Just bought a second hand DM twin chain Giraffe ex Ebay for my son Zyllan’s
birthday. Very pleased with it, as its condition is really excellent. Well
worth the money paid. However it does have the standard straight DM seat,
with which I suspect he is not going to be completely happy.
The giraffe tubing is larger in diameter than most and so needs a different
seatpost (or conversion in conjunction with a standard seatpost) .
Might I ask what others have done to change/improve the seating
arrangements on the DM uni? Indeed should I instead retain the existing
seat?
Pros/cons/ costs? General advice anyone?
Giraffe seatposts need to take a lot force. When I built mine I didn’t realise this and used similar tubing to a standard uni. It bent within a week. I replaced it with bigger bore tubing and it is now fine. The DM uni is very, very tough (and heavy) so it best to use a DM seat post too.
When you say a straight seat do you mean the old T-bar style? Those are pretty horrid. DM is pretty good at providing spare parts. The prices are usually good too. In fact Dave usually has a load of parts going very cheap for some reason or other. I have had several sets of cranks (painted a dodgy colour) and a few mis moulded seats from him for not much money.
On my DM Ringmaster Advanced I replaced the DM seatpost with a pashley seatpost which is the same width as the seatposts he uses (25.4mm/1 Inch I think). I’ve got a viscount on this, a KH would also fit. The seatpost on a giraffe may be longer than the pashley seatposts Roger sells though and I don’t know if he uses the same width posts on the giraffes. Actually looking at his website, it seems he does.
The problem with DM seatposts is that they have a funny 3 bolt seat attachment, which means you can only fit the rubbish DM seat on it. If it is one of the really old DM seats, you can probably upgrade to a new DM seat, which is a bit better, but weighs a ton, falls apart really easily and isn’t very well made and is of similar comfort level to a viscount at best. If you can in any way avoid using a DM seatpost then do.
> Might I ask what others have done to change/improve the seating
> arrangements on the DM uni? Indeed should I instead retain the existing
> seat?
> Pros/cons/ costs? General advice anyone?
So, I guess by now you’ve already figured you can get a DM Contour
seat for the giraffe. The problem I find with the contour (mine came
with it on) is that mounting is made rather difficult due to the size
of the rear part of the seat. The T-bar seat that’s on will make mounting
an absolute doddle.
Maybe work out if Zyllan is going to be mainly showing off by mounting it,
or by riding it around?