A few months ago Team Racer Nick D. and I participated in a XC mountain bike race with the TwoFast4U tandem. But after lap 1, we broke it. Nick and I were pretty bummed about what happened because we were having such a great time racing the tandem. Mind you, it’s not easy, but it sure is fun. After the race Nick had this great idea about building our own tandem…yes building our own tandem. All we needed was a pair of donor frames and Nick can fabricate a complete bike out of them. Not sure if you knew this. Nick was a former racer car builder. He was on the cover of various magazines with his creations and we figured if his work is good enough for cars that go fast, it should be good enough for 2 guys riding down a hill at 25mph. Just to keep this compliant and stuff, “do not try this at home and MtnBikeRiders.com and the individuals involved in this project take full responsibility for any damages, injury or death caused by fabricating our own tandem.”
Let’s start off with our first donor frame. This is the Airborne Skyhawk.
These beautiful seat and chain stays will be cut off.
The other half of this project will consist of the now defunct Woodstock 707 Full Suspension Frame.
I’m not really sure how Nick will make all this work, but I totally trust in his craftsmanship and I have confidence that he will make these two frames into a beautiful piece of art. I figured some new tubing will be required and some measurin’ and cutting will happen.
Now let’s get to the name of the project…”Double Banger.” Well don’t immediately take your minds to the gutter. Nope! Have you ever heard of the term 4 banger or 8 banger? People describe how many cylinders their cars have by saying the # of cylinders and the word banger after it. Banger comes from the fact that an internal combustion engine has explosion or a BANG during it’s cycle. When you ride a bicycle, you are the engine of the beautiful machine. Since there’s 2 of us on the tandem, then it made sense to call us Double Banger.
Here’s a mock up of the Double Banger. Rather than grey, we’ve talked about getting it powder coated in hot pink!
