Actually they are a sandwich of carbon, glass and carbon. The glass is there because it is tougher than carbon (it does as you say keep the price down as well). The weaves are selected to give excellent stiffness and durability. This combination makes the bases a lot stronger than just a carbon base. The guy who makes them used to work in the research department of the composite devision of ICI. He really knows his stuff!
The ones sold by all the unicycle.com’s are made in the UK.
As for how many have broken. In the 7 years since the first one was produced I only know of 3 that have failed in any way… that is not a bad record. Carbon fibre has a life, this is normally put a year by most manufacturers. There are an awful lot out there that are a lot more than a year old! That they are lasting this long is testomony to their design and constuction in what is a hard enviroment.
Hey Roger, at Amy’s request, I sent her a pic of my broken magura hs-33 brake hose fitting. here’s the pic. It seems to have been a rare, unusual defect/breakage, and I’m hoping you can replace this for me. Or maybe all I need is a replacement fitting, but the broken part is sheard off where it goes into the hose.
I believe tha a small part of the hose, containing the rest of the broken fitting, can be snipped off, then a new 2-part fitting connected with a hose crimping pliers? Please advise, thanks! Here’s the pic. It is the cross-over hose only that’s damaged; the main hose from the brake lever down is fine.
Yeah, and cover, handle and bumper. You just ordered a seat base so you will get a solid seat base with no holes or anything. You need to drill the holes for the parts and put the whole thing together.
“Stiff Stick”? Is that what Evan was talking about when he said “reinforcment post”?
I personally don’t like that as a solution, but I guess its one way around the problem.
I will buy another CF base shortly, but still thinking about other options in the interim.
This thread has shifted topic, larl. Anyways, people who use “stiff stick” or similar, have you noticed stress being transferred from the seat to the frame?
This is obviously going to happen from this sort of reinforcment, although the effect could vary. When Cody snapped his torker cx frame for instance, that can hardly be blamed on the seatpost, because torker don’t have the best reputation as far as frame build quality goes.
My worry would be that doing this to a cheap seatpost to reinforce a cheap seatbase could, in the long run, destroy an expensive (in comparison) KH frame.
I won’t be doing this type of reinforcment any time soon, and regardless of whether I like the design or not, I would rather shell out $140NZ for a new CF base when I manage to break one than to pay $250NZ for a new frame.
It also seems that nobody has tried to mod a UDC classic saddle, to add a handle. Is the UDC classic saddle anywhere near as strong as the Viscount? It seems like a cheap way to get a strong saddle if it is.
