New Rohloff tandem

[chrispayne]

Has anybody taken delivery of one of the new Rohloff Tandems yet? If so I would be interested in any first impressions. I have a friend who has gone to NZ for 6 months and sent me  a piccy of them both on it - but no ride reports yet!

Chris

[David Hull]

Chris
Yes - I took delivery of one in mid June and have done some local rides, taken it to S.W. France on a pendle roof carrier and just come back from a week in Northumberland - just over 350 miles so far.  The rohloff is excellent.  It does take a little getting used to but I'm sure is a whole lot easier than derailleurs.  Once used to it, you wouldn't want to ride anything else.  I went for 44x16 ratios as haven't missed the very slightly lower gear that you would get with a 40X16 - it only makes about 2 gear inches difference at the bottom.
One slight quality issue is that the paintwork has a few blemishes - Robin says that this has been an issue with this batch of frames but mine should be resolved with a bit of touch up - it's only in a couple of places.
Apart from that, excellent.  

David

[chrispayne]

Thanks David, sounds excellent. I am very interested in your comment about the ratios you chose - I posted a separate query a long while ago on this. I have a solo Adventure Tour with a Rohloff on a 38x17 ratio - it suits me fine (correction it is a fabulous bike) though now I am fitter I would notch it up to 38x16. I too had thought that a Tandem should be slightly higher geared - the Rohloff gives loads of low gears but "runs out" of high gears quite quickly. I have an old Derailleur Tandem and we toured extensively in Europe 20 years ago and the high gears can be very useful on long gradual downhill gradients.

Do you, or anybody else, have a view on how a "comfortable cruising" ratio on a solo compares with that on a tandem (assuming averagely fit M+F). My solo cruising gear (11) is approx 60 inches, should I order a Rohloff ratio that gives a cruising ratio of say 70 inches? This would fit with your 44x16. How old and how fit are you both?

Chris

My query was (and is) if buying now I would notch the

[graham]

quote:Do you, or anybody else, have a view on how a "comfortable cruising" ratio on a solo compares with that on a tandem (assuming averagely fit M+F). My solo cruising gear (11) is approx 60 inches, should I order a Rohloff ratio that gives a cruising ratio of say 70 inches? This would fit with your 44x16. How old and how fit are you both?

We weren't prepared to wait for a Tiawanese framed Rohloff tandem so Robin made us a (very) special.
Geared 44 x 16. 11th is about 71.5". I'd say about right. We're both 42 and did over 110 miles on Saturday even though we didn't really feel 'up for it' when we set off. 100 miles in 6 hrs 6 minutes, so averaging over 16mph.
I also have a Raven Tour geared the same.

[graham]

The 'last post' was cut a bit short because I had to rush out & collect the wife from work.

Although the Solo and Tandem are geared the same, I find it easier to hold a higher gear (lower cadence) on the solo. Probably because the machine has less mass to accelerate.
I don't know how other tandem teams work, but in our case I expect the wife only to go with me and not complain when we're doing over 40mph downhill, followed by sharp braking and swinging round a corner at 25mph. And she's very good, she doesn't.
Chrissi obviously has to turn the cranks at the same speed as me but it is entirely up to her how much force she puts in. So she adds whatever power she can/wants to, and I do what I can. If that results in an increase of speed, I change up at a cadence of about 100rpm. If we cannot maintain speed and the cadence drops below about 80, I haven't the body weight to maintain momentum and so change down. I no longer need to advise my stoker of this action, we're both clipped in and she responds instantly a slight hesitation in the pedalling action as I change gear. It almost certainly helps that the Rohloff hub changes so quickly.

The only time I will advise Chrissi of a gear change is if we're grinding to a halt on a steep incline and I need to drop about 3 gears, because an enthusiastic stoker putting real pressure on can prevent the gear change from happening (even so it's still miles better than a derailleur).

Personally I think 44 x 16 is about as low as I'd want to go, because top gear and 100 rpm cadence means a road speed of about 30mph. And seriously, every time we go out on the tandem, we exceed 35mph, which is about spin-out speed for us.

We both prefer the tandem because the extra weight and the double power input smooths the pedalling action, we think.