No, not unusual at all...As Harvey wrote, oval boob tubes were very much the norm with better tandems in the early 1970s and on.
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-----Original Message----- From: Harvey Sachs <hmsachs@verizon.net> To: bob@sutterfields.us; classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Sent: Wed, 1 Oct 2008 10:27 pm Subject: [CR]Re: Melton tandem
Bob Sutterfield wrote:? ?
I forgot to mention: The boom tube is oval. I wonder if that's?
unusual, a narrow overlap in time with the Marathon lateral. Lots of?
bikes with Marathon laterals had twin boom tubes of regular-profile?
tubing, and ovaled tubing came later.? ?
I'm preparing a photo gallery of its interesting details. Meanwhile?
it's in action at?
http://picasaweb.google.com/
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Bob -?
It's not terribly important, but I've rarely seen on-topic tandems with twin boom tubes. In my experience, by far the more common was a single oversized tube, which I assumed was either plain-gauge 4130, or salvaged from a kid's swing set. :-). Oval boom tubes were available in the "proprietary" Taylor 531 tandem set, and Phil (Wood) made an ovalized tube for a number of years, too. The dual tubes would have been very labor-intensive.? ?
Indeed, Santana gave up the laterals when they realized that a single large diagonal avoided something like 9 fillet-brazed joints that required finishing, and resulted in a stronger frame. I don't remember the details, but it was stimulated by buying the tubing stock of another tandem maker who had gone out of business, if I recall correctly.? ?
What do you call a tandem with twin laterals? "al dente"? ?
harvey sachs?
mcLean va.?
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