I was finally able to take this bike out on a nice twenty miler last Sunday. It was quite an experience! The bike was quite lively and seemed to encourage high cadences, in a way I haven't really experienced in a tandem. My stoker said it was the most comfortable she'd been on, which is a plus. She was sore in the correct places (hands and sit-bones, acceptable as an infrequent and therefore un-hardened rider). Even the old Brooks B72 seemed to suit her. Success! I hurt because of the lack of bar tape on the front and lack of adjustability in the old single-bolt saddle clamp holding what I think is an old B15 or B17. Maybe I can find the "sweet spot" if I flip the clamp over. Sometimes that works. Or bend the saddle rails? I do sorta miss my infinitely adjustable Campy and Suntour two-bolt posts.
A few mechanical troubles persisted, however. Shifting the twin-cable "Le Cyclo" derailleur felt like telegraphing commands to a distant engine-room. If there was any cable slack, it would translate to very vague shifting. And the cable slack appeared to vary depending on the position of the derailleur. As it got to the high gears, it went taut. Toward the lower gears it went all slack and shifting got all wishy washy. This was because the derailleur was moving toward the bottom bracket cable guides a little when shifting to the low gears. This evening, I tackled re-adjusting the thing, to see if I could wrangle some better performance out of it. It seems the rod it rides on needs to be aligned, much like a derailleur hanger on a dropout, but not to achieve proper shifts. It has to be aligned so the cable doesn't change in tension. In other words, due to the lack of housing, each point on the derailleur's travel must be equidistant from the rear bottom bracket cable guides. A little tweaking with a Crescent wrench and all was good. Much more responsive. Requires a ton of overshift to change gears, but at least it's pretty quick, shifting the 15-28 (or so) on par with the performance of Nuovo Record on a racing freewheel in my estimation. Fine!
One thing that's weird is the bolt for the Cyclo twin-cable shifter. I think it might be the wrong one... It's a 10-24 American bolt, with some weird head. I wonder if the correct bolt for a "Le Cyclo" lever is one of those French M5x1 bolts as found on Simplex shifters. Luckily I have one and I will report back on whether it fits, as long as the original threads haven't been damaged too much by the American bolt screwed in there. Does anyone know if it was meant to be M5x1? It seems like it could be, only because of its size and the fact that other French shifter bolts are this size.
The Pari-Moto tires are cushy. The MAFAC tandem brakes and the Maxi drum work adequately but are (as expected) very noisy. The Taylor stem is way too low and short for me, and that's a slight problem. I wonder if I'll ever find a Jack Taylor stem that's a bit longer. I'm trying not to overstate things the way Jan Heine likes to, but it was really just pretty all right. The front derailleur is still stupid, but eventually I will get that ironed out.
Even the JOS dynamo and RADIOS headlight worked ok. I made an LED circuit according to
Pilom circuit number 4, with a 3W warm white LED from China and a 5-farad 5-volt supercapacitor and made it fit all in the space normally taken up by the original bulb holder, so I'm not modifying the old light in any way and you could still put back in an incandescent bulb. It ends up having about a 7 minute standlight with the supercapacitor. I might do the same supercapacitor treatment for the tail light so I have standlights front and rear.
Sorry this post was too long with no pictures. I will say it is way more all right than I thought it would be, after riding tandems with 9-speeds and bar-cons for the past 15 years.