Finding hubs that fit may be a bit of pain depending on what the OLD is. You may be able to stuff some fatter rubber into the cannondale though as I think they have pretty decent clearance.
If it were me i’d definitely go for the Cannondale over the Santana.
Guess the hub availability isn’t so much of a problem afterall. We dithered on two tandems (Burley something or other and then a Raleigh pursuit) before we bought a new Comotion Mocha earlier this year. Our Raleigh had similar component spec to that Cannondale and it was great for a few years and a few thousand miles.
Welp. 2nd time roasting the freehub on our Velocity hub… This time we had to take sag for the final 50mi of bragbrai.
Any recommendations for tandem disc hubs with super burly ratchet mechanisms, in a 40 or 48 spokeway? I am considering Phil and WI but curious if there are others I should think about.
For context, we do a fair bit of gravel/singletrack lightly loaded bikepacking, in addition to our normal road/path biking. And we’re running 26x2.4" slicks with a 3x8 transmission
absolutely do not Phil Wood under any circumstances, literally double the weight of WI and half as reliable as the cheapest name-ish brand chinese stuff
White Industries is quite good, and the right answer if fancy aesthetics matter
DT with the original big-tooth 18t star ratchet is the most bombproof, and maintainable through all past/present/future standards
the Velocity Cliffhanger rim is about the best you can do for high spoke count rims
Thank you for the additional insight. Our old Santana tandem had freewheel Phil hubs, but that is not what we’re dealing with anymore. (And we went through several freewheels on that hub too)
Our Ventana tandem has WI hubs already, laced to Sun BFD rims, so I reckon those are good for life.
I’ll be looking into the DT 540 and cliffhangers for this next build on the cannondale, thanks all!