Originally Posted by
Kuromori
1 1/8 steerers do appear in the Reynolds 40's catalog, so they were made at one time.
Yes, that's very interesting. I guess that means someone made a 1-1/8" headset also? First I've heard, after being a tandem specialist since the '70s, so they must be rare. I worked at Bud's Bike Shop back when they bought a half-page advertisement in Bicycling Magazine each month billing themselves as "THE Tandem Shop". Before they started Santana, they were buying all the tandems they could get from anywhere in the world to satisfy the demand (including a large fraction of the Taylors' output), and servicing lots of vintage machines. I saw a lot with oversized steerers, but they were all 28 mm. Of course Bud's/Santana was a USA shop, so they only saw what had made it to these shores. Lots of British, French and other brands, especially smaller-volume ones, have probably never been seen here.
Still, I wonder if Reynolds was talking about 28 mm, and just "rounding up" for their English-speaking audience?
My all-time favorite tandem steerers were the tapered ones that were 28 mm at the bottom but regular 25 mm at the top. I think those are rare but I've seen them on Herse, Singer and Bushnell tandems. I saved for myself a 531 steerer in 28 mm, and my hope is to someday use it on a bike after tapering it, and making a suitably flared head tube to match, like on this Singer:
Those 28 mm steerers are unbutted, same very thick wall all the way up, so they still take a 22 mm stem. Tapering them to 25 mm (or 1 inch) sheds some unneeded weight.
Mark B in Seattle