# Homemade tandem



## george kraushaar (Jan 15, 2007)

In 1973 I bought a "homemade" tandem built by a framebuilder in Oakridge, TN. He had made it out of two bikes; the front a beautiful Dawes with Nervex lugs, and the rear a cheaper Raleigh woman's frame. The end result was a relatively fast tandem with a series of recurring issues that I always had to come up with a fix for. The first was coming up with a chain tensioner that worked. I ended up using a rear derailleur cage affixed to a u-clamp which attached to the large lower cross member between the bottom brackets. The cranks were cottered and no commercial cotters were hard enough to take the strain of two peddlers, so the rear crank arms always ended up misaligned. I finally had a machine shop make me some cotters out of drill bit steel which did the job.

After I had owned the bike a year or so a crack appeared in the front seat lug. Frame builder Mike Melton, who was on my racing team at the time, brazed it back together.

The wheels were regular 27" road wheels and the front rim collapsed going up a hill one time when I turned the bars sharply. Since we were going at a crawl, no one was hurt.

Finally, a few years later, when the kids were getting into their teens, they were simply horrified beyond belief to even think of being seen on such a bike with their dad. I ended up selling.

Wish I had some photos, but I don't

A couple of years ago, I bought a Burley for the wife and I. It's heavy, but there are never any issues with it.


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