Help me rebuild my seat.

There haven’t been many seat threads lately, so I’m going to make a new one to liven up the board and get some new ideas out of everyone.
I have the following parts;
(1) CF base
(1) CF front bumper
(1) CF rear bumper
(1) CF reinforcement for front handle
(1) dog pillow w/ tube
(1) black Roach ballistic nylon cover
(1) Schwinn style seatpost

What size holes should I drill in the base?
What hardware do you reccomened to hold this in place?
What secrets do you have that should become mine?

If this thread is a bust. Then I’m throwing this damn seat away.

Lots of work, so read all the way through before starting.

Go buy carriage bolts to fill the holes in your harware (handles, rail adapter etc.) carriage bolts have round domeshaped heads with a square shoulder to keep them from spinning in a properly shaped hole.

drill holes to fit carriage bolts. use a small triangular or flat file to make the holes square, take your time so that the carriage bolts press in nicely with as little play as possible.

Play with different sized innertubes, i use one 16 inch in a single layer with no pillow. others have had better luck with other combos, so see what works for you. stretchy medical type tape will help hold your tube in place on the seat base and assist in shaping it to better fit your precious bits and peices.

don’t use alot of air, you can drill a hole in the seat base to accomodate you tubes valve to play with different amounts of pressure.

assembly:

1 put all carraige bolts in place. use tape or glue to keep them from falling out.

2 Set tube (with or without pillow) in place. use tape if you find it needed.

3 put cover over seat. cutting propper holes for handle bolts to pass through.

4 put your handles and your reinforcer plate on, tug on the cover to keep things tight and shaply.

5 attach assembeled seat to uni using adapter or whatever seatpost you have.

Step six- eight, this is important, so pay attention.

6 sit on uni and ride. get really pissed off that your ridiculously expensive seat feels like crap.

7 take the thing apart and put it back together thirty or forty times until it feels only slightly less comfortable than a thrity dollar velo seat.

8 smile and bask in your underdeveloped overpriced custom seat.

Disclaimer: step six is described as experienced by me. maybe i just suck, but it took me forever to get my custom seat to feel like anything i’d want to ride. it now sits on a shelf. I use my first seat, a KH all the time with no complaints.

but my carbon masterpeice is light and pretty, just like a paper wieght should be.

Adam,
Don’t goof up the base. Just place the schwinn post in the general location that your Miyata post was without overlapping the original holes in the base.
Scribe the hole locations with a pencil. Drill the holes to accept the 1/4 " carriage bolts that Semper-uni mentioned. The flat file part comes next. Carefully make the circle a square, one side at a time. Test the fit of the bolt as you do this so you don’t take off too much. When you’ve got all the holes prepped, just bolt on the post.
All the other holes are already in your carbon base. Put it back together. Put duct tape over the top of the base, covering all of the screw heads. Just get the pillow and cover close enough to be ridable. Next time I’m up that way I’ll set you up with the “Custom Job”.
Take a look at John Childs’ seat gallery.
If it all goes to hell, call John M. and ask him if he’ll loan you his KH saddle, it’s the same bolt pattern as the Schwinn post. His trials uni is out of commision at the moment.

  • Frank

I think I’m going to splurge on one of the Summits for now Frank until I can do another build up. This way I’ll have something to ride as far as 20" goes for trials, and the Schwinn to hold me over as a Cruiser until I can fully build another Agent Orange. I’m thinking I might talk you into rebuilding me a seat with one of those fancy UK covers if you’re up for it. I’m quite lacking in the drill department up here.