If you didn’t know that tandem bikes could be fast and light, clearly you have yet to meet a racing tandem. Don’t worry; we won’t hold that against you, considering there are only a couple thousand tandem racers in the US. Just be aware that the sport is growing. In Denver, Colo., for example, the popular Cherry Creek Time Trial Series added a tandem category, and saw about a dozen different teams sign up this year.

Unlike single bike road racing, tandem racing isn’t done as part of a cycling team utilizing race tactics and group strategy. It’s just you, your bike, and your partner against the world. Besides working on fitness and synergy with your tandem partner, the best advantage you can gain against another tandem race team is by having a better bike.

So here’s the real news – Paketa, a little company in Colorado, has just revealed a new racing tandem called the V2r that weighs less than 22 pounds. That’s lighter than your mountain bike. And probably your road bike too. How did they do it? We talked to David Walker, V2r’s chief designer to find out.

Walker says the two keys to creating the lightest tandem alive were the frame material and a complete drivetrain redesign. For the frame, he was able to use magnesium alloy, which is 34-percent lighter than aluminum, 50-percent lighter than titanium, and just as strong. It’s no secret that most frame builders would prefer magnesium to any other frame material – the reason it’s not commonly used is that the technology hasn’t been fully explored or developed, and it’s not a simple technology. Paketa is actually the only company in the world to have done it for tandems, and the company’s master welder spent six years of intense research and testing to get there. “It’s a combination of good engineering, as well as artisanship,” says Walker.

Once the magnesium frame, which weighs only five pounds, was perfected, Walker felt there was nowhere left to go to shave weight off a tandem without completely rethinking how you build one in the first place. So that’s what he did. To understand his game-changing concept, you must first understand standard tandem design.

Because there are two cranks – the captain’s and the stoker’s – they need to be connected via a transfer chain or belt. But with a triple chain ring (the preferred tandem gearing), there’s not enough room for both the triple and the transfer sprockets, so the transfer drive was relocated over to the left side of the bicycle long ago, using a crossover design for the cranks. This solved the problem, but introduced a lot of unnecessary weight because it meant only tandem-specific cranks could be used, which are heavy compared to what we’re used to with road and mountain bikes today. The reason is that tandems comprise only about 1-percent of the cycling market, so manufacturers don’t put their latest and greatest technological innovations to use for tandem cranks. Even if you were willing to pay top dollar for the best, lightest, most technologically advanced tandem cranks, you’d be out of luck, according to Walker, because they just don’t exist.

Walker’s thought was that if you could alter the tandem’s drivetrain to put the transfer belt back on the right side, you’d eliminate the need for a crossover design and could use the lighter single bike cranks for both the captain’s and stoker’s cranks. So he switched the tandem’s gearing to the new 2X10 drivetrain – a double crank that only sacrifices the granny gear. That gave him room to mount the transfer belt sprocket onto the same crank spider, just behind the main drive sprocket, in the rear.

Presto! The entire belt could move over to the right side, eliminating the need for any tandem-specific anything, including crank arms. With Walker’s design, tandem racers can now pimp out their ride with the latest and lightest crank technology, including carbon, and even alter crank arm length, if need be. Walker used ZippTM carbon cranks to demonstrate a two-pound reduction in weight, using the same magnesium frame.

And the redesign goes even further than shaving weight. According to Walker, mounting the transfer drive inboard on the right side also reduced frame bending (in the boom tube), even under the duress of hard pedaling. “Even all-out sprints by the strongest riders won’t cause frame whip and the unpredictable handling that results,” he says.

Here’s to thinking outside the box. And here’s to Denver becoming the new tandem technology hotspot. The mile-high city boasts another innovator named Da Vinci Designs who’ve introduced the concept of the Independent Drive – an intermediate shaft that allows the captain and stoker the freedom to coast independently of each other. The city also hosts an abundance of bike shops with tandem expertise, including some devoted entirely two bicycles built for two, like Tandem Cycle Works, who’s been so successful in their dozen years in Denver that they’re expanding to a new location January 1st.

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