I know there has been a good deal of talk on this but I would like some numbers:

OOP for over the past 225,000 miles.
Pedal on!
Rudy and Kay/zonatandem

Gee, I wonder if the results will change from the last "In-Phase" or "Out-Of-Phase" Poll???

https://www.bikeforums.net/tandem-cycling/267643-poll-do-you-ride-phase-out-phase-do-you-like-better.html

N-a-a-a-h!

We have learned however that Rudy and Kay have put in a very solid 3 plus years, going from 200,000 miles to 225,000 miles.

I could claim both "neither" and "either". Our new recumbent tandem has IPS.

Now in our 'senior years' (78/75) we no longer pedal 10,000+ miles a year.
We now ride half the distance at half the speed; not as many miles but still as many smiles!
Growin' old is not for sissies!
Pedal on!
Rudy and Kay/zonatandem

So are you interested in the difference from a performance perspective only? If that is the case I can say that we rode OOP for several months and found no discernible speed difference compared to IP. We ride IP at the moment.

I recently switched our Screamer Tandem to slightly out of phase. My stoker is two teeth ahead of me. We don't have enough miles to evaluate this setup though. She seems to have more "initial torque in her stroke and I like to spin so I though this might synergize our relative strengths. Time will tell if there is anything to gain for us as a team.

I've read back through the many posts on this topic and realized this is a "cold" thread but...When I switched to OOP I went with the recommendation in Eugene Sloane's bicycling book (1980) recommending 45 deg. rather than 90 deg. The posts I've seen seem to be more toward 90 deg with a few mentioning a couple teeth, and an occasional 45 deg. Is there any consensus or has any one done a number of trials to see if there is an optimal OOP angle? I'm assuming Sloan had a reason for recommending 45 rather than 90 but he doesn't elaborate. Incidentally, I'm happy with 45 but never tried 90. Thanks. Ralph

IP now. Used one tooth only stoker in front until stoker's spin rate caught up to mine. She liked the feeling of pedal resistance at the top of the stroke.

Some day we might try 90 and 45 degree just for grins and the caterpillar effect.

zakkendrager:
Well, give 90 degrees OOP a shot and see if you like it better than 45 degrees. As you probably found out there is 'left' and 'right-footed' OOP too!
We've been doing the 90 degrees for decades.

BTW: 'zakkendrager' is Dutch and translates to 'bag carrier' in English . . .
Rijd te zamen!
Rudy en Kay/zonatandem

Zonatandem - thanks for reply; yes, now that I know so many people use 90 OOP, I will have to try that, too. Related to Zakkendrager = bag carrier; I saw the name on a restaurant in Utrecht and thought, hmm, possible name for a boat I was building: "one that hauls freight" or, I believe, literally a Stevedore. Ralph

We've ridden both quite a lot and both work well. A little harder to stand with OOP but no dead spots either. We currently are IP and we like it as well. We are newbies at standing, so IP makes more sense for us.

Frank and Terry

You're kidding - right?

What was I thinking? Can I retract?

We switched from IP to stoker leading by two teeth about a year ago (by accident, mind you!). I thought we had a new bike. Had about a hundred miles in before I figured out I had it slightly OOP. It is great; not going back! Much smoother and just better in every way... I had no interest in even trying OOP until my goof put us there...

FWIW, more serious racing tandems, such as these at the 2008 Beijing Paralympic games, always seem to be in phase.





So too at Roc d'Azur 2010.



Leadville 100

We ride IP. If you want to corner fast, your best bet is IP. On non-pedaling turns, that outside pedal has to be down, with your weight on it to be able to corner with any real speed. The bike handles so much better this way. That's why you see all the racers IP.

That's my experience also.

In addition, I consider a link or two offset (like we run our tandem) to be IP.

I would consider OOP to be 45 degrees offset or more.

My suspician is a number of the "OOP" survey responses would fall under "IP" using my criteria.

Every time I read one of these threads I'm inspired to try OOP on the daVinci for climbing. If only my stoker could retrain herself to get out of phase. We have a particular problem standing IP since I seem to get my weight to bear faster than my wife; this could really be emphasized if she is even a few degrees behind. What we need to do is identify cues in my stroke that would let her lead by 45 or 90 degrees. Why would we every stand with a 24-32? a) were old; b)captain gets us in the wrong chainring; c) captain mistakenly believes we can "muscle" (a relative term mind you) over a crest. I still swear that when we started out two years ago on the tandem and inadvertently OOP'ed on our first steep climb we found the climbing easier.

We bought our first tandem in 1980 and started riding 90 degrees OOP. In 2006, we purchased a new tandem and decided to try riding IP. It was okay and we rode it that way for a few hundred miles. We switched to OOP and it seemed a lot better and hill climbing was easier. That is a qualitative evaluation.

We raced a district 40K TT championship in both IP and OOP and prefer OOP. It was not possible to determine any benefit of one versus another by our time since our fitness was different as well as the wind.

We have raced the Berkeley team trial three times and made the podium once in the tandem category. All three were done OOP with some high speed right hand turns that were not a problem.

With respect to standing, we prefer OOP to IP as it seems to be smoother.

Since my wife and I started racing individually, we have become like our racing friends with tandems - we race and train on our singles and use the tandem for special events and races. When considering inviting others to race on the tandem, IP makes more sense then to try to have a new person come up to speed on OOP.

IMO, IP is preferred for fast accelerations. We both race at the velodrome and my wife said the other day, it would be fun to race the tandem at the track. Well, it would be but... Anyway, I would only race IP at the track since coordinated power for the first couple of pedal strokes is very desirable especially when standing. That would also be true in crits and road races.

This year we are racing the Berkeley Team Time Trial on our TT bikes in the mixed couple division versus the tandem. It should be a lot of fun and totally different.

No mention of the da Vinci Independent Coasting System (ICS) as yet?

On our Join Adventure we are usually slightly out of phase except for steep up hills where my wife, stoker, moves into phase.

Yeah, there have been at least a couple of mentions. With ICS, it seems, the stoker has final say as to which phase a team "typically" employs.

NOT that it matters, but my stokers and I have always ridden in-phase. Blame it on my 30-season racing background, but I can't imagine cornering aggressively or climbing out of the saddle OOP -- especially on a triple. Perhaps we'll try OOP again when I finally come to terms with my old-fart status... but I doubt it .

In a moment of enlightenment brought on my this thread I now realize I can cheat and cause my stoker to go slight OOP by hesitating for some fraction of a pedal stroke. Of course this won't be precise, but it's an easy enough experiment (on a daVinci). In our situation where I expect I'm providing 2/3+ of the power when climbing it would probably be advantageous to have the stoker behind to help smooth out the power at the bottom of my pedal stroke. Climbing standing would seem to favor the stoker somewhat ahead. Maybe we need DI3+ with variable stoker phase under computer control.