Calfee always has a few nice items in their booth, but this year they pulled out all the stops. While tandems may not be your thing, they had THREE of them, all with some incredibly cool tech that could be built onto just about any of their bikes. Beyond that, they’ve expanded their set of internal Di2 offerings and updated the PowerPost seatpost/battery combo with an external charging port.
The bamboo tandem above was designed to be a do anything, go anywhere bike. It’s equipped with disc brakes, Gates Belt Drive for both the timing and drive chain mated to a Rohloff internally geared hub.
Plenty of tandems at the show had a belt timing chain, but this bike used them all the way ’round. A dynamo front hub powered the headlamp, and a double handlebar provides plenty of room for accessories and packs. Clearance for the rear disc rotor was tight, but it looked sweet.
Other than Kent Eriksen and his wife and the occasional random couple, we’ve not see too many folks willing to race off road on a tandem. If you were going to do so, this would be one sweet rig to do it with. Up front, a dual crown White Brothers fork handles the extra loads, but the real cool details are closer in…
Rather than put a special crankset with the timing chain on the non-drive side, Calfee simply flip-flopped the position of the big/small rings on a standard crankset and ran the timing chain on the outside. Yes, that’s some pretty tall gearing for off road. At least you’ve got two people pushing the pedals. Oh, and yes, those are Di2 derailleurs…
Di2 remote shift pods were hacked to bolt onto Magura MT8 brake lever mounts. Both handlebars are molded into the stems, and the rear is then molded into the seatpost.
Built for Calfee and his kid to ride, this carbon fiber tandem uses S&S couplers at the front and rear to allow different sections to fit onto the bike. With a child on the front, steering is handled in the rear via a cable-actuated mechanism:
Couplers at the rear of the bike let it break down compact enough to fit in a car, and it can add a third section or traditional stoker section as a family grows.
Calfee’s Tetra Adventure cyclocross bike is now available with disc brakes. The carbon lugged construction can be dyed, too, as shown here in blue.
They carve their own lugs, which takes a lot of time, but the result is both unique looking and pretty stiff. And what’s that on the left?
Why, yes, it is a darn-close-to-production version of the long awaited eeCranks from eeCycleWorks.
Cosmetically, Shimano’s Di2 control box is an eyesore. While the Big S has now announced a seat tube battery like Calfee’s original PowerPost, the builder has one-upped them again by building a bar/stem combo with internal placements for the box. Above, there’s no wiring or anything visible.
Underneath, you have an access hole and another hole to see the light for any troubleshooting purposes. The PowerPost now has an external charging port at the top so you don’t need to remove your seatpost to charge it.
