The Turkey Is On The Platter... With A Flat Spot.

If you look closely. The quick-release is out of the dropouts...

So the tandem saga continues like all good sagas do. With a little drama and eventually a happy ending.

As the above picture depicts. The rear wheel was out of the dropouts when I pulled it out of the box. At the time I didn't really think twice about it. I was just too busy undressing the bike to start to put it together. So once I tore all the crap off of it I noticed that the rear skewer was a little bent. Meh, no big deal...

Well now it's turned into a big deal. You see that hunk of cardboard next to the tire valve on the wheel? Well right beneath that there turned out to be a hop in the wheel. A hop that can't be trued (More of a flat spot really.).

Fail.

So with this piece of information I had Graham at the shop call Cannondale to see what we needed to do to have the wheel warrantied.

But here's the rub. They can't warranty it. Because Cannondale is no longer making these bikes (Since they shipped production over seas they have discontinued tandem production. So the one's they have left on the shelf are what they have and that's it.) they don't have any surplus of these wheels laying around. So there for they can't warranty it.

The best thing they could do was send a whole new bike. Which to me seemed a little silly considering I could probably build an entirely new rear wheel for the cost of shipping the two bikes back and fourth.

So Graham in his infinite wisdom called the Cannondale rep to see if some other deal could be struck. And what a lovely deal (For me anyway.) it is. It looks like I'll be getting a credit for the wheel. And that credit will go towards a new set of Rolf Prima tandem wheels!



Sa-weeet!!!

Yes, they cost more than the stock wheels. And yes, I'm going to have to pay more for them. But as the shop has learned over many years of doing business with me. I'm an easy touch. So with the skill and peer pressure of a drug dealer to one of their best addicts it didn't take much to convince me that these wheels would be the bee's knees for our sled.

One more crisis averted in the long, adventurous story of making a dual powered velocipede.

Rubber side down,

Big E