Help, I thought that instead of relying on the locktight to keep the seat from squeaking, I’d try putting some lock nuts on. Bad idea!
To be really cool, and cause I couldn’t find some nuts thin enough to put on the seat base side of the seat post, I put some washers there. I thought I’d see if this would help to stop the squeaking.
Well now I’m really in a jam.
I got two of the lock nuts off - I never could get any of them all the way on as the bolts just started spinning so badly. And now I can not get the last two off. It is just too narrow a spot to get a hold of the spinning bolt with needle nose pliers.
I would like to take the seat down to Home Depot to see if I could get thin enough nuts there to place on the seat base side like Sofa first suggested when he had this spinning bolt problem. (Sofa where did you find the nuts that worked to help deal with this problem?)
I don’t know about getting them off but I just did the same thing. Although I put some nuts under the seatpost. They’re not thin ones but I embedded them into the seat a little. I hope that I can get the locknuts off. In your case I’d try using a dremmel tool and cutting slots into the top of the bolt for a flat screwdriver. If you dont have access to a dremmel (or similar tool) try a hacksaw blade. That should work although you would have to use a small screwdriver. It may just be enough grab to get those pesky locknuts. I really dont think it would have mattered whether you used locktite or the locknuts, they would both have ended up with spinning bolts. Good luck with that while I go and make sure I can get mine off too.
Hey Erin, too bad about them bolts! I didn’t seek out any extra thing nuts, I just wrote that the thinner the better. The ones I used are typical thickness for nuts of that size.
I brought the velo to the store and just found nuts that fit them
So if I don’t have a dremmel tool or a hacksaw… and am not quite sure if I should buy these tools for this one job… humm, maybe, depends on the cost, I guess…
otherwise, do you think maybe I should hand over my evening’s unsucessful project to my LBS to have a go? (You wouldn’t believe how long I have spent this evening sitting on the kitchen floor trying to pinch that bolt in the needle nose pliers so that I can get the somewhat stubborn, and I dare say tighter than most, nuts off the bolt.)
Who would have thought this was an aspect of unicycling that just comes with the territory.? I love to ride but I don’t really enjoy trying my hand at these type of repair problems.
I think the creating a slot for the screwdriver is probably my only option but I’m not sure I am the gal for the job. (Then again, I do have two more Velo seats waiting in the rear… yikes, that is a sobering thought!) Bike shop… where else might I go for help with this?
A shop that specializes in fasteners will have jam nuts in various sizes. These types of shops generally cater to businesses but some do sell to the general public. You should be able to find them in the yellow pages under something like “Bolts & Nuts” “Fasteners” or “Hardware - retail”. Fastener shops are good for lots of unicycle related things like set screws for pedals, various fasteners for the seat, and various other parts.
Oh crap, you gotta mess! Take the seat, seatpost and all, to the LBS and pay the price, or take it to an OLD FASHIONED hardware store and ask the nice man behind the counter for a Dremell tool. If you are lucky he will try to sell you some other stuff as well. He will give you advice. Buy the stuff and take the advice. You are becoming a mechanic.
I had two friends in Lawrence, KS who started a quickly failed Volkswagen repair shop named, “We’ll Get Your Nuts Off.” If you bring the saddle with you when you come in June, the Seattle Unicycle Mechanics Squad will help you get your nuts off. We have everything imaginable to do it.
A hacksaw blade is mere pennies.(well maybe a dollar or so) But if someone has a hacksaw or dremmel thats the way to go
It doesnt even compromise the integrity of the bolt. Unless the person doing the work is really sloppy
good luck
I hope it’s easier than the dreaded Miyata Bumpers. I hacksawed a groove in those… because they’re at the front of the seat you can only use a couple of centimetres of the saw blade, so it took forever!
I really, really hope I never have to do anything like that again. I think I’d go and buy a dremel just for that, regardless of price…
The nuts are in the center of the seat so you should be able to use more than just a few centimeters of the blade so long as the seatpost doesnt get in the way. I think you should be okay with that though.
Very interesting problem. I have a miyata and I Have yet to encounter this problem. Is the nut open or is it an acorn? If it’s open, how much of the bolt is above the nut?
If there is enough space, would it be possible to screw two jam nuts onto the bolt (with a space between them and the locknut). Then grip the top one with pliers and turn the bottom one? I know that’s a bit hard to understand so I included a pic:
Well the saga continues… I did not have much luck at my LBS with the suggestions of using a dremel or hacksaw to cut a groove, etc… they just shook their heads… But as luck would have it I was directed to a small, tucked away, and very hard to find custom cycle shop called “Toby’s”. As it turned out this is where the KH custom Coker frames are made and where Kris had a lot of his uni and seat designs prototyped.
Toby and Robert who run the machine shop are great guys to talk to and it was a fortunate happenstance that I met them.
As for the seat, and these guys know Velo seat intimately, it was kind of wrecked thanks to the fact that I damaged the threads on the bolts badly. And did I ever have those lock nuts jammed on there too!
The seat will need to be dismantled and new bolts placed in the base - from the inside.
Kris e-mailed me, as a reply to my e-mail where I described my spinning bolt problem, and said the following:
“Do you know whether the seats with this problem have a metal plate?
I’ve hopefully addressed this problem in my recent feedback to Velo. The problem was that the
plastic mold was shaped to accept larger diameter bolts than the bolts that are currently used, so
they spin. The best solution may be to carefully take out the staples and peel back the
seatcover, and then cut the foam to expose the bolts on the inside, and then nest the bolts
properly with some silicon seal or goop. If you do this carefully it shouldn’t wreck the seat.”
So I thought that was useful info to share here as it might help some other Velo seat owners out there.
As for me, now I am in over my head, thos seat will have to be pulled apart, not something I am really excited about, but what can I do… I’ve come this far.
why not just send it back to where you got it from and get a new one. If you’ve been sold a defective product (and a seat which doesn’t stay on a seatpost is undoubtedly defective) then send it back and get another one. If everyone just hacks away at their seats and tries to make them work, then unicycle.com / bedford or whoever will just keep selling junk seats to us and we’ll never get a fixed seat. It’s all very well saying that these are early models, but we do pay good money for these seats and you’d expect them to have undergone some testing before being released.
