This picture is from the 1999 Erzgebirgs Bike Marathon at Seiffen. The bike was completed the day before the event. This first test ride was 100km off-road with 2,600 m of climbing, most of it in technical terrain. We finished first among the tandems, as we have done in every race we have entered so far.
This
bike is certainly among the best full-suspension tandems on this planet.
I have to admit I have only ridden four such beasts so far. However, as
among those was a Santana DualMoto
which is often regarded as a very good bike, and Santana is probably the
most reputable tandem manufacturer, I feel confident that my judgement
is not off.
The bike is a steel frame designed and built by Stephan Odenwald of Tandem Technology in Chemnitz, Germany. During most of the day, Stephan is an engineer at the Technical University at Chemnitz. He started building tandems eight years ago when still a student, and he loves to ride with his entire family (on their travel tandem with a fully suspended Weber "Ritschie" child trailer in tow).
From
his first tandem on, Stephan has always used ultra-big diameter steel tubing
to achieve maximum stiffness. The frame is fillet-brazed from a variety
of cromoly steel tubing, most of which comes from Columbus. Suspension
duties on the prototype were handled by a Nicolai
three-pivot rear section made from custom drawn Easton aluminum tubing
and a Votec GS 4 fork. Another component
highlight was the Hope rear disk brake. The other components on this prototype
were taken from what was available before the first race. They include
some rare parts such as Mavic wishbone shifters hooked up to a Suntour
XC Pro derailleur. See here for two in-depth ride-reports.
A
small number of similar frames with upgrades incorporating everything Stephan
has learned from testing this one (lighter tubing, revised rear section
of his own design) are in production. The production bikes were first unveiled
at the MTB marathon at Kirchzarten in late June of 2000. The first bikes
were delivered to customers in time for the 2000 riding season. The picture
on the right shows the new rear section with the Rohloff
Speedhub. Regular derailleur drive-train is equally possible, of course.
Extensive testing on tours and races has shown that the new single-pivot rear section is a great improvement. The 2001 models will feature slight revisions of the main pivot, but are otherwise mainly unchanged. For more information mail to stephan@tandem-technology.de or visit their website.