I love that weird extra tube for the stoker handlebar.
Too bad whitewall tires were out of stock indefinitely from our supplier. We had to go with period-appropriate blackwalls instead.
I rode it by myself. It handles like a damaged truck. Perhaps the weight of a second person would make the frame sag enough to correct the front end geometry.
It looks like more weight would increase the already large front rake and probably make the handling worse. With that separate stoker bar tube, it could probably be set up to steer from either seat. Some 19c tandems were clearly configured to be ridden by a male captain steering from behind his lady friend stoker.
ReplyDeleteIt had not occurred to me that the rear handlebar configuration could have been derived from a courting tandem. I've only seen one of those, and I did not examine it closely. A lot of design elements on American bikes are done out of habit. They're degenerated versions of formerly functional or well-machined equipment.
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