Welcome to the New Machine

Our new machine arrived safely in a well-packed box Monday afternoon. Our Fandango Tandem 29er, that is. We hauled it to the basement, unpacked and assembled it, and immediately put in an order for some new brake pads, a brake bleeding kit, and some new tires. It was a used bike, after all.

I had to go to Buffalo for a few days, but I came home Thursday and the box of parts arrived the same afternoon. We installed the new brake pads and bled the brakes up front, replacing the front tire while I had the wheel off. This evening I repeated the process in the rear. The brakes feel great now, and so far I like the new Geax Gato tires.

Quinn & I got it out for ride (and a few photos) this evening. We just buzzed around the neighborhood for 10 or 15 minutes; it'll take a few rides like that to get those new pads burned in. The fit seems good for both of us. The drop and reach feel very comfortable to me. The Middleburn cranks are 175mm up front and 160mm in the rear. Perfect for me and reasonable for Quinn. 160mm is a little larger than Q uses on his single bikes, but smaller than is often put in the stoker compartment. He shoudn't need his crank shorteners, although I see in the photos below that his saddle could come up a bit. Once he gets to the point of having 90mm of seat post showing, we can get him Thudbuster suspension seatpost to protect his spine from the shock of getting slammed onto his seat when we bounce over big logs and take big jumps and drops...

The Fandango seems to be solid, mechanically, but we'll have a little more adjusting to do yet. I'll have to spend some time getting the shifters adjusted, and then it'll take more time yet for me to adjust to using grip shifters. And we'll need to get that suspension fork dialed in - it's a little firm right now. That should be about it. I think I'll get some sort of a rear fender so that if Quinn should slip off the back of his saddle those Gato 29ers won't widen his crack!