IkeCan

After several rides including Ragbrai this summer my wife and I have decided to replace our 1995 Santana Encore with a new tandem. We are a 290 lb team, I am 5' 10" tall and my wife is 5' 6" tall. A medium bike is really a good fit for us. I don't believe a custom fitted bike is really needed.

However I would really like some advice. I thought for sure that I would love the Co-Motion Carrera bike. It sounded perfect for us. My mistake was we took a Santana Team Ti-700 out for a ride after test riding the Carrera. For us the difference was night and day. We loved the feel of the Santana. It was more responsive for us on the hills both going down and up. Our primary reason to upgrade was for a bike that does better on hills. We live in Florida and have virtually no hills. Our largest hill in the area is a interstate overpass. So when we go out of state for a ride, hill climbing is our biggest challenge. The Ti-700 just felt more responsive and was better on the hills. As a result, I am looking seriously at purchasing a Ti-700. Questions I have are:

1. Should I consider an Exogrid Ti frame? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Is it worth the cost?

2. Should I be considering other Ti bikes ( I see very little discussion in the forum about the Santana Ti-700)?

3. What rear bike rack should I purchase, are Ti racks available?

I live in Bradenton, Florida with no tandem dealers within 60 miles. I plan to purchase the bike either directly from the manufacturer or from a dealer, however I will use a local bike shop to service the new bike(he services all of my bikes). As a result I am not tied to any specific bike brand.

DKMcK 

We are very happy with Team Ti-700 with Exogrid. We traded up from a 2003 Santana Sovereign and the ride is not that much different even though we did drop a few pounds. We are not big climbers. We're in the Piedmont area of NC so we do get rollers. It's fairly stable when we both stand, I think better than the Sovereign, but my stoker does not agree (I think I may be moving the lighter bike more). My draw to the Ti was for travel (ours is coupled). If not for that I would have considered the Scandium, which is a very little bit heavier and a lot less $$.

You may just like the Santana geometry more than the Comotion. It is different.

The ti with Exogrid does have the bling factor. The advantages of the Exogrid is the vibration dampening and weight savings. The only disadvantage is the additional cost.

We're using an aluminum rack.

At GTR earlier this year Jack from Tandems Ltd had one on demo. I believe it was a medium. If it is still available you may get a good price on it and Birmingham is not too far from you.

jnbrown

I hate to cloud the waters but another question might be , should I consider Carbon Fiber? especially considering the money you will be spending.
I think Merlinextralight lives near you, it might worth meeting up with him to see his new Calfee.
If you are really in love with the Santana then I don't want to sway you away from it, especially since you had a positive experience with it.
AS far as racks go I don't think you can beat Tubus and they do make Ti ones.

zonatandem

Have ridden several 'tanas including a Ti and Beyond; considered them to be a bit overpriced.
However, having said that, we own a custom full carbon fiber tandem (including a custom c/f rack) that currently has 45,000+ miles on the odo.

IkeCan

I bet you are right, that I may be reacting to the geometry more than the frame material on the comparison between the Santana and the Co-Motion. The Carrera is an excellent tandem! I have not looked at the Scandium. Do you know if the frame geometry is the same as the Ti-700?

Actually the bike I rode was Jack's demo bike at Tandems Ltd. On the day I was in Birmingham another nice couple from Huntsville was there. They ended up purchasing Jack's demo Ti-700. Jack is a wealth of information on Tandems I learned a lot from him during my visit. He and his wife Susan are great to work with.

IkeCan

I will look into the Tubus racks. I did not realize they had a Ti rack.

IkeCan

45,000 miles is beyond impressive! I have thought of going to a carbon fiber bike but I worry about the risk of frame damage. I know carbon fiber frame damage is rare, but a with a Ti frame the concern is much lower.

jnbrown

I often read that concern, but how do you think the frame would be damaged?
I can tell you that a Calfee is quite different than a typical CF frame made in Asia, it is much more robust.
Recently ours fell against a wood picnic bench and the disk brake cable guide broke off of the seat stay, but the seat stay was only scuffed.
We don't have a disc brake so not a problem. In the rare event the frame was damaged, Calfee can repair it. They are experts in this and repair other manufacturers CF frames all the time. Again not bashing the Santana, we used have a Sovereign and enjoyed it for 10 years or so.

mje

Maybe Tandem | Kent Eriksen Cycles, but I think those are one-off custom bikes, and you don't need a custom bike for geometry.

jnbrown

I don't have personal experience with Exogrid but i would look at it as how does tandeming fit into the other priorities in your life?
For us it is very high even though we don't ride that many miles, maybe 150 on a good week.
So spending a big chuck of money on our tandem was worth it to me if it was going to make the experience better which it did by a lot.
We don't buy expensive cars or other items so we were able to use the money towards the tandem.
There is a local frame builder here, Bill Holland, who builds frames from Exogrid and sells them for $5K each.
I see a lot of people here on them and I know a few, but never asked them how they liked them but I assume they must.

Holland Cycles ? Holland ExoGrid® Bicycle

DubT

We have a Calfee Tetra that we bought in May of 2011, we now have nearly 25,000 miles on it with no frame issues.

I would like to see some actual data on carbon repair versus ti repair. I think carbon repair might actually be easier to repair than ti.

zonatandem

Frame damage?
Have had a steel (Reynolds 531 racing tubing) tandem frame break. Once at 50,000 miles and again at 56,000 miles. Sold the tandem with 64,000 miles on the odo. Eventually any material can and will fail.
So far so good with our custom Zona c/f tandem.
Did have a rather unique crash with our c/f tandem in Logan, UT.
We were watching a herd of bison (buffalo) in a huge fenced in meadow. Leaned our tandem against the steel double farm gate. Gate was locked with a very sturdy steel chain and big padlock. The alpha bison male sauntered over to the gate area, snorted and stomped his feet.
Before we could move the tandem the buffalo took a couple quick steps and butted the steel gate with his head, knocking our tandem down.
No damage done to bike/gate/bison.
No, the carbon fiber did not explode . . . removed our tandem and the 2,500-lb beast sauntered back to the rest of his herd.
Talked to the farmer/owner later and found out that that huge male is quite aggressive and protective of his harem, even having charged the farmer while on his 4-wheel ATV!
Photos of bison and gate attached.
Pedal on!
Rudy and Kay/zonatandem

Monoborracho

We have a Seven Ti (coupled) and have been very happy with it. We had a custom rack built for it. The difference between stainless steel and Ti (IIRC) was a couple of hundred dollars and a couple of ounces. We went with stainless steel. But I'm sure Seven or some other custom builder can build a titanium rack.

waynesulak

I believe that there are a lot of factors, some of which mentioned above that blend into how a tandem feels and there are reasonable differences between teams on what works best for them. I don't believe there is one tandem best for all. If you are fortunate enough to ride a bike for a substantial period of time and feel it responds better than others when you climb and corner then I would hesitate to buy another bike, no matter how much others may like it, without a similar test.

IkeCan

Appreciate all the comments on the high durability of carbon fiber. Carbon fiber has come a long way from 15 years ago. I will take a second look at carbon fiber.

In looking for a rear rack I ran across Lynskey performance bikes. They will custom build a Titanium tandem. It appears you start with a clean sheet of paper and go from there. I am not sure I have the technical expertise to chose all of the components and wind up with a trouble free bike. Has anyone worked with them and built a tandem? What was your experience like?

jnbrown

Are you talking about buying the components and building it yourself or having Lynskey do the build?
I did the former and it is indeed a daunting task even for someone with a lot of experience building single bikes.
But given some patience it can be done, and a lot of folks here can help (and/or debate) with component selection and technical questions.

IkeCan

I would opt for Lynskey to do the build. My concern would be picking out components that would play nice with each other. I called today and talked with a salesman at Lynskey. He has never been involved in a tandem build at Lynskey. He was going to have another employee give me a call who has built the tandem frames and in the build out.

DubT

If you settle on Ti then I would suggest looking seriously at seven or R & E, they both have experience building tandems. The testimonies on this board on the Seven are are excellent.

DKMcK 

There is a Santana Beyond for sale on TCA website Tandem Club of America | Santana Tandem - Beyond - Indiana - Tandems - Tandems - Indiana - Santana Tandem - Beyond

The Beyond is Carbon and Titanium, with the Santana geometry you like.

You miss out on all the fun of a new build and loose the warranty, but save some coin.

You can get the serial # from the owner and get original details from Santana.

stevoo

I would highly suggest riding a Beyond before spending the $$ to ensure it rides as you expect. This would be especially true if you are used to riding a laterally stiff bike.
Not saying good or bad, just that you should stand and crank and also turn hard to see if it is acceptable for you. They do ride different.

Pista Largo

We have about 12000 miles on our Team-Ti exogrid, and have been extremely happy with it. I would recommend couplers, DI2 and the big disk brake. We've been happy with the rack provided by Santana.

IkeCan

Thanks for all the insights and helpful advice! My wife and I decided to purchase a Santana Team Ti-700 with Exogrid and Spinergy Wheels. While it was very close between a Carbon Fiber Calfee and the Santana Team Ti The deciding factor for us was the Santana geometry. We plan to use this bike for long distance supported touring (70 to 100 miles per day). The Santana for us seemed to be the best for this type of touring.

For the rack I am going with a Lynskey Ti touring rack. It's design is very similar to a Blackburn rack. The Blackburn rack would work as well, but sticking with a Ti rack just seemed to be the right choice.

DKMcK 

Get the S&S couplers to expand you tour options. Santana's new couplers are such that you cannot tell the bike has them.

IkeCan

I will seriously consider going with the Santana couplers. You are right you have to know where to look to see the new couplers. My hesitation is I plan to use the tandem for tours in North America. We typically drive versus fly.

Philly Tandem

As mentioned, Tubus makes several Titanium racks. I don't have the Tubus Ti rack, but do have several other Tubus racks (Cargo, Logo, Tara, and Duo) and really like them. One thing I like about the "Logo" rack is that it offers a lower mounting point for rear panniers, lowering your center of gravity with them and also opening up the rack top for use with a trunk or tent, etc., while still allowing easy access to the panniers. I've had good luck buying from "The Touring Store" at Tubus Bicycle Touring Bike Racks, TheTouringStore.com

If you don't need Ti, Blackburn is now making their time-tested Expedition rack in stainless steel, which looks nice (and similar to Ti) and is a lot cheaper: EX-1 STAINLESS RACK

I don't have experience with the Lynskey rack (actually, didn't even know they made them), but if it's the "Caddy" rear rack, a quick look on the specs on the Web shows a pretty light-duty rack that I probably wouldn't use for anything but very light touring. The Nomad looks to be more robust.