Our Calfee Journal

Well, it's been eleven weeks since my last update back on May 26th so I thought I'd bring y'all up to date on what we've learned and done to our Calfee in the interim and touch on a few other topics at the same time.

Euphoria or the Real Deal?

Our first impressions have been lasting ones as the Calfee IS the real deal. In fact, we recently found ourselves back on our Erickson tandem for the past several weeks and it was an eye-opening experience. As a reminder, here's what I wrote about the Calfee back on January 12:

...light, responsive, and smooth as silk. Of course, therein lies the problem with the Calfee bikes: it's very hard to convey to someone else in words how and why they feel the way they do because there's more to it than simply feeling 'light, responsive, and smooth as silk."

However, and with respect to our time spent back on the Erickson, this update from February 10th was truly profound:

As mentioned in the first impressions entry on January 12, Debbie is absolutely thrilled with the comfort and ride qualities of the [Calfee] and still has no interest in going back to our [Erickson] just to quantify the differences. Push-come-to- shove, I know she's game to do so, but there's just a serious lack of motivation. However, the take-a-way is, what I'd hoped to accomplish by going to the Calfee has been achieved: my stoker is delighted with the new bike. Like my Calfee Pro single bike, the Calfee tandem just feels exceptional: ride positions seem better even though they're the same ones used on similar bikes, the roads seem smoother, and riding in general seems to take less effort.

Those comments made while we were still enjoying the sweet smell of a fresh carbon frame are still as true today as they were back then. More to the point, the first ride back on the Erickson a few weeks back was made with the conventionally-spoked 36h Deep-V wheel set and, to say it felt harsh compared to the Calfee would be an understatement... even with our cushy 700x25 tires mounted. While the Erickson still had great handling characteristics, exceptional stability, and rock solid feel when sprinting and climbing, we felt like we'd been beaten when we finished. Of course, to put this into context it's important to point out the Erickson tandems are some of the finest steel tandems you'll find and, up and until we took possession of our Calfee, they held top honors for comfort over any other tandem we've owned or ridden.

After completing our first ride back on the Erickson in its original configuration and confirming just how different the Calfee was, I changed out the conventional wheel set for our Topolinos fitted with 700x23 tires so that we could see if they would have any noticable difference on the Erickson. Wow, they truly transformed the Erickson with regard to comfort, but without sacrificing anything in terms of handling or stability. This was the first time we'd fitted the Topolino wheels to something other than our Calfee tandem. While our initial impressions of the Topolino wheel set mounted on the Calfee was very good, we didn't gain much appreciation for the purported vibration dampening characteristics of the thermoplastic resin and Kevlar/carbon fiber spoke network. However, that was not the case with the Erickson where the difference was immediately noticeable and greatly appreciated. In fact, while the Topolino wheels aren't exactly cheap, they could provide a team with a less expensive alternative to a full-carbon framed tandem if they're just looking to make what is otherwise a prized steel or aluminum tandem a bit more comfortable, spry, and at least a full-pound and a half lighter than most other conventional wheels. Heck, they're 3/4's of a pound lighter than our Rolf's!

Less I digress, looking past the comfort it may be fair to say the Calfee is probably not as stiff as the Erickson; however, that little bit of extra compliance coupled with carbon frame's other properties may be in part what gives the Calfee its buttery-smooth ride qualities. What's interesting is, that slight trade-off in stiffness doesn't seem to have any downside. In other words, the Calfee still handles and climbs at least as well as the Erickson and doesn't suffer from any stoker-lag or feel whippy when we're climbing and sprinting out of the saddle.

To sum up this little restrospective ride on our Erickson, we were never so happy to be reunited with our Calfee this past weekend. Our initial impressions were all validated as the pure joy we experienced on that first ride back in January came rushing back when found ourselves back in the saddles of our Calfee. Moreover, this weekend marked the end of experimentation as every little nit has been addressed and the tandem is fully dialed-in: it was a perfect ride.

So, what's changed since May?

OK, here's a run down on the nits and other things that have been addressed to dial-in the Calfee. Some of the tweaks made during the past eleven weeks have been quite minor, while others were actually somewhat significant. Therefore, we'll start with the small stuff and work up to the more significant changes.

Perhaps the smallest change was swapping-out the silver plastic Jag Wire Mini In-Line derailleur adjuster for a new model molded out of black rubber. The new model is easier to manipulate with sweaty wet hands and also blends in nicely with the black cable housing. Again, while this may seem like a little nit, having an in-line rear derailleur adjuster like the Jag Wire Mini that works well is a must-have for any tandem that doesn't have more traditional down tube cable stops with barrel adjusters. Yes, it's important to get your tandem's drive train dialed-in, but no matter how well you do that ,over time a little tweak will be required and Murphy's Law will cause that to happen when you're 65 miles into a century, or half-way up a 3,500' climb.

On the other side of the head tube was another little tweak where I've added a Shimano XTR M960-965 in-line gear position indicator to the front derailleur cable. I've always had some type of visual gear position indicator on our tandems attached to the derailleur cable just below the down tube cable stops / barrel adjusters. However, the cable routing on the Calfee did away with those stops and also hides the derailleur cables from view once they enter the head tube. Therefore, given the importance of knowing which chain ring the chain is sitting on, the Shimano in-line indicator seemed like the best solution short of a Campy ErgoBrain. While it's not an ideal installation -- given the indicator sits where the cable housing likes to bend -- it will be interesting to see how it holds up over time. Again, this little device isn't essential, but having the ability to glance down and quickly see which chain ring your drive chain is sitting on is a heck of a lot easier than looking under your saddle and between your legs with your head upside down ala the pro racer-boys or stress-testing the front derailleur cable and shifter lever by trying to shift into the big ring when you're already in the big ring.

These little tweaks weren't limited to adding little bits to front end of the tandem's derailleur cable installations as at the back end of the tandem I've gone and removed the J-Tek Shiftmate #1. Instead, and like on previous hybrid shifting systems, I am now simply running the Campy 10 speed Ergo levers and Campy 9/10 long cage rear derailleur with Shimano 9 speed cassettes without any adapters or cable routing tricks. Thus far the shifting hasn't suffered and actually seems to be crisper. Moreover, it's nice not having to check on the J-Tek's cam position as the cam and cable would sometimes migrate away from the 1:00 o'clock default position and create shifting problems that couldn't be dialed out on the fly. Therefore, it would seem that (similar to Campy 9 & Shimano 9) the spacing differences between Campy 10 and Shimano 9/10 is so slight an adapter really isn't absolutely essential, just a nice to have. I'm not taking anything away from the J-Tek, it just doesn't seem to be needed for this application and most likely would also be unnecessary for our Shimano 10 speed cassette.

Now for something completely different... noting we've taken possession of our 3rd different carbon stoker stem. No, there's nothing nefarious about these replacements, as the first two stems did not fail nor did they appear to be on the verge of failing. Instead, they simply developed what appeared to be some signs of potential long-term durability issues that I asked the fabricator to evaluate and, in both cases, the prognosis was "let's try something different".

It was actually a very educational and insightful experience seeing what all went into the design and fabrication of what at first glance seems like a rather non-descript component. I was provided with design drawings, many photos that illustrated the fabrication process, and even an mpeg showing some bench testing for tensile strength. Having that much visibility gave me an immense amount of appreciation for the time and expense associated with developing and hand-fabricating these one-off carbon stoker stems and, in retrospect, the selling price is justified if a buyer has decided they'd like to have a carbon stoker stem on their tandem that yields about a 100 - 120 gram (33%) savings over the alloy models.

Again, as I said, we haven't had any failures, I just detected visual cues that suggested we could have reduced service life / durability issues down the road that I elected to address now rather than later. As it is today, our current stem embodies a very shallow angle and internal bracing at the junction of the seat post clamp yielding what seems to be a very robust stem that should not have any life / durability issues.

Note: If you happen to have one of these stems of any generation, please don't be alarmed or assume you'll have any problems with yours. Instead, just be attentive to it as you would be to any carbon or lightweight alloy component on your bicycle. If you should discover any fissures or other signs of fatigue wear at that point you'd want to take some photos of the area of concern and send them to your dealer so that they can pass them back to the manufacturer for evaluation. Otherwise, enjoy your lightweight carbon stoker stem....

Finally, now for the little nit that evolved into what was something of a major makeover: Eccentricity Part II.

If you've been keeping up with the entries in my journal you'll recall it took me a while to come up the learning curve on how to adjust the eccentric on our Calfee. The trick was getting it tight enough so it would not slip while still holding the bottom bracket with sufficient torque to preclude the dreaded creaking noises that often times come from the front bottom bracket or eccentric on a tandem.

As noted in my May 27 update, through my efforts to troubleshoot some of the noises I believed to be coming from the cranks, I found myself in need of a spare eccentric. However, when the spare eccentric arrived I was surprised to find it was too big to fit in my frame's eccentric shell opening.

I called the folks at Calfee who confirmed they had recently implemented a design change to their frames to accommodate a larger diameter eccentric, larger bolts, and an aluminum sleeve bonded to the inside of the .25" larger eccentric shell opening. This change accomplished three things:

This revelation regarding the change in the eccentric shell and eccentric design spec used by Calfee was something that stuck in my mind for about a month, at which point I had to ask the question, "Can you retrofit an existing tandem to accommodate the larger eccentric opening and aluminum sleeve?" My reason for investigating this possible modification to our frame was based on a number of different factors, to include having two spare Bushnell eccentrics here at the house; a version #3 and one of the '07 version #4's. Anyway, to make a long story short, the answer was "maybe" and the front 1/3 of our frame was sent off to California in mid-July for an inspection and possible surgery. After the inspection the prognosis was, let's go ahead and proceed with the somewhat gnarly retrofit, noting that James made a point of telling me Craig would be the one who bored-out the original eccentric shell given the complexity of the frame work. Yes indeed, I was as nervous as a long-tail-cat on a porch full of rocking chairs.

However, as you can see , the surgery was a success and the frame was back in our hot little hands-on Aug 8. Moreover, when it arrived I was pleasantly surprised to find the '07 Bushnell eccentric at 129 gram was only 13 grams heavier than the new and larger Calfee eccentric. Over the following weekend we logged about 80 miles on the tandem with the Bushnell eccentric installed and everything was tight, solid, and quiet.

Like the carbon stoker stem, I'd suggest that anyone reading this who owns a Calfee tandem produced before the eccentric spec was changed to leave well-enough alone if you've not had any problems with your eccentric, e.g., rotating under load. It really is some gnarly surgery as a lot of material is removed from the eccentric shell to accommodate the aluminum sleeve. Again, ours appears to have turned out quite nicely as no one would guess any type of modification had been made to the frame. However, I don't believe this is a no-brainer modification and there may be some tandems / tandem teams where the rework could be more extensive than what we experienced.

Wheel Update: Just a couple notes here.

Spin Down Testing: Perhaps the most interesting thing I've done with respect to wheels during the past few months was some spin-down testing. In short, I mounted the front wheels from our Topolino Carbon Core AX-3.0T, Rolf Prima Vigor Tandem and White Ind / Velocity Deep-V wheel sets to the front of my Calfee Pro single bike along with a set of Campagnolo Eurus and Campy Record / Mavic Open Pros and used an electric motor to spin the wheels up to 60 mph, at which point their speed decay was captured by my wife's Garmin 305 using the wireless speed sensor. You can find some graphs below that depict the results and draw your own conclusions regarding wind resistance, inertia, speed decay rates, and the like. Now, bear in mind, this was when the front wheels were forced to a starting speed of 65 mph. Therefore, I suspect if I had only accelerated the wheels to 20 mph or even 30 mph ­ approximating average flat line speed range for your average tandem team ­ all of the various different front wheels would have had very similar looking decay rates, with perhaps a slight edge / lower drag being indicated on the run-down times for the low-spoke-count wheels. If it ever starts to rain here I may investigate that theory by reducing the voltage feeding electric motor to reduce the revs / top end starting speed.

Note: Please don't draw any false conclusions regarding overall performance or aerodynamics based on this little experiment. The only way to quantify how these various wheels perform with respect to aerodynamic drag when installed on a tandem would be to put a tandem with two riders in a low-speed wind tunnel with the appropriate instrumentation and to conduct dynamic testing on a tandem-specific balance, which probably doesn't exist. Therefore, the best you could hope for would be using single bike data and assume something on the order of a 30% reduction in any aerodynamic drag reduction due to the wheel design. Now, if you consider that a tandem bike only accounts for perhaps 10% or less of the drag for recreational cyclists, any reduction in drag will be rather small....

Topolino Support: Back in my May 11 update I mentioned we were experiencing some front hub / axle noise on the front wheel of our Topolino AX 3.0-T wheel set on hard, out of the saddle climbs. The support from Topolino was outstanding and Rafe even went so far as talking me through the front axle repair procedure over the phone ­ essentially being his hands ­ just to be sure the change was made per spec. The axle ends that we used were not the knurled ends used on the rear hub but where, instead, a slight variation on the original end cap with a small recess machined around the skewer hole. This solved the fork slippage; however, once that noise was silenced it became evident there was something else amiss with the front hub. Rafe had me send the front wheel to Connecticut for some quick-turn rework and unfortunately, while the second noise was resolved yet another one from a bearing that isn't fully seated has cropped up. We think the use of a steel skewer instead of the Ti one may address this minor annoyance. I say minor because, aside from that clicking noise on those rare, hard, out-of-the-saddle climbs when I'm throwing the tandem from side-to-side and side-loading the wheel, they have been outstanding and otherwise troublefree.

Update: The different skewer did not resolve the issue and front wheel was replaced under warranty after being returned to Topolino a second time for evaluation. As always, great support... just gets a bit expensive when you have to ship these very expensive wheels back and forth for service / evaluation.

In fact, while I originally planned to not ride them as our everyday wheels on the Calfee I've found that I really prefer to use them vs. the Rolfs or our travel / every-day White Ind / Velocity Deep-V wheel set: they feel solid, the make the tandem feel buttery-smooth, and they look awesome.

Also, as mentioned earlier, the Topolino wheels truly transformed the ride qualities of our steel Erickson tandem. Therefore, like the Calfee itself, the Topolino AX 3.0-T wheel set is also the real deal: they are light, fast and really do an amazing job of dampening road vibration.

Other Wheels: Not much new to report on our conventional White Industries / Velocity Deep-V wheel set other than the need to adjust the front hub's end cap pre-loading. Like the '08 Rolf's, the front wheel started to feel a little sloppy on turns and upon giving it a firm side-to-side push and shove in the garage some hub slop was clearly in evidence. I'm actually surprised I haven't had to make this same adjustment on the '07 Rolfs but, then again, we've only used the Rolfs on flat and rolling rides and do almost all of our other rides on the Topolino wheel set.

Final thoughts.

Notwithstanding any unforeseen problem with the Calfee or the components, this may well be the penultimate journal entry documenting our first year of ownership. Hopefully any loyal readers of my journal have gained some insight into what it was like for us as we worked out a few kinks and tweaked what is easily the most exotic tandem we'll likely ever own.

Through it all, the one constant has been "Outstanding Support" and hopefully that has been evident. Although I've known Craig Calfee for many years through our mutual participation in the Tandem@Hobbes forum and related off-list correspondence, it was truly a pleasure to work with him and his staff on our tandem. Lest anyone think this was a turn-key buy, let me point out our tandem was anything but, as we had a lot of support from a number of different folks: Alex Nutt at MTBTandems , Mark Johnson at Precision Tandems, Mel Kornbluh at Tandems East, Todd Shusterman at daVinci Designs, Stephen Bilenky at Bilenky Cycle Works and technical support from Bob Davis of AriZona Tandems and Rafe Schlanger at Topolino Technology.

As in previous tandem projects, I've learned a lot from the folks who made it all happen and to a person they have all bent over backwards to answer my questions and address any issues I've had. The latter is important because as hard as everyone tries, it is rare that everything will be perfect right out of the box when you commission something like a custom, never mind an exotic, high-end custom tandem. To recap just a few of the issues, there was a slight delay in schedule due to tubing supplier issues back in the Fall of '07, the frame has been back to California twice for adjustments (water bottle boss relocation & the eccentric retrofit), we've learned a lot about the cutting edge of performance wheels, we've seen just how much time and effort it takes to hand craft something like a lightweight carbon stoker stem, we've investigated radio frequency interference, and untold hours have gone into chasing down squeaks and creaks and making those little tweaks needed to get the tandem "just the way we want it."

Do I find any of this to be unusual? Not really. In fact, I believe the more you spend on a tandem the more "issues" you'll experience if only because the expectations are set so high and the margin for error is so narrow compared to what you'll find with an entry and mid-level tandems and bicycles. Therefore, if you don't have the patience and time needed to work through the little issues that will invariably crop up then you could be setting yourself up for some tense moments if you venture into this end of the tandem market. Just my view here, having commissioned and survived three custom road tandems and a custom off-road tandem.

Are we really done? Pretty darn close is probably the best answer. The cranks still seem a bit too shiny and are the last parts on the tandem that needs frequent post-ride attention to maintain the brilliant finish. Therefore, they may still make a trip back to Colorado for trip though the anodizing tanks. We still have that one noise to chase down on our Topolino wheel set. However, beyond those two things I can't think of anything else that needs to be touched.

In closing, to say we are thrilled with the final product would be an understatement. Having to part with it for a few weeks this summer really drove that point home. This is not to say everyone reading this should run out and place an order for a Calfee tandem; although, if you could afford it I don't think you'd be disappointed. However, it hopefully reinforces the notion that you shouldn't be afraid to set your sights on your own vision of what the perfect tandem should be and then go for it, bearing in mind some of the trials and tribulations that often times are an integral part of the process.

Bottom Line: We've now experienced the perfect ride and have absolutely no regrets. The acquisition of our Calfee Tetra Tandem was without question one of the best decisions we've made. We may not be the fastest tandem teams you'll ever encounter by a long shot, but we'll certainly be one of the most happy and comfortable you'll come to know!