Hi all.  I recently bought a second hand tandem fitted with a Neodrive rear hub motor.  It also has Gates Carbon drive belts instead of chains.  It was originally built by Tandems by Design (TbD).  The belt drive to the rear wheel means that the frame has a horizontal dropout so that the wheel can be moved fore and aft to tension the belt.  The (huge!) rear disc brake calliper also has to move with the wheel so that the calliper stays correctly positioned over the disc.  To do this, TbD made up a calliper mount which also serves as the torque reaction point for the Neodrive and which slides back and forth in the dropout.  The wheel is fixed in this calliper mount.  It all works, but it means that all the torque from the Neodrive and, probably more importantly, the rear disc brake, goes thought the very short moment arm in the sliding dropout.  When I first serviced the bike, I noticed that one of the dropouts had spread quite a bit, making it impossible to properly tighten the calliper mount.  I've pressed the dropout back to approximately the correct shape but to stop it happening again, I'm thinking of making some sort of brace to go between the calliper mount and the seat stay.  I'd be really grateful if anyone with either a belt drive tandem, or a Neodrive, or both, could either post on here or email me, a photo of the arrangement on their bike.

Thanks!

John Hutchinson