Customer Reviews

Mongoose Wanderer AL Tandem Bike (26-Inch Wheels)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

My wife wanted us to purchase a tandem bike. I ride quite a bit but my wife does not due to a balance problem. I was not crazy about this but I bought the Mongoose Wanderer. I have been plesantly surprised!

The bike was shipped and arrived in perfect condition, no damage and all pieces were received. I assembled in less than an hour but I have a fair amount of experience in working on bikes and I have a repair stand and a good supply of tools. Brakes required some adjustment as did the front and real derailleurs. Park Tools "Blue Book of Bicycle Repair" is very helpful with this.

The ride of a tandem is better than I expected. I've only ridden one tandem in the past and it was less than pleasant. We rode in a charity ride recently (appx 18 miles) and the bike worked perfectly! We got quite a few comments and most were very surprised at the low price paid for this bike.

The quality is very good for the money spent on the bike. Frame is excellent and total weight is not bad; appx 39 lbs. I did replace the knobby tires with higher-pressure smooth tires. (Much better ride.)Got a different seat for the wife. Seats seem to be more of unisex seats, which is understandable, mine was fine.

There are a few other changes I plan to make but nothing big. All in all, I'm very happy with purchase. And most important, my wife really enjoyed the ride!

The Mongoose Wanderer AL tandem has a good oversized aluminum frame. The same frame is sold in steel under the "Pacific" brand name. Assuming that the frame fits you and your partner, I doubt you'll find a better frame even if you pay far more. The frame is light and feels solid.

The steel fork and components are inexpensive but serviceable.

You'll have to take the bike to a bike shop to assemble, unless you're an experienced mechanic. Every bearing needed to be adjusted, and both wheels needed to be tensioned and trued. This is the way all bikes come from the factory.

The weight out of the box is 41 pounds. By replacing some of the steel parts with aluminum we easily lowered to weight to 37 pounds. You could lower the weight further without great expense.

The annoying thing is that the Mongoose choose parts that save a dollar, but cost a fortune to replace.

- The most important part to replace are the tires. We put on 1.4" Tom Slicks and it felt like a different bike.

- The seats and pedals are cheap plastic. No big deal, I always replace the seat and pedals when I buy a bike.

- The bike has a threaded headset. A threadless headset would have cost the manufacturer a dollar more, but for the consumer to upgrade to threadless (fork, headset, stem) costs about $200.

- It has a freewheel, not a cassette. This increases the stress on the rear axle, increasing the possibility of breaking. And it has a "Mega Range" 7-speed freewheel, which is a 14-24 6-speed plus a 32-tooth cog. 14-32 is a good range, and 7 gears are adequate, but the shift from 24 to 32 teeth causes the pedals to increase in speed suddenly and the stoker loses her feet off the pedals. Replacing a cassette is easy but replacing a freewheel is harder. First I found a 14-28 7-speed freewheel on an old bike. Then I found a deal on rear wheel with a 7-speed cassette. Then I upgraded the rear wheel to a 9-speed cassette with 40 spokes, which was expensive but is a real tandem wheel.

- Both wheels have 36 spokes. 40- or 48-spoke wheels would have cost just a few dollars more, but for you to upgrade the wheels can cost hundreds of dollars.

- The spokes were undertensioned, which will increase spoke breakage, so you need to have a skilled mechanic spend some time tensioning the wheels. This isn't simple, you have to true, tension, and re-true the wheel; go for a ride; true, tension and re-true again, etc. After doing this four times the wheels stayed in true.

- The bike only has mounts for rim brakes. Disk brake mounts would have cost another dollar, I guess. The ProMax brakes work acceptably, but if you want to upgrade to better brakes (I put on Avis Single Digit 7's) you'll need brake boosters. Without brake boosters you get squealing and shuddering, because the fork and frame aren't as strong as the brakes.

- Both seat tubes are standard 27.2mm, but the captain has a 25.4 seat post with a shim, to fit a 25.4 stoker steam. These non-standard sizes increase your cost to upgrade.

- The handlebars, stems, and seat posts are steel. They're functional but heavy, using aluminum would have cost only a little more.

- The SRAM 7-speed derailleurs and shifters work perfectly well.

- The cranksets are functional, no-name-brand, square taper, and work perfectly well.

I wish that there were a more expensive model with this frame and a threadless headset; 8- or 9-speed cassette; 48-spoke wheels; and standard-sized aluminum handlebars, stems, and seatposts.

All in all, this is a good bike if you just want to do easy rides in the park with your sweetheart, or if you are a serious cyclist with the skills and time to upgrade parts. If you want a quality tandem but don't have skills or time to work on the bike, go to a good bike shop and get a Burley or Santana.

The frame measurements are:

- Captain's seat tube 18.75", top tube 21"
- Stoker's seat tube 17", top tube 24.5"
- Wheelbase 68"
- BB height 11"

I looked at tandems all over the price range, including used ones costing much more than this new one, before deciding on this. It's perfect for our needs as new tandem riders. Yes, its a lower end bike. But it is a fraction of the cost of a higher end bike, and even a fraction of the used ones we looked at. A new Kia is a better car for most people than a 15 year old Mercedes - and this bike is better for most people than an older higher end tandem.

Many of the reviews I read on this bike said it was hard to assemble. I didn't think so. With some metric allen wrenches and a pump, it was ready to ride in about an hour. Most of the time spent was removing protective packaging and making minor adjustments to get the seating position right and brakes adjusted. Simple stuff that most anyone can do.

I didn't find a lot of info on sizing, so here is some. I'm 6'0''. The captains perch fits me OK, but it's a little on the small side. The seat is about as high as it goes in the adjustment range and the bars are three inches or so lower than the seat. That's fine for me since I'm a road rider, but many people may want to swap out taller bars or stem. My wife is 5'4". The stoker perch fits her perfectly. The seat is about in the middle of the adjustment range and the bars are comfortable for her.

Like most people, I'm making some changes to make the bike fit best for us. I've already replaced the stoker seat with a gel padded one so she's comfortable. I'm replacing tires with a smoother tread pattern to make it roll easier and with less vibration. And I expect to upgrade other things like pedals over time, but it works fine as is. The SRAM shifting works perfect, and the brakes are much better than I expected considering they are slowing a heavy bike with two people aboard.

All in all, I couldn't be happier with this purchase. The fun per dollar quotient is outstanding, and it allows us to get out and ride together with each of us working as hard as we choose, and it allows for easy conversations as we ride.

One tip - I did some reading first on tandem etiquette. The best articles I found came from Santana - the bike I'll upgrade to if we decide we want a higher end bike. The Golden Rule is "the stoker makes no mistakes". With that in mind, my wife is confident that she can do no wrong on the bike, and I'm reminded that everything that happens on the bike is my responsibility. I like it, because it definitively answers any questions, and minimizes the chance of quarrels.

My wife and I thought this bike was inexpensive enough to give it a try. We have enjoyed riding it and have got our money's worth and more. I suspect we will upgrade to a nicer bike... one that costs more than we would have been willing to take a chance on before knowing if we really wanted to ride one. We tried renting one first, but couldn't find anything suitable. So, this tandem has been a big success.

The good:
For the most part the components are of decent quality. It took some fussing and tweaking, but now rides without too much noise or hiccups. It is light enough to lug around. In a nutshell, the bike actually works OK and I have some reasonable confidence that it isn't going to spontaneously self-destruct. The brakes even work. The pedal threads are standard so you can put your favorite pedals on. My wife hadn't ridden bikes for decades and I race; this bike lets us ride together and each get some satisfactory exercise. It's a lot of fun!

The bad:
This isn't an off-road bike, but comes with knobby tires. That seems to be typical for cheap bikes. So budget for getting some sensible tires. Budget too for new inner tubes. One blew out the first time I pumped it up. We got two new ones. The wheels are crappy. Budget to get them trued, especially if you plan on getting the brakes adjusted nicely. Basically, plan on spending time and/or money getting it set up and tuned. Assembly is easy, but adjusting cheap parts takes some skill and patience. If you don't have that, plan a trip to your LBS. Also, the screws for adjusting the front bottom bracket are poorly designed. Getting them tight enough without stripping the holes is a PITA. It also has more gearing than it needs, which seems to be par for cheap bikes. Twenty one gears on a cruiser... why not just 3 or 5 sturdy ones?

The subjective:
This style of "comfort" bike is not very comfortable IMHO. After riding an hour I long for a touring frame and drop bars. Next purchase: bar-ends for me. I'd prefer touring wheels to 26" wheels, but this bike is easy to get on and off, and get started. We had to get a different seat for my wife; it was too hard and didn't fit. For me, the seat is actually OK for a cheap sofa-seat. You could probably pay more for a seat somewhere than this whole bike cost. My wife says it is pretty.

The bottom line:
Buy it if you want to try out riding a tandem and have some cheap fun. Don't buy it to ride across the country or to hammer up the Alpe d'Huez. Anticipate some non-trivial tune-up work. Consider my spending so much time to review this bike as a moderately enthusiastic endorsement. I would have given it 5 stars if the wheels weren't so bad.
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Later, after 800 miles:
It takes a lot of effort to keep this bike running, but it still works. We found we like tandeming so much that we're currently looking to get a better (and much more expensive) tandem. As I feared, one of the eccentric screws did strip. Luckily I was able tap a bigger hole. The cheap ring on the timing chain has come loose. I had to re-pack the wheels and cranks; they were all crazy loose or crazy tight. We had to replace the freewheel.

Another important thing to consider... this bike is really really small, especially for the stoker. Good for a kid, but even with the bars all the way up (with added climbing bars) and the seat all the way back, it is still too cramped for an average sized adult.

Since it still actually works and we use it, I have to say it is a success. But you better be willing to give it a lot of attention. I'm really looking forward to getting the new tandem!

If you're an avid cyclist, you already know that you can NOT purchase a high quality bike (let alone a tandem) for this price. However, if you looking for a relatively low priced introduction to tandem biking, this item is a pretty good place to start.

One tip: Be sure to have a metric Allen wrench set on hand when the bike arrives, or it's a trip to the hardware store.

The Wanderer AL is a $300 frame with the added bonus of having a bicycle built onto it. Most owners will get the most of this bike by upgrading the rear wheel, rear brake, rear stem, both tires, and both seatposts. These upgrades will allow most riders to have a thoroughly enjoyable bike for around $200 over the initial cost.

Rear Wheel Upgrade: The rear wheel is approximately 1/8" off-center from the frame and is instead centered on the hub flanges for improved strength, causing the bike to "dog tack". It's MTB-standard 135mm wide and can easily be upgraded to a stronger MTB part. A tandem wheel (145mm-wide) would fit by spreading the frame, but I don't recommend spreading aluminum frames.

Rear Brake Upgrade: Because of frame and cable flex, the rear brake is not firm. Upgrading ours with a "Curve" brake booster (a horseshoe-shaped brace) made it half-firm, and replacing the brake itself with old Shimano LX parts completed the fix. The front brake is fine since it's mounted to stiffer metal and uses a shorter cable.

Rear Stem Upgrade: The rear (stoker) stem is too short and forces the rear riders face into the captain's back. It also has a 25.4mm (1-inch) clamp diameter on both ends, forcing Mongoose to use an undersized seatpost in front. We upgraded ours to a longer 1 1/8" threadless stem normally designed to be used with forks, and added a 27.2mm to 28.6mm shim at the stem itself to alloy a larger seatpost to be used.

Seat Post Upgrade: The Wanderer AL frame is designed for 27.2mm seat posts on both positions, but uses a smaller post and shim in front to accomodate its small "stoker" stem. We replaced both posts with Kalloy "Zero Offset" 27.2mm (350mm long) parts available on Amazon.

Tire Upgrade: You'll probably want to replace these with something smoother: Amazon sells Kenda Kwest Tandem 26 x 1.50 tires that can take up to 100 PSI to handle the extra weight of two people. Stock tires should be inflated to maximum pressure (65 PSI).

Assembly Notes: Brake cables must be lubricated as these arrived "sticky" from the factory. Side screws on brakes allow adjustment. Bottom brackets and headset must be adjusted as these arrived over-tightened. Spokes of both wheels should be re-tensioned prior to use to reduce the risk of rim failure.

Service Notes: Failure to adjust headset may cause bike to be difficult to control. Failure to adjust bottom brackets will result in dramatically accelerated wear. Extra frame clearance allows the 68x124mm bottom bracket to be replaced with Shimano 68x122.5mm sealed cartridge bottom bracket. Expect to true the rear wheel at least twice as the spokes will stretch unevenly during your first ride. 5mm jamb bolts for front bottom bracket eccentric chain adjustment should be tightened to just below the point of stripping. Enough metal exists around jamb bolts for resizing to 6mm if necessary.

Stock Component List (FYI):
Frame: 7005 Aluminum with integrated rear derailleur hanger.
Forks: Extra-thick mild steel with 1 1/8" threaded steer tube and generic threaded headset.
Wheels: Generic extruded aluminum rims on 36-spoke Joytech hubs, SunRace MegaDrive freewheel.
Brakes: Promax alloy V-Brakes with adjustable levers.
Handlebars: Thin-wall steel, 25.4mm bar clamp.
Seatposts: 27.2mm rear post, 25.4mm front post with 27.2mm aluminum frame shim.
Stems: Steel quill front stem, steel "one-inch threadless" rear stem, aluminum caps on both.
Cranks: Cast aluminum arms, mild steel sprockets, 68x124mm square-taper bottom bracket.
Shifters/Derailleurs: SRAM 3.0 shifters, SR-Suntour Front/SRAM plastic rear derailleur.
Tires: Heavy-duty generic with short off-road knobs.

Looked at lot of $1500 plus tandem bikes before deciding to order the Mongoose. The basic bike platform is a good one. The wheels and gear train are sound. For the ~$350.00 price, there is a lot of accessory room to fill before one would jump up to the next price category. Recommendations: OEM tires and tubes are junk. First thing I did before letting the bike off of the assembly stand was to upgrade to thorn resistant tubes and "no-flat" strips. Put them inside of Contental Town and Country 26"x2.1 tires. Wife and I then rode up the driveway for a short ride and promply decided the handlebars were way too low. Unless one is about 5' tall or Quasimoto porportioned, way too much hunch back involved. Upgraded the front stem to an adjustable one, and the rear bars to 5" lift ones. Should be OK with the formentined modifications.

We bought the Wanderer because my significant other is more or less incapable of strenuous physical activity. With this bike, i can do all the work and at least she gets to ride along.
My initial impression of the bike is that it was fairly decent. However, likely due at least in part to my size (6'4", 280+ lbs), we ran into a few hiccups during our initial few rides.
The first thing notable that happened is that the captains seat (the front one) bent in the first 10 miles of riding (just regular bumps transitioning from roadway to sidewalk, no curbs, and cracks in pavement and sidewalk). This seems to be due to how the captains seat post is made. The inner diameter appears to be identical to the stoker's seat post, however the outer diameter is smaller, and a shim is used to fit it to the seat tube. This means that the captains seat post has a thinner wall (unfortunate as most literature suggests the stronger, and thus larger, of the two riders take the front seat). The solution for us was to get a seat post that fit the seat tube directly, and then use the shim from the old seat post to shim a new 1 1/8" thread-less stem to the larger seat post to mount the stoker (rear) handlebars to. The stock thread-less stem seems to be a special unit. It might be a 1" thread-less stem.
The next thing we changed about the bike was to replace the knobby mountain bike tires with some tires with a continuous center rib. This makes a world of difference in the rolling resistance of the bike.
The stock seats are little more than plastic seats with a thing cover of leather on them. They were replaced next with padded suspension seats as the bike itself has no suspension.
If you are tall like me, you will want to get a threaded stem raiser (an extension for the handlebars, basically). The bike is much more comfortable with an additional 4 inches of height on the handlebars.

The biggest tragedy of all happened with the eccentric bottom bracket. If there is any really substantial, hard-to-mitigate reason to not get this bike, this is it.
The eccentric bottom bracket is the area where the front pedals are mounted. In order to tighten the chain that links the front pedals to the rear pedals, there is a round, thread-less bracket in which an eccentric (or off center) adjuster is placed in. The pedal set is then threaded into the eccentric adjuster. By rotating the eccentric adjuster, you can increase or decrease the distance between the front and rear pedals. The eccentric adjuster is held in adjustment by 2 Phillips screws threaded into the bracket from below the bracket.
The first flaw is that mongoose chose a bottom bracket design from the early 1900s. It's basically a single solid piece that you rotate inside the frame. This necessitates that steel screws be threaded through the aluminum frame and tightened against the adjuster to forcibly hold it in place.
The second flaw is that there is no reinforcement in this area, and due to positioning, when the captain pedals, they are pushing all of their pedal force directly onto these 2 small screws that hold the eccentric in adjustment. For us, this meant repeated pedaling (approximately 90 miles of <5% grade cycling) caused one of the screws to completely strip the hole it was installed in. This resulted in the pedal set and eccentric adjuster quickly finding it's way outside the left side of the frame and rendering the bike irreparable (as the screw could no longer be tightened to hold the eccentric.)
The third flaw is the size of the bottom bracket the eccentric adjuster fits in. It's literally 1.5 mm smaller than any eccentric adjusters we were able to find are designed to fit. As a result, the bike was more or less irreparable by conventional means (parts replacement.)

The third flaw left what I saw as two options.
Option 1 was to use Heli-coil or a similar system. This seems more than a little unlikely the be successful to me. The amount of material available to work with is very small. The original screw probably holds with no more than 5-7 threads.
Option 2 is to increase the bore size of the bracket the eccentric fits into. This solution has obvious risks. Without a doubt this will completely void the warranty and as it slightly weakens the bracket, could result in catastrophic failure down the line (so far, with more than 100 more miles on the bike, everything is perfectly fine). Doing this allows "standard" eccentric adjusters to fit into the bike and allows the installation of much more prudent designs like the Bushnell Eccentric Bottom Bracket (approximately $125US) we installed on our bike.
For those undaunted by these problems and wishing to tackle them via option 2, I would recommend contacting a local machine shop. While this can be done yourself (which I will briefly explain) you will be more at ease with your bike in the hands of a competent machinist.
If you wish to do this yourself, I recommend the following procedure after some trial and error.
You will need:
-an electric drill (preferably corded as this can take nearly 4 hours)
-an engine cylinder hone (you can get these relatively cheap from autozone, with 3" stones)
-replacement "coarse" cylinder hone stones (the coarser they are the faster the job)
-a can of WD40 (to use as a cutting lubricant. Other light spray lubes should work as well)
Start by disassembling the eccentric bottom bracket and completely removing it from the frame.
Spray a short blast of WD40 at one spot on the inside of the bracket.
Squeeze the stones together and insert them into the bottom bracket.
Start the drill, slowly at first, and increasing in speed as the lube is distributed, and move the honing stones in and out of the bore while keeping the stones in the bore.
You will know it's time to add more lube when the honing stones become noisy. Ignoring this will result in rapid wear of the stones and will necessitate replacement.
The stones will need to be cleaned at least every 5 minutes at the top speed of an average drill due to aluminum dust clogging the stones. If you set the bike sideways, you will know it's time to clean the stones (by brushing them off with a plastic brush or wiping with a shop towel) because the amount of dust created will decrease dramatically.
This procedure results in a little more material being removed from the edges than the middle. To finish up, you can trim the stones by reducing their size to approximately 1.5". You can remove .75" from each end of each stone by setting a flat screwdriver against them and hitting the screwdriver, like a chisel, with a hammer. This will allow you to increase the diameter of the center of the bracket without affecting the edges more.
This procedure is tedious and a bit silly. It's unfortunate that mongoose did not make the bottom bracket slightly larger so it would fit "standard" parts. Once we performed this procedure and installed the Bushnell Eccentric bottom bracket, it's been a fantastic bike.

I needed to order this bike because I have an 8yr old son who has Autism and cannot ride alone because he tends to ride away & not come back. We took the bike to a bike shop to be put together to avoid any mistakes and it runs beautifully! My son got the hang of it quickly and it is a smooth ride. At first its a little awkward because you have to learn to balance with two people but once you get it its great!

The bike in the box arrived in rough shape with several tears and gouges taken from it. Still, when unpackaged, it was in surprisingly good condition. Assembly instructions are not all that great, but amyone with common sense can get through them. The chain tensioner is underneath the front pedal set and works on a cam and locknut - something not mentioned at all in the instructions. It is there where you can loosen the chain to match the pedal sets as the bike came with just a random placement. The handlebars are a bit too narrow for good turning stability, and I had to purchase aftermarket seats to be able to ride it further than around the block. Otherwise, it seems to be well built and has served me well for a couple of years now.