Hans Christoph Timm
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2001 Soil 'Hard-Line'
This picture is from the Soil website. Specs:
MSRP (Germany):
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I had a chance to ride the prototype 2001 Soil 'Hard-Line' at the MTB Festival hosted by the German bike magazine 'bike' at Riva/Lago di Garda (Italy). Like many other manufacturers, Soil showed some of their bikes at a booth there and made them available for test rides. 'Soil' is the label used by the traditional, family-owned German bike manufacturer Schauff for their upper-end bikes. We exchanged my shiny new Tandem Technology Pinus Cembra for the Hard-Line on display at the booth, and we were immediately impressed by the Soil's low weight. Wow - will this bike hold up? We didn't ask if we were expected to bring the bike back in one piece, but hey, if they give us a bike to test, we should be allowed to test it, right? Since we intended to race the next day, we decided to be easy on the bike to make sure we survived, though. The next thing we noticed was how short the rear section is. The Soil website lists the stoker compartment as being 685 mm, which is about 75 mm (3") shorter than what my stokers are used to. Add in the very long stem the bike came with, and you get a very cramped stoker position. Recreational riders might prefer such an upright position, but will they be willing to spend $4500 on a full-suspension tandem? The third fact we noticed before we even started was frame flex. Frequent readers of the three large tandem forums on the internet know that I don't like lateral flex in tandem frames! Expecially not on an off-road frame!! During hard off-road riding, the stoker is basically dead weight in turns. They cannot see ahead, so they cannot brace themselves for quick moves which may be necessary when navigating through rough sections at high speeds. Thus, the captain needs to be able to just move the whole bike, and the bike should go where the captain wants it to go - without any wiggle! To investigate this further, I did some quick lane changes and my stoker wiggled around on purpose. During this manuever it was pretty hard for me to even keep the bike on the road! And that was with a 60 kg (132 lbs) Marco-Pantani-lookalike on the back!! If I have ever been on an unsafe tandem it was this one!!! I had already been wary about the component choices Soil/Schauff made for this bike. I do not trust single-bike forks on a tandem, not even on tandems used only on the road. Brake shimmy is a serious issue. You usually brake hard because you need to slow down quickly to keep yourself and your stoker alive, and this is the type of situation when you don't want to have your bike act up like a bucking bronco! In addition to a loose headset and too soft springs (both of which are not standard features on the production bikes, I hope) the Soil came with a Rock Shox Psylo fork. This fork could best be described as a 'lightweight freeride fork' - not what you'd want on a tandem. Now I trust the Soil engineers when they claim their in-house testing predicts that the fork will not break under tandem loads, but steering precision and stiffness under hard braking are still like I predicted: Horrible! 2002 bikes are equipped with stiffer springs and the Tullio thru-axle, which should improve stiffness. The other components were the usual stuff found on decent bikes: Magura brakes and XT/XTR mix. The rim brakes will be replaced with dual disks, as the Soil staff said that they torched two tubes when testing the bike in the mountains around Lago di Garda. The picture from the Soil website shows the bike with Magura Louise brakes (which are in no way capable of slowing a tandem down safely), but the finished bikes will come with Magura Gustav M brakes - a wise choice. Not to sell this bike at all until the frame has been seriously reinforced would be an even wiser choice, however! What would Soil have to do to make me like the bike?
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