Tandem gearing

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I am thinking about getting a tandem for me and my wife. She is not a biker
and therefore I may be doing most of the work. I was wondering if it is
possible to use a 52/42/30 in front and a 12 / 32 in the back AND some sort
of hub gearing to give me a real wide range. I am open to suggestions but I
need to be able to hill the hills in Middle Tennessee
Thanks

You might take a look at all the discussions on the tandem list (see
tandem@hobbes.ucsd.edu).

I run a 54/42/26 on our tandem with a 12/32 and it has enough low gearing
for touring in New England.

Ted


"ME" <Rschupp@charter.net> wrote in message
news:107iqi02oo79kd3@corp.supernews.com...
> I am thinking about getting a tandem for me and my wife. She is not a
biker
> and therefore I may be doing most of the work. I was wondering if it is
> possible to use a 52/42/30 in front and a 12 / 32 in the back AND some
sort
> of hub gearing to give me a real wide range. I am open to suggestions but
I
> need to be able to hill the hills in Middle Tennessee
> Thanks
>
>

Me wrote:
> I am thinking about getting a tandem for me and my wife. She is not a
> biker and therefore I may be doing most of the work. I was wondering
> if it is possible to use a 52/42/30 in front and a 12 / 32 in the back
> AND some sort of hub gearing to give me a real wide range. I am open
> to suggestions but I need to be able to hill the hills in Middle
> Tennessee Thanks



My stoker/wife is also not a cyclist, except when she rides with me. I
would suggest a 11-34 cassette and you can put a 24 or 26 on a 74 mm BCD
crank. This will give you quite a range for those Tennessee hills
without the expense of an internally geared hub. I think you should try
that combination before going further. There is a tandem mailing
newsgroup called Tandem@hobbes. They have an extensive searchable Data
Base. Tandem rear hubs tend to cost more due to the design, wider OLD,
and limited distribution.



--

"ME" <Rschupp@charter.net> wrote in message
news:107iqi02oo79kd3@corp.supernews.com...
> I am thinking about getting a tandem for me and my wife. She is not a
biker
> and therefore I may be doing most of the work. I was wondering if it is
> possible to use a 52/42/30 in front and a 12 / 32 in the back AND some
sort
> of hub gearing to give me a real wide range. I am open to suggestions but
I
> need to be able to hill the hills in Middle Tennessee
> Thanks
>
See the Peter White Cycles page on TA tandem cranks:
http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/ By using something other than the
traditional 130bcd crankset (like the Shimano) you can select the chainrings
you need to suit your purposes. In the back of many tandems are MTB
cassettes (up to 11/34) and derailleurs, and up front you could go with,
say, 48/36/26 (or even 48/36/24) chainrings which should allow your team to
climb walls.

ME wrote:

> I am thinking about getting a tandem for me and my wife. She is not a biker
> and therefore I may be doing most of the work. I was wondering if it is
> possible to use a 52/42/30 in front and a 12 / 32 in the back AND some sort
> of hub gearing to give me a real wide range. I am open to suggestions but I
> need to be able to hill the hills in Middle Tennessee

You'll be speaking of the SRAM Dual Drive hub, that's the only available
one that will accept a multiple cassette without a lot of do-it-yourself
hacking. Shimano is also scheduled to introduce something similar, but
their production is currently so backed up I wouldn't suggest waiting
for it.

Neither of these is suitable for tandem use with full-sized wheels, only
36 spokes and not designed to withstand the amount of torque you're
speaking of.

For someone who's concerned about low gearing, I think it's pretty silly
to limit yourself with a 30 as the smallest front ring. It would make
much more sense to go with a 26 or 24, might even let you get by with a
less extreme cassette.

See: http://sheldonbrown.com/harris/74 for details on this.

Sheldon "Been Working On Shorter URLs" Brown
+-----------------------------------------------+
| I'll be appearing as Preposteros in |
| Gilbert & Sullivan's Thespis at M.I.T. |
| April 9-10,15-17 http://web.mit.edu/gsp/www |
| http://sheldonbrown.com/music.html |
+-----------------------------------------------+
Harris Cyclery, West Newton, Massachusetts
Phone 617-244-9772 FAX 617-244-1041
http://harriscyclery.com
Hard-to-find parts shipped Worldwide
http://captainbike.com http://sheldonbrown.com

ME wrote:
> I am thinking about getting a tandem for me and my wife. She is not a biker
> and therefore I may be doing most of the work. I was wondering if it is
> possible to use a 52/42/30 in front and a 12 / 32 in the back AND some sort
> of hub gearing to give me a real wide range. I am open to suggestions but I
> need to be able to hill the hills in Middle Tennessee

Others have pointed out slightly smaller (24,26) chainrings you could
use. (Well, i say "slightly" but the perceived difference would be big).

If you were to find some sort of hub gearing that could make a
*substantially* bigger difference, IMHO you would soon find it difficult
to control the bike at such low speeds going uphill. This based on my
experience of many tandem miles, and I enjoy trying track stands on the
tandem (but they make my wife nervous).

Mark "thinking about lowering my 32/32 tandem gearing" Janeba

Sheldon Brown wrote:

> ME wrote:
>
>> I am thinking about getting a tandem for me and my wife. She is not a
>> biker
>> and therefore I may be doing most of the work. I was wondering if it is
>> possible to use a 52/42/30 in front and a 12 / 32 in the back AND some
>> sort
>> of hub gearing to give me a real wide range. I am open to suggestions
>> but I
>> need to be able to hill the hills in Middle Tennessee
>
>
> You'll be speaking of the SRAM Dual Drive hub, that's the only available
> one that will accept a multiple cassette without a lot of do-it-yourself
> hacking. Shimano is also scheduled to introduce something similar, but
> their production is currently so backed up I wouldn't suggest waiting
> for it.
>
> Neither of these is suitable for tandem use with full-sized wheels, only
> 36 spokes and not designed to withstand the amount of torque you're
> speaking of....

The SRAM DualDrive is used by Greenspeed (stop drooling!) on their GTT
tandem trike. However, it has an ISO 406-mm drivewheel and the cranks
can be mounted out of phase to further reduce peak torque. Of course low
speed balance is not an issue, so very low gears may be used.

--
Tom Sherman - Quad Cities (Illinois Side)

Someone wrote:
>>
>>> I am thinking about getting a tandem for me and my wife. She is not a
>>> biker
>>> and therefore I may be doing most of the work. I was wondering if it is
>>> possible to use a 52/42/30 in front and a 12 / 32 in the back AND
>>> some sort
>>> of hub gearing to give me a real wide range. I am open to suggestions
>>> but I
>>> need to be able to hill the hills in Middle Tennessee
>>
I replied in part:
>>
>> You'll be speaking of the SRAM Dual Drive hub, that's the only
>> available one that will accept a multiple cassette without a lot of
>> do-it-yourself hacking. Shimano is also scheduled to introduce
>> something similar, but their production is currently so backed up I
>> wouldn't suggest waiting for it.
>>
>> Neither of these is suitable for tandem use with full-sized wheels,
>> only 36 spokes and not designed to withstand the amount of torque
>> you're speaking of....
>
For some strange reason, someone else chimed in with:

> The SRAM DualDrive is used by Greenspeed (stop drooling!) on their GTT
> tandem trike. However, it has an ISO 406-mm drivewheel and the cranks
> can be mounted out of phase to further reduce peak torque. Of course low
> speed balance is not an issue, so very low gears may be used.

I know that, but chose not to bring it up (except by my reference to
"full-sized wheels") because adding extraneous, irrelevant information
like that in an otherwise informative post just wastes people's time and
leads to confusion.

Sheldon "Bandwidth" Brown
+-----------------------------------------------+
| I'll be appearing as Preposteros in |
| Gilbert & Sullivan's Thespis at M.I.T. |
| April 9-10,15-17 http://web.mit.edu/gsp/www |
| http://sheldonbrown.com/music.html |
+-----------------------------------------------+
Harris Cyclery, West Newton, Massachusetts
Phone 617-244-9772 FAX 617-244-1041
http://harriscyclery.com
Hard-to-find parts shipped Worldwide
http://captainbike.com http://sheldonbrown.com