After almost four months of waiting, our new tandem has arrived. We've been talking about getting a Calfee since we first saw one on RAGBRAI four years ago, and now we have our own. It is a beauty. The carbon frame, lightweight wheels, disk brakes, and Di2 shifting come together to yield a two-person machine under 35lbs. Of course we loaded it up with racks, fenders, and packs, so now it's a bit heavier, but it still saves almost 20lbs over our alloy steel Davidson.
The bike comes apart with S&S couplers and ships in a re-usable plastic box. So it should be ideal for the international trips we like to do. Here's our first view as we took the top off of the crate.
Assembly was straightforward with the only hitch being adjusting the tension in the carbon synchronizing belt. The latest technology has an internal wedge bolt that holds the front eccentric from rotating instead of a split in the frame with external clamp bolts.
After several adjustments to seat and handlebar position, the bike was ready to ride. But all was not well. After our first 55 mile ride, my hands were pretty numb. Comparing this HB positions to that of other bikes that I ride, I concluded that the brake hoods were too far down on the handlebars, so I unwrapped the HB tape and moved them back. Now we just need to get past this insane heat and see if the fix worked. Other than the handlebar issue, the first ride was a dream. The bike is super-stiff in the lateral direction, so instead of snaking down the road like our steel tandem, it tracks almost like a single bike. Here's the assembled steed:
The synchro mode on the Di2 shifters worked really well with one exception (see further down). The captain on the tandem has a very hard time knowing what gear the bike is in. If I don't know what we're in, I call to Gayle to report the gear, but with 11 cogs on the rear, and part of the frame blocking the view, it's difficult for her to see. With synchro, the Shimano shifter automatically shifts the front chain-rings and then adjusts the chain position on the freewheel cogs so the gear change isn't too extreme. This works really well by only having two levers: one to shift to a higher gear and one to shift to a lower gear. The only problem was that with shifting to lower gears, the synchro would go all the way down to "B2" (the next to largest cog on the freewheel), before it would shift from the large chain-ring to the small chain-ring. Needless to say, the chain alignment in the last few gears before the chain-ring shift occurred was pretty bad. So, I embarked on trying to fix it.
The first thing I did was download the Shimano "E-Tube" smart phone app that is supposed to let you change the shifter parameters. It appeared to do what I wanted, changing the large to small chain-ring shift point from 2nd cog down to fifth cog down, but it didn't take. Then the app said that new firmware needed to be loaded. Alarm bells should have gone off, but they didn't! After less than a minute of trying to download the firmware update, an error appeared, and then the shifter unit completely hung. No lights, no motion when buttons were pushed, no nothing! After scanning the internet and finding numerous reports of others having the same problem, I connected the shifter unit directly to my PC using the computer version of the E-Tube program and then after many attempts, I was able to connect to the shifter and update the firmware. And finally, I was able to change the shifting point to drop to the smaller chain-ring earlier in the shift cycle. Whew!!!
