Another day, another tandem...

Last night I took the children for a swim, and after a text from Katie about an eBay listing, came home via Cambridgeshire, with a whopper of a tandem on the roof!

Now we've got one that fits Katie on the front and Thomas Ivor on the back, and one that fits me on the front and Katie on the back, pending the addition of some Kiddy Cranks which would open the way for me to have one of the girls on the back, and tow the other on one of our trailerbikes.

The new one has pedigree - the original owners rode it to Turkey, and it's already got a number of touring accoutrements. Looks like the fleet plans have just changed, again - and if it already knows the way to Turkey, that's one less thing to worry about if we decided to take off round the world, right?

'Pimp my Tandem' Update - Nearly roadworthy again!

Two steps backwards, one step forward, has been the way of things so far with the tandem project. For every two things I remove, I successfully replace or reinstate one. This has so far resulted in a 'decluttering' of the bike such as to cause it no longer to be rideable - but I'm not done yet!

Katie and Thomas Ivor's first ride on the bike showed up a few immediate deficiencies - notably that the handlebars were too low and were particularly uncomfortable. Katie, like me, also hates grip-shifters. The front derailleur's spring is so strong, they spent the whole ride in the little ring, because of fears the shifter would break if put under enough force to move the derailleur! Brakes were a bit uneven, the stoker bars were really scabby and poked the captain up the bum when getting on and off. Otherwise, though, the fit was not all that bad, and we are reassured that the bike can be a useful member of our fleet, if not necessarily in the capacity we were anticipating when we first started looking at multi-seat bikes on eBay!

The list of jobs ran something like this, we felt:

Tranche 1 - Make it rideable for minimal cost!

• Get rid of the stoker's bar tape - just make it stop!
• Clean everything else.
• Remove the rear rack, clean out all the bosses and put new stainless screws in (we already have a stash)
• Swap out the handlebars and shifters for spares we already own; swap V brake arms while we're at it
• Raise the handlebars as far as we can
• Swap the saddles for spares which may be more comfortable in the short term
• Try a really long seat post to see if Daddy could ever ride it without being impaled or crippled
• Assuming the above are successful, fit handlebar bag bracket, front lamp bracket, some old bottle cages and order some spare inner tubes for initial rides out.
• Do some homework on drivetrain options, including replacing worn-out components and fitting kiddy cranks.

Tranche 2a - Drivetrain and Stoker Refurbishment (budget dependent on whether we are going to do 2b in the longer term!)

• New chainrings, cassette and chains (need to consider possible upgrade to 8 speed or more)
• New front and rear derailleurs (front is stiff; rear is broken!)
• Consider fitting kiddy cranks
• New stoker bars and possibly stems

Tranche 2b - Wheelset replacement

• Two nice, shiny new 26", 48 hole wheels. Mummy has already requested a dynamo hub, if we go this far!

Tranche 3+ - Icing on the cake if we are totally invested in the thing!

• A frame and fork respray
• Custom frame bags (tent pole carriers!)

Tranche X - Nice-to-haves which we can use on other bikes anyway, not time critical.

• Nicer water bottles
• Speed and cadence sensor
• Front and rear racks

I've got a few bits to tinker with today, at which, hopefully, a first proper ride (and some pictures being taken in daylight) can take place at the weekend, and I can start totting up the costs so far, which should be decidedly modest. For once, I am making that a particular challenge!

Two's company; three's an aspiration! Buying our first tandem.

The auction had sat at about £125 for a couple of days. We hit the 'watch' button.

A couple of hours before the end, someone bid £155. Unless it went for a song, it was too much of a risk. It was obviously going to clear £200 at the end. We had a chat as I got the barbecue out to cook dinner, and decided we'd leave it. 

3 minutes to go and I sneaked another look. No movement. "I'm going in, just in case", I called to Katie. "No more than £200 and it's worth a punt, right?".

"Go on, then. Nothing ventured...", said Katie, sticking her head out of the back door. 

I put in £205, just in case it was close. Don't tell her, will you. My finger hovered over the button for what wouldn't have been the first entirely futile attempt at an auction 'snipe' lately. 

10 seconds. The house WiFi had better hold up, out here in the garden, or this was going to be upsetting.

I think I actually saw '3 seconds' just as I hit the button, and the screen went blank for a what felt like at least a week.

Eventually, it became apparent that yes, we had just bought our first tandem - a Thorn Voyager - for the princely sum of one hundred and eighty-two pounds and thirty-three pence.

Er, ok... now we've got to fetch it! Not so simple when there was no way I would fit on it, we had no idea if any of the five of us would fit on the back without adaptations, and we didn't have a tandem carrier for the car - the latter would have cost more than the bike.

Our brave but possibly foolhardy plan for Katie, under the weather lately, to make a late night trip to a Luton postcode and cycle home, not just on a bike she'd never set eyes on before, but her first ever tandem ride, and do 30+ miles home in the dark, was eventually cast aside (to our mutual disappointment - we like a challenge!) for the more practical solution of stripping out our people carrier, which was in dire need of a litter-pick anyway.

Luckily, our new purchase fits without too much bother, with the wheels off, and I only bent the mudguard stays very slightly, getting it home. In the same way, I only took a bit of paint off the front door getting it in the house, and Katie and I sat on the settee to eat our dinner, watching 'Gray's Anatomy' through the latest addition to the family, still a bit bewildered at what we'd done.

A bit of work since then, and every single member of the family having sat on it in some way, has proved that Katie fits on the front, Thomas Ivor fits on the back, and we ought to have no trouble adding a trailerbike rack on the back (although the scarcity of spare Islabikes racks is once more, a pain in the posterior) so that together they can tow one of the girls.

Our new tandem (as yet awaiting the decision of the naming committee) is no spring chicken. It's old school bike engineering in many ways; a steel frame, lots of chromed bits; solid, heavy-looking cranksets with a Suntour front derailleur (remember them?) and seven gears on the back. We haven't had a grown up bike with V brakes for quite a while! The paint is thin, and there's some rust. But it's a simple, rugged design, and now the manky bar tape is off, we're on our way.

Katie and Thomas Ivor went out for their first ride last night, and didn't die, so whilst it may be a brief dalliance that leads to a different machine in the end, we have a little project on our hands - and I think it's going to be fun. It will be interesting to see how much we can do with the beast, with things we already have in the cupboard... #PimpMyTandem is born!