sheldon Brown says they are the best pad for any brake using threaded hardware – I believe him. I should probably put them on our single bikes too. https://www.sheldonbrown.com/harris/b....html#mountain

Around mile 3000 we began having some rear shifting problems. I over-reacted and under-thought. I had two unrelated issues that both contributed to the problem but I fumbled my way to findng them. Before I found the real culprits I purchased a new cassette and new chains. The rear derailleur housing had a kink as it entered the derailleur adding some friction but the major cause was that most of the strands of the cable inside the lever were broken and sprangling, keeping it from moving easily. I’ve never had a cable break before and it surprised me but some have said this is a common occurrence in Shimano levers related to a particularly small radius bend that the cable is subjected to inside the lever so I will be replacing them every 2000 miles as preventive maintenance. I have 12,000 miles on my campy shifter cables on my single with no strands broken. Anyway, before I found the failing cable, I purchased installed a new cassette. My front derailleur was not shifting smoothly to the large ring around this time and I bought a new large ring but the problem was solved by correctly aligning the front derailleur cage which probably got rotated by getting bumped when it was in the car between seats or bumped with a foot – who knows.

Chain wear: I believe in wet lubes and lube the chain every weekend or every 100 miles. I replaced the original KMC chain at mile 3000 with an Ultegra 10 speed chain. I wouldn’t have needed to. Measuring with a ruler, it showed less than 1/64 of an inch over 12 inches. With a Park go / no-go gauge it was fine (the tool wouldn’t go in). With the other Park gauge that shows a 0 to 1 percent wear it showed under 0.5 percent. The Park gauge showed that the new chain was already worn worse than the original (more than .5 percent). How could that be? Here’s an interesting article explaining why the current commercial chain wear tools are not accurate and how one could be made but in the meantime there is the ruler for measuring 12 inches from pin to pin over 12 links. An extra 1/16 would be approx .5 percent and an extra 1/8 inch would be approx 1 percent.
https://pardo.net/bike/pic/fail-004/000.html
On our cross country trip, all riders were asked to replace their chains at the halfway mark at 1800 miles. The dry lube folks really needed to. Our wet-lubed chains were not showing any significant wear but I will grant that dry-lube cleanliness has its merits.

Here are some other more minor things that make the tandem experience more pleasant for us. Flite Deck computer for the captain. I love to know what cog I’m in without asking the stoker and it’s much safer than trying to look (I do that on my single and I realize now just how often I would do that and it’s not so safe to be looking down and back). Stoker has Cateye Double Wireless (speed and cadence). We did not ride our singles with the same cadence. We always rode together but she used higher gears and lower cadence. Having some numbers for each of us has helped us both compromise. We have a mini bell with a compass on top. We seldom use the bell but the compass is great. https://www.rei.com/product/480045.htm The chain has come off the inside of the small chainring on occasion. We now have a Deda dog fang. It’s small but does the job in the limited amount of room available because of the lateral tube joining the seat tube right where one would like to be able to fasten such devices. https://www.speedgoat.com/product.asp...t=310&brand=66 I have since read the suggestion of just building up layers of Velcro in the desired area. The stoker also has a bubble level inclinometer https://westernbikeworks.com/productdetail.asp?p=STSMI Finally, we like the Rixen Kaul KlickFix fasteners and the Detours High Tail Ultra Low Profile bag. It’s easy on easy off with just a small mount that stays on the seatpost. https://www.terrybicycles.com/detail.html?item_no=7740 Don’t worry, it comes in black in addition to the pink one pictured. Our frame is a medium / medium and we have enough clearance for this bag. Before they had the ultra low profile I was able to bend the support of a regular Detours bag so that it cleared but it will not work on our friend’s smaller frame. It comes with a dire warning about fastening it to a carbon post. I put some tape on the post and then put the clamp over that and keep the pressure low because I’m sure it could crush the post too, just like the seat post clamp could.

One final thing, the stoker has drop bars. We just changed the original diacompe stoker levers to the Cane Creek stoker levers. They sit on the bar such that the level of the top part of the bar flows at the same level into the levers - much like campy levers do. They are also fatter which the stoker said felt better when she was standing and holding the hoods

Having fun in Bloomington, IN

Thanks for the comprehensive and well-written update with linked resources. I look forward to reading your comparision reviews on the Calfee and Speedster with Wound-Up fork.

An extremely detailed report . . . appreciate it!
Having just test ridden a Santana Beyond with Winzip disc, S&S and all the goodies we were duly impressed with several things, especially the nice engineering of the oval boob tube.
However, for the price, the weight of this bike was 35+ lbs.
Weight/price may not be a concern for some folks.