Tonight I managed to bend my old skool Japanese Miyata seat in the middle. I rolled up to a set of four stairs, intending to jump down them all in one leap, misjudged my take-off point and UPD’ed. I think I missed the take-off because it was quite dark.
After this crash I noticed my seat was flattened out at the front. I bent it back to a rideable shape and wondered how the old Miyata saddles, made in Japan, got such a great reputation. This saddle was only 2 months old and had been ridden less than 10 times. Whereas my other new style Miyata saddle has taken much more abuse and has lasted 8 months so far. I guess any non-carbon fibre reinforced saddle will bend if you apply enough force, but I’m disappointed how easy it was to bend.
Has anybody else bent their Miyata seat like this? What caused it? I’m guessing I musta put a lot of weight on the handle, bending the seat frame down.
One of mine ended up the same way; I missed a suicide mount and landed on the front of the seat. It bent the seat sharply downwards at the front and even mangled the seat post.
Ouch… luckily it was two days before I got my Velo…
the old school Miyata seat got its good rep cause the handle was stronger plastic and it was easily converted to air.the base plate was always a flexy thing waiting to break if you did hardcore crap to it. the new baseplates will also bend if you slam down hard enough on them.
I’ve done the same thing to several Miyata seats. The life span of a Miyata seat base on my muni was beginning to be measured in months or weeks. And I’m not that aggressive or destructive in my riding style. Eventually all the pulling up on the seat for climbing and the occasional sitting on the front of the seat due to a bad landing will cause a Miyata seat to get what I called the droopy nose syndrome.
The solution is to reinforce the seat base with a stiffener. I tried a couple of home brew stiffeners that were not effective. This was before the GB metal stiffener was available. I was too lazy to get a proper custom metal stiffener custom made. After destroying several seats I decided to go with the carbon fiber base (thank you Roger).
Put a metal stiffener like the GB4 stiffener in the seat or get a CF base. If you have a metal stiffener custom made get it sized so it also stiffens the back of the saddle also. I’ve cracked a Miyata seat base in the back where I sit on it so it is not just the nose of the saddle that needs reinforcement.
I should add that all of my Miyata seats that I damaged were of the “old” made in Japan version. I have not used or owned any of the new made in China Miyata saddles.
I’ve switched to a KH Velo seat which is nice for trials riding. However, this is only a temporary measure as the KH seat belongs to my Coker. The long term fix to the Miyata’s ‘droopy nose syndrome’ is to install my carbon fibre seat base in it… time to sharpen my drill-bit!
The bend probably occurred in the metal part. The older Miyata seats (10+ years) used to gradually go flat after lots of pulling and pushing up & down, but a sudden flattening comes from a blunt trauma incident.
“Blunt trauma my a**!” you say? Well basically, yeah.
This type of bend can also happen with a falling unicycle landing on the front part of the seat, such as in careening down the side of a hill off a trail.
This type of bend (from a hard landing) can happen to prety much any seat, including the old steel Schwinn/Semcycle ones, Viscounts, and other “quality” unicycle seats. I think it would be less likely on a Velo, because the post metal is extremely unlikely to bend, and the plastic is pretty tough.
