brilliantly simple tandem bike

Step 5 Finishing touches

hopefully, like I suggested, you used a rear bike with at least a double crankset. that's vital.

let's get the chain on now. or two. or three actually.

yeah, you'll need three chains for this bike as well as a breaker. first off, fuse two chains together, and add or take out as many links as you'll need to get the chain to stretch from one set of cranks to the other. and make sure your pedals are set to where you want them just as well. you can do this using a chain breaker, which are about three bucks at your local walmart.

naturally, the holes in the second bike's headtube are going to stretch, and considering that, so is your chain on those nasty turns. a simple solution is taking an old deraileur and fastening it to the dropouts of the first bike, but only using the bottom pulley. this will tension the chain from the bottom up, as you see, and prevent it from falling off.

once you've routed your chain through the deraileur, connect the chain.

so that's one down. oh yeah, and you're going to want to fasten it to the top gear of the rear cranks.

the middle ring (I drilled out the little one because I'm anal), will work great for the drive ring, as you will, and operates on the same principle as a regular bike's drivetrain would.

just so the chain doesn't fall off, I took an old front deraileur and bolted it on as another safety precaution.