Transporting Tandems

 

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We used to transport out tandems on a roof rack.  This works well, but since our S&S coupled bike has a custom paint job, we transported it inside our 1997 Saturn SW1 wagon.  To do this we broke the bike in two parts (behind the captain's seat tube) and placed it in the back of the wagon with some old quilts padding between the pieces.  These three pictures show the sequence.  Click each picture to see it full size.

 

We recently bought a 2000 Dodge Grand Caravan.  Minivans are often referred to as "the ultimate tandem accessory" since so many tandem teams use them to transport their bikes.  In our case, we didn't need the van to transport the coupled bike, but when we added an extra 80 lbs of german shepherd to the house, we needed "the ultimate dog accesory".  At right are links to pictures of the bike in the van.  We remove the wheel, and use a "transport" from Performance to hold the fork.  This is mounted on a piece of 4x4 lumber which in turn is attached to a plank of laminate flooring.  I added some velcro under the plank to keep it from slipping on the carpet.

We've only flown with the bike once so far, when we went to Yellowstone in June, 2000.  At right Dawn is carrying half of the bike in the S&S soft side backpack case.  We use two of these cases to pack the bike for airline travel.  We suffered some spoke damage on the return trip, probably from the handlebars sticking through the spokes.  In the future we will be packing most of the bike into one case, and the wheels and clothing into the other case.  I might use sheets of corrugated plastic (coroplast) between the wheels and other contents to make sure nothing gets into the spokes.

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