I’ve found a rail adaptor to be very helpful in improving riding comfort. For me the usual trick of tilting the front of the seat upwards has been helpful, but I’ve recently started looking at more fine adjustment.
Does the forwards-backwards position help for anything at all? And on a relatively flat seat (just got a Fusion Freeride) should I be tilting it less?
Any hints would be useful; I’m used to riding with a T7 handlebar, so I’m not used to having quite so much wait on the seat.
I find that tilted forwards as far as it will go is the best postion for me at the moment. (Although it felt like I was falling forward at first)
One of the things I really can’t figure out is whether I should slide it forwards on the rails (which I generally do), or backwards, or leave it in the middle. Trouble is I can’t make up my mind what difference it makes…
I’ve played with this a bit. I find that sliding the seat nearly all the way forward (with a slight upward tilt) gives me a little more support on my “sit” bones. FWIW, I also tend to slide my butt backwards when riding a bike, so I apparently don’t favor the skinny side of things when it comes to sitting and cycling. When I’ve slid the seat more toward the back of the uni, it’s put more pressure on my perineum, which is more painful. YMMV–I’d just mess around with it a bit and see what feels best. Oh, and I mostly muni–I don’t put in long hours on the road, and the muni I ride makes me stand up and adjust quite regularly–so an accomplished Cokeur would have more insights, I’m sure.
I don;t think the slide makes too much difference, when you ride your centre of gravity has to be above the tyre contact point (assuming steady riding) so sliding the seat forward say will just make you lean back slightly more. I guess you could use this effect to get a more extreme angle on the saddle. Personally I have the front of my saddle up quite high (N36" with nimbus gel and T7) so that the rear portion is pretty much flat, and the forward section slopes up, rather than there being a dip between the front and back of the saddle.
I found that my sit bones take more of the pressure with the seat way forward (I sit mostly on the back part, where it is wider). Forward from there, the pressure is all where my legs meet my body, between the legs. Gets painful quickly. I don’t have a rail adapter, but made sure that the front of my seat is tilted as far upwards as possible on the seatpost.
For years I’ve ridden with the front of the seat slightly higher than the rear. This wasn’t a problem until a couple years ago when I started riding more distance and was in the saddle for several hours at a time. For these longer rides seat discomfort seemed to always be my limiting factor. Recently I’ve Raised the front of my seats significantly so that, as others pointed out, most, if not all, of the pressure is off my perenium and on my butt bones. Now seat discomfort is no longer an issue. One of my uni’s is pictured below. You can see the seat adjustments. Notice how flat the back section of the seat is where most of my weight is supported. As for the position of the rail adapter, I adjust it so that my body is positioned directly over the center of the wheel.
I think it works best to have your weight as much directly over the seatpost as possible. To do that I have to push the seat as far forward as possible (so the seatpost clamps are at the back of the rail adapter).
When I drill a CF seat base that will be used for muni or Coker I put the holes about 1cm back from where they are on a stock seat.
I don’t know if it actually makes any difference. It just seems, in a logical sense, that you should have your weight as much over the seatpost as possible. When you angle the seat up you sit farther back on the seat so the seatpost should be positioned farther back. But in the end it might not really matter. In the end your weight is going to be centered over the hub no matter how the frame and seat and seatpost are positioned or angled. Take a look at the Telford unicycle and you’ll see that angle and such of the seatpost doesn’t affect rideability of the unicycle. The Telford rode and felt like a normal unicycle even though the frame did a zig-zag.
I’m with you on this - moving the seat forward does seem sensible. In fact, I think kington99/Dave is right: it’ll change the angle that you sit on the seat so moving it forward ought to put more weight back onto the sit bones. I’ll give it a try…
With my Nimbus Gel saddle I was very happy with the seat tilted all the way up it could go… The KH Freeride has a flatter profile, so I’m not sure that much tilt is necessary… But I’ll stick it all the way forward anyhow - it just makes sense for putting more weight onto the sit bones.
I wonder if when using a handlebar unit it might be beneficial (in terms of contact angle with the saddle / weight distribution) to move the seat back a little on the rails to compensate for the centre of gravity being further forwards…
Would be real nice to fit some pressure sensors on the saddle to get a better measurement of what difference these settings actually make whilst riding!
I don’t get the having the front angled upwards is putting more pressure on your sit bones. What happens when you lean forwards to go faster, don’t you just squash cruicial bits?
I think that to go faster you have to actually rotate the frame forward relative to the ground, to increase the moment of your body mass about the axle to equal the now increased moment caused by your feet on the pedals. This pushes the front of the seat down so you’re actually sitting more on the back.
It all does seem counterintuitive. One would think that raising the front of the saddle up so far like that would squash crucial bits (especially for males), but that is not the case for the normal upright riding position.
Most riding by most people is done in an upright sitting position. Even when you are leaning forward to accelerate you are not leaning forward that much. However, if you are someone who likes to ride in a lower tucked position instead of upright then you might find the front of the angled upwards saddle more constricting. But most people don’t ride in a tucked position. GizmoDuck and some other riders like a tucked position, but most other riders are pretty much sitting upright. The people who like a tucked position also like flatter seats.
I angle the seat up for Coker and muni riding. But at the same time I have found that cutting a wedge from the nose of the saddle makes it more comfortable for me. See my airseat gallery for examples of my seat mods. My seat mods involve cutting a wedge from the nose of the saddle to make more room up front. But the front of the saddle is still obviously angled up.
So my position is mixed. I angle the seat up but cut a wedge from the nose to make more room.
Now I’m using the flatter foam from a KH Fusion Freeride for my Coker. No mods to the foam. The stock shape is good for me.
If you slide the seat forward relative to the seat post, it effectively tilts the nose of the seat upwards. This is because the whole frame and seat assembly will tilt backwards to keep the centre of gravity above the wheel. In effect this is the same as tilting the seat with the rail adapter, assuming you haven’t reached the end of it’s range. But more significantly, the frame moves backwards while riding. That’s what I’ve done to prevent my knee guards (mostly the right one, actually) from hitting the frame, which otherwise sometimes occurs. This is on a 36" Nimbus.
Klaas Bil