JaccoW

Built the wheel yesterday. As is common for me I made a mistake first time around (swapped the long and short spokes) so I had to rebuild the wheel.
My girlfriend told me she was in awe at my patience. Then she told me to stop and get to bed.

But now I do have a new rear wheel for the tandem!

Parts:

• Rim: Ryde Andra 40 650B/584mm - 875 gram (1.92 lbs)
• Hub: Sturmey Archer RXL-RD5 - 2480 gram (5.46 lbs)
• Spokes: Sapim "Strong" butted spokes
• Tyres: Schwalbe Road Cruiser 650B (44-584) - 660 gram (1.45 lbs)
• Spoke nipples: Sapim Polyax Secure lock

It's (not) a featherweight at 4560 gram (!) (~10 lbs).
Next up is actually installing the wheel on the bike and seeing how it rides.

I might replace the tyre with a pair of Grand Bois Hêtre's in white but that will depend on what I do with the rest of the bike in the future. The Schwalbe's are fine tyres and just €13 around here so they are one of the cheapest options in 650B VS. the €50 per tyre for the GB's.




Impossible to center with the spokes swapped so I had to unbuild and rebuild the wheel

J.Higgins 

JaccoW

I tried fitting it in the frame over my lunch break... only to realize the 120mm OLD is too narrow for the 135mm OLD hub.

Time for some DIY fork spreading & cold setting, it's currently too stiff to do by hand.
That's going to be fun, never done that before on a frame.

noglider 

I meant to make my comment on this bike here but I accidentally put it in the "what are you wrenching on" thread.

Have you ridden a tandem? I find it quite hard. I was hoping it would improve my spouse's stamina but it didn't. However, it reduced mine, so we are more closely matched but not in the way I had hoped. Maybe one day I will get the hang of it. First there is the mental drain from the responsibility of keeping it upright. Also, because of the lower power-to-weight ratio, I am constantly rowing through the gears. Second, I have to work with my arms and shoulders. I'll be doing some upper body strengthening, so that may help.

J.Higgins 

I can seriously sympathize with you, Tom. As much as I want to see my wife and I pedaling merrily away, its merely my personal ignis fatuus. I keep seeing tandems, and I keep wanting them, but reality has a strong pull on this aged body of mine, as well as the realization that my wife won't be able to to adapt to tandem riding. My quest for tandem enlightenment will have to wait for the next life.

noglider 

I don't follow. How do you know it won't work?

My spouse was terrified when we first tried it, but I gently asked her to persevere. It didn't take too long for her to feel safe. She choose the tandem almost half the time we ride together. And that's with no pressure from me.

J.Higgins 

My wife is abnormally fearful of just riding in general. A tandem would just amplify that. I'm going to let sleeping dogs lie.

alexnagui

I am curious which method you gonna use in order to spread the dropouts. I've tried and the result was far from ideal. You have to be lucky to get an equally spaced rear triangle with that.
Actually, I am thinking about spreading the dropouts on my Gazelle CM as well. I've got a nice read wheel with a Maxi-Car hub with 130mm OLD. I could also try to respace the hub to 120mm, of course. I have to decide..

Cool project, by the way!

JaccoW

I tried the one from RJ the bike guy as well today and it worked... somewhat.

I used 8mm stainless steel threaded rod, nuts and washers.
Managed to spread the fork from 120mm to 122mm then 127mm this way by spreading it to 160mm before the threaded rod started buckling and the threading started to strip.
Felt it necessary to start using safety goggles by the that time.
It's definitely a stiff fork.

Not wide enough for the 135mm of the hub + the axle puller + the rear cover of the chainguard but I did manage to get the wheel in.
Which is a succes in my book.
I will have to retry this again some time, perhaps with some extra reinforcement or thicker rods.

There is plenty of space around the bottom bracket so I might even be able to go wider than the 42mm on the tyre but this is fine for now.
I hooked up a spare outer brake cable I had lying around but I will need to pick up an outer shifter cable to run through the gears. The 5th gear it defaults to is a bit much to get started.

Anyway, pictures!




Spread to 160mm


Set to 127mm


Buckling rod

JaccoW

We haven't, that's why I will just make it rideable first before investing much more money in it. We are still riding a lot on our own and when my girlfriend can go back to the office again after September she will probably be riding her bike 160km a week to work so chances are her stamina will be better than mine shortly.
But I do look forward to the experience, should be interesting. Worst case scenario I swap the original rear wheel in again and sell it to someone else. With what I paid for it I might even make a small profit.

Wildwood 

As an occasional tandem rider, and vintage fan = this project warms my heart.

Eye too, have a heavy rear wheel w/ drum brake assisted 40 spoke tandem wheel.
Have not weighed it but my hub is Phil, not Sturmey Archer. so you can have the weight award.

This pic almost 25years ago. Just a tandem now.

Some days I could take and pick-up the kids from school. Elementary school so it was cool.

JaccoW

That's such a cool picture! I can imagine it must have been fun to pick up the kids like that. No kids here yet though.

JaccoW

While I am waiting for the weekend before I can work on the bike some more and take another shot at the rear fork I was looking back at something I came across a few years ago; hydraulic drum brakes.

There is a small company in Taiwan that makes the Pavolution Keeper, essentially a slot in piston for Sturmey Archer drum brakes to offer lighter braking.
Originally designed for trikes and velomobiles where lots of people prefer drum brakes over disc brakes in mountainous terrain. Anthrotech in Germany offers a modified Magura piston for their trikes as well.
Though often they use customized drum brakes with ribbed cooling bodies which are virtually impossible to overheat from GinkGo-Veloteile.

I don't suspect it is necessary and they seem hard to come by but my engineering heart does flutter a bit over the thought of something as silly as this.


Pavolution Keeper hydraulic drum brake piston


GinkGo Veloteile air-cooled drum brakes 90mm top view

GinkGo Veloteile air-cooled drum brakes 90mm side view

noglider 

I used the threaded rod method for spreading my Super Course, and I got very asymmetrical results. Now I have to correct it.

alexnagui

Happy it worked for you! Even though that you could't reach the desired spacing. Buckling is a real problem!

The problem with this method is that you have no control over the deformation of chain and seat stays in relation to the symmetry plane of the bike bacause both dropouts are being spread at the same time. You will get appropriate results only when the left stays are equally stiff as the rights ones so they can all deform in the same way but in reality I guess it's almost never the case due to unequal brazing, material differences, tolerances and other variables. I could see this method working if some kind of a frame jig is used with a threaded rod attached to that jig so that each dropout could be spread separetely from each other.

Beurt

Hi everyone this is my first post on this forum. Thanks for creating this thread Jacco!
I have bought the same gazelle tandem bike in France this morning as a gift for my girlfriend.
It's in an overall OK condition, is painted the same color as yours and I too will have to rebuild a rear wheel as it's been replaced by something that only matches the size of the original. No speeds, and no brakes on the back of this bike. It was not used like that but served as decoration in a shop.
I will have to source a hub with brakes, spokes and rim just like you did, but I'd really rather not forcing the frame wider and risk ruining the geometry.
What was the original width? Is there a modern hub compatible with this mesure with 3 speeds minimum and brakes, or should I go for a second hand original replacement vintage Sturmey?
This will be my first time building a wheel from the ground up, it's both exiting and intimidating!
For the rim I'd rather find a chrome one to macth the front one that I plan on keeping.
Thanks for your insight, I'll post pictures soon!

JaccoW

Hey Beurt!

Glad to hear you found it interesting. IIRC the original Over Locknut Dimension (OLD) is 120mm. Not many modern hubs available in that size but the slightly older 3-speed (90's) Sturmey Archer XL-RD3 and the SA XL-RD5 (w). I would not necesarily recommend the 5-speed as it is pretty fiddly to adjust properly. Let me know if you run into any problems finding them. Originally they came with the Sturmey Archer AB hub (essentially the AW hub with a drum brake) and those are cheap and plentiful around here.

Good luck!

Beurt

Thanks for the speedy reply! I'll follow your advice and start looking for the XL RD3 in addition to a new rim and spokes then.
While I wait for parts and tools, I'll disassemble the rest of the bike and give it a good cleaning as well as fresh grease/oil.
When you refreshed the front hub some parts were worn, did you replace them or just clean and relub? Can spare brake pads be found new for these old hubs?

JaccoW

My plan is to build a new front hub so the only parts I will be rebuilding are probably the cranks and head set. I'm having a hard enough time finding the correct size seatpost right now.

Most if not all parts can be found in places like Hollandbikeshop.com though it sometimes helps to simply scroll through all the Sturmey Archer parts as SA has renamed the model codes a few times for some parts in the past.
Brake shoes should be available but it helps to take them apart first to check how they mount. Some newer style pads don't work with older style hubs but if you don't mind you can also just replace the entire front and rear brake unit though just replacing the brake shoes might be cheaper. This one for example mounts using a screw instead of a post.

Me, I'm planning on building a new front wheel around a XL-FDD 90mm dynamo hub because I like running lights all the time. The XL-FD (non-dynamo) is only slightly cheaper but does look a bit sleeker.

What do you plan on using for the new rim? The old 650A size is hard to come by nowadays but maybe you will have better luck with 650B wheels in France? 700C should work too but will limit your tyre size.

P.s. if you quote me I'll get a notification you've replied. And I am looking forward to seeing yours once you get your post count up!

EDIT: Not that I expect you to be doing a lot of hill climbing on this bike but the French Alps might be a great excuse to get the high-end version for the front.

SJX426 

JaccoW Challenging project! Wishing you the best.
Tandems are really unique in so many ways that the only commonality with two wheelers is, well two wheels!
Like noglider , I have a Burley, Mine is the Duet from about 1997. Lots of differences from yours.
WRT spreading the rear, be sure to support the "bridges" on the stays with clamps, you don't want to break those joints!

BTW: if you want to include someone in your text like i did above, use the @ in front of their login name, no space.

Before we stared using the tandem, I looked up how to ride one. There are rules. First is that the stokers is always right. There are others. I added one for my wife, don't rock or lean to the side, especially when turning! Reviewing the rules of what to do to get going and to stopping often addresses some of the fear factor. It is a lot easier for the stoker on a tandem than riding single. all you need to do is hang on and pedal. It also requires a degree of trust in the captain, a good thing to reinforce!

himespau 

Definitely a cool project and am looking forward to the final results.

JaccoW

Except the mentioning system is broken at the moment @SJX426 I didn't see an e-mail or notification.
Otherwise it will only link to the person's profile page.

@ and clicking the name links to the user page. SJX426
But what you want is this: @SJX426
(remove the spaces to use this)

You can see the difference by clicking on the Source button on the top right of a post.
My guess is that there is a small bug in the forum software that inserts the wrong code or there is a problem with the order in which each code gets used. But I am only a software tester, I'm better at pointing out the problem than offering solutions.

Here's what one of the mods has to say about it:
I'm going to give the spreading another try next week after I grab some better tools and clamps for it. Those things can get expensive! It's a bit of a slow burner project after an expensive summer but I should have some room again soon.
Perhaps I will even start looking at RAL colors and a powder coater soon!

SJX426 

@JaccoW Good info on the issue of notifications! Didn't know about that.

cudak888 

How'd I miss this thread? Fantastic build, Jacco.

Out of curiosity, were you able to verify whether the stays cold set equally? That's the biggest concern I have with the threaded rod method. I never expect the stays to necessarily spread equally.

-Kurt

JaccoW

I need another 5mm if I don't want to burst a bloodvessel each time I remove the wheel so I haven't checked yet. There is plenty of room in the rear triangle so if it is offset by a couple of millimeters it won't matter much on that front. First impressions make me think it's decently straight. But I will give it a good check before painting the bike or anything like that.

I'll keep you posted on any progress.