uspspro

Hey tandem folks! I know it's been a while since I've posted, but thought I would share a little work we have done to our Calfee.

One thing we wanted to do was switch to the new Shimano road hydraulic setup. Now I did not want to go Di2, because I like having a triple up front, so that gave us the option of the RS685. The RS685 lever/brake combo has hydraulic discs, and mechanical shifting..... it is also 11-speed.

Our Calfee has 145mm rear spacing, and a nice wheelset, that I wasn't about to replace. So I took some measurements, and was able to machine some material of the inner-most carrier on an Ultegra 11-speed cassette, and fit it to our Chris King 10-speed tandem hub!! Basically I shifted the entire cassette inward by .080". As such the biggest cog overhangs the spoke flange a bit, but there was still plenty of room. The place where there wasn't much room was the arms of carrier's spider, closer to the center. This was pretty close, but still worked out.

Details:
- 11-speed 11-32 Ultegra cassette
- 145mm 10-speed Chris King tandem hub
- .080" machined off the carrier

Works perfectly! Also the cassette carrier is very thick, so I doubt it will have any strength issues. If any of you decide to do this, I would take some accurate measurements... as the .080" may not be exactly right for your setup.

Here are some pics!

ghoundz

Hello USPSPRO and welcome back to the forum.
I think your tandem wheels you mentioned above are using HED C2 rims at least for the front wheel; is that correct?
If so, I wondered if you could tell me what tires and what size tires you are running. Also, what Fork do you have on your Tandem; is it an ENVE fork?
I am about to setup my new tandem wheels, which are built on HED C2 rims, but I am not sure what tires and what size tires I would like to run.

By the way, I am thinking about running a Shimano 11-speed setup at some point in the future and I also have a Chris King hub (which is meant for 10 speed).
It is nice to hear that a modification to the cassette carrier as you described would allow an 11 speed cassette to mount on this hub.

Thanks!

ahultin

how does the RS685 work with the triple, What derailleurs are you using?

uspspro

I am actually using a Campy Centaur triple-specific front lever and an Ultegra 6703 FD. It lets me cross-chain, shifts fast... just works well.

If you want something that matches a little better, with a triple, I would just use the Ultegra 6703. The aesthetic is very similar to the RS685. I personally like the way the campy lever feels, in terms of hood shape and shifting. The big point of the campy hood actually matches the RS685 ergos well enough.

I actually had some frame work done as well. I had some minor warranty defects that I never sorted out when I got the frame. So while I took care of those, I decided to have the frame modified to accept the hydraulic brake hose, or alternatively a full-length compressionless cable housing (if I decide to return to mechanical brakes). Calfee also removed the rear brake caliper bridge (which rubbed on some of the bigger 28mm tires), and they added the new brace from the left chain stay to seat stay that they now put on all disc-equipped tandems.

Here are some pics:

uspspro

I have the HED Belgium up front and the BHS (Kinlin) C472w in the rear (I wanted 36h rear). I now have an ENVE fork, which has zero additional room compared the the Alpha Q tandem fork. They claim it fits 28mm tires, but only certain models actually fit when coupled with the wide rims. The 28mm GP4000 II are not even close to fitting. Right now I have a 27mm Challenge Paris-Roubaix... that barely fits, when considering flex. The wheel dish has to be spot-on. We kept the GP4000 28mm in the back.. that thing is awesome (wish we could run both).

Chris_W

Nice work on the cassette. For anyone living in a more developed country, 0.08 inches is about 2.0 mm . Officially, an 11-speed body should be 1.8mm longer than a 10-speed, so you may even be able to get away with slightly less.

uspspro

Myself, I always use metric... my old school machinist buddy only thinks in "hundredths" or "thous"

twocicle

uspspro,

I'm curious what you think about the rear hydraulic lever feel and which hose brand/model was used? Are you able to bottom out the lever to the handlebars?

At the moment, our rear hydraulic is way more powerful grabbing the 203mm rotor than the TRP Spyre ever was, but the lever feel is still far softer than the front lever is and I can bottom out the rear lever (this is with the long Jagwire hose for the rear only). The front brake lever is firm and does not bottom out regardless of how hard I squeeze it.

Due to a stoker foot injury, our tandem has been collecting dust in the garage for some time now and we had to cancel all our events for the year. Still, I occasionally pull out the tandem to tinker with it. I just picked up a couple more bleed kit bits and getting myself in the mood to redo the rear bleed again. This rear brake bleeding (or maybe hose selection) has turned out to be a trickier thing than expected, and a process I want to nail before we go travel abroad just in case the need should arise.

---

Regarding the ENVE fork, I see it is a straight steerer. Previously we had a tapered ENVE with plenty of room for a 28mm Conti 4-Season tire which we always use when touring abroad. I know that tire does not balloon as much as the 28mm 4000, but still I would be surprised if the 4000 did not fit that fork. I wonder if the straight steerer fork has a narrower shoulder area than the 1.5" tapered version and thus less clearance space on the inside? Sort of a mute point, but just wondering about those two fork models from ENVE. We now have a Whisky No.7 tapered road disc fork, which with our typical 25mm tire setup does not look especially generous in the tire space department. I have no doubts about the 28mm 4-Season fitting, but pretty sure the 28mm 4000 would not. This is one of those problems with the standard Calfee 367mm A-C (assume you have this?), and why there are so many other cross disc forks with a longer A-C which Calfee will build to as well.

Also, which rake did you pick?

uspspro

I have the Jagwire hose, and the lever feel is great. In fact I set the reach in 1-click so that it would bottom-out closer to the handlebar.

However, I do have a resonant vibration that is pretty bad. I will be trying to figure that out this weekend. Hydraulic, and lever travel-wise everything is great.

It helps to have the front end of the bike elevated a bit to assist in bleeding. I made my own version of that shimano funnel that seals to the fill port (since I didn't think to buy the official one) and just kept it full as a pumped out the fluid (with the lever) until I saw ZERO bubbles and closed the bleed valve while the lever was pulled back.

I chose the 43mm rake, since my Calfee was designed around the AlphaQ X2 which had 374mm A-C and 44mm rake, and I didn't want to change the trail too much vs the old setup.

twocicle

Yeah, I've done the bleed with the rear hose nearly completely vertical and with the official funnel/cup, left it for hours, tapped the hose to coax bubbles, pumped the lever, etc, ... all the tricks I could find online. I've got a syringe now, so I'm going to retry with that. Only the long rear hose run has given me less than ideal feel, so still reworking it.

Your resonant vibration with the Hope rotor on the rear?

uspspro

Yes.

ghoundz

Hello USPSPRO and other forum members,
I finally got around to experimenting with mounting 2 different tires on my new Tandem front wheel. This wheel is built with a HED C2 rim (the 23 mm wide rim; not the wider 25mm rim that HED has been offering recently). First, I mounted a 700 * 25 size Michelin Pro Race 2. This was a new tire, never mounted, that I have had sitting in a closet for years. Once mounted on the HED C2 rim, it was a little over 28 mm wide; about 28.10 mm to be exact. When I put the wheel into my Enve Fork, it had clearance but not as much as we had when running our other wheel. For reference, our current front wheel is a Deep V type of rim which measures about 19 mm wide at the brake track. When we have our Continental 4 Season tire, in size 700 *25, mounted on this Deep V rim, it measures about 25.10 mm wide. So, compared to our current setup, the new HED C2 rim with 700*25 size Michelin Pro Race 2 tire was wider by about 3 mm. This was a little wider than I was expecting and in general provided less clearance than I was hoping to see. I then mounted a 700 *24 (not a typo) size Specialized S-works tire that I had recently picked up. I thought that this 700 * 24 would be a sweet spot type of size when used with the HED C2 rim. Well, I mounted this tire on the HED C2 rim and measured the width and came up with 24.75 mm. This was smaller than I had expected. I thought that the wider rim would somehow cause this 700 *24 size tire to measure out maybe 25.5 to 26 mm but this did not happen. This S-works tire would definitely provide more clearance, but I am not sure that we really want to go with a narrower setup than what we had been riding.
I am now wondering if there is 700 *25 size tire, maybe like a Continental GP4000 SII that would end up about 27 mm wide when mounted to the HED C2 rim. I now this is a minor detail, but I was really hoping to get something that would be a little bit wider than our current setup of a 25.1 mm tire but not something as wide as 28mm. Do anybody know of a tire, probably marked as a 700 *25, that when mounted to a HED C2 rim would end up about 27 mm wide? I know that Specialized makes that same S-works tire in a marked size of 700 * 26, but I have a feeling this will end up as 28 mm or wider when mounted to this rim. After doing some internet research, it seems like these rims kind of do that to these tires; i.e., a 700 *23 will end up as about 24.5 mm wide but a 700 *25 ends up as a 28 mm wide tire. I was kind of hoping for something in between.
Thanks!

Dean V

The 25mm Michelin Pro Race is an exceptionally big 25mm tyre. Most of the other 25s will be close to what you want.