Another broken KH seat... but..

Unicycles and Equipment
1

Today I broke my KH seat post in half, right where the tube narrows and is welded. Luckily I was just riding on flat ground, but I was still almost impaled :astonished:

I’ve been suspecting that I broke the stiffener plate in the saddle, so I opened the seat up tonight, and sure enough, cracked it in half in the usual place.

Through searches and all I’ve decided to buy a Thomson rail seat post and KH rail adapter…

…but…

if I buy that, I certainly don’t have enough money for a new seat. I’d love to get a carbon fiber seat base, but they’re expensive. I’ve searched all over, but havn’t found any threads about repairing/replacing that metal plate. I’d rather not replace it, just to break it again… is welding it practical? Does anyone make a GOOD replacement for it?

Or should I just suck it up and go for the carbon fiber?

Pissed about breaking a top of the line unicycle, Dave

2

i don’t know if they’re available yet, but i have a prototype/first run of a gb4 stiffener plate for the new kh saddles. made the seat about 5x as stiff. when i did the swap i tried to bend the KH and it bent semi easily with my bare hands. the GB4 was definitely not going anywhere without a clamp and a hammer. email george. maybe he’s shipping those now/has some in stock.

3

i just threw out the broken stiffener plates and didn’t worry about it, seeing as it was broken already (and looked like it had been for some time) I never noticed a difference. (it was always flexy)

it ‘will do’ in this mode until your CF replacement

4

I made some 1/8" thick reinforcement plates a while back. They worked great, but they weighed a lot.

5

How did you go about making one? I have access to a machine shop, and could give it a shot. Did you take any pictures/write instructions?

Dave

6

I just flattened the existing reinforcement plate so I could get a templet. After that I cut the templet out of 1/8" steel. Then I bent the metal using a burning torch and hammer to the curves and and bends of the original reinforcement plate. Finally I drilled holes for the bolts, put the bolts in, and welded them to the plate to prevent them from spinning. I only took a picture of the finished product.

That is a comparison shot.

7

I just took one of my KH seats apart to replace a broken mounting bolt and found the metal plate broken in this same place.

My thought was to weld a spine along the center, made out of 1/4 or maybee 5/16 steel rod. this would add some extra strength with out all the weight of making the whole brace out of boiler plate.

When I get around to this project i’ll take pics.

8

Al - I like that idea better than a big heavey plate… let us know how it works out.

Does anyone know if there is a warranty on my '04 KH Trials, purchased from UDC. I looked all over Kris’s site and UDC and couldn’t find anything. Anyone know anything about this?

Dave