Well, I ride a 24" Nimbus Muni and somtimes go off rather high drops. I have somtimes, in the past, bent the front of top metal plate on the seatpost. I have fixed it with a hammer twice before.
However, I have never bent any cranks. The stock cranks that came on my Nimbus are still straight.
Any way, I was riding on a nice trail, having a lot of fun, when I decided to try to hop over a small stump for fun. I lift up on my lift handle and…
On the plus side, this is how you start collecting spare seat parts.
Now you’ve got a spare handle, spare rear bumper, some KH seat foam, miscellaneous hardware, and possibly some other useful bits. I’ve got a box full of spare seat parts from my old Miyata seats, old Schwinn seats, dismantled Viscount seats, and others.
Every KH seat I have ever seen the innards of (5?) has had a split metal plate. That obivously weakens the seat greatly. I guess you could maybe put in one of the reiforcing plates. I think they are designed for miyatas but the may fit. This would add wieght but stiffen and strengthen your seat. Or you could just buy a CF base. Thats prolly what you should do since you have the rest of the parts. It would only be around $20 more than a new KH.
One solution is to have a gusset welded on to the seatpost that supports the front of the seat so the seat doesn’t flex when you pull up or push down on the handle.
I’ll attach a photo of the design made by (or for) John Foss. The photo was stolen from this thread. Note that the three bolts for the handle go through the front plate of the gusset. The design would be slightly different for a KH seat because the KH seat uses four bolts to hold the handle on.
The gusset solution would be good if you know of someone who can do the welding and fabricating. If you have to go to a commercial welding shop it could end up being a bit expensive.
The other solution is to get the carbon fiber seat base for the KH seat. You’ve got the hardware and the foam from the old seat. You may even be able to reuse the seat cover. It will take some hand-work and some fiddling to get the holes drilled in the CF base and seat cover glued back on and everything back in proper order.
Wow! That is a really strong - looking solution to the bending-seatpost-top problem! I want one, too!
So, okay, you couldn’t adjust the seat angle once you had one of those, but it seems like some of us who are hard on seats could really use a gusset like that.
I’m not ready to buy a welder and go into business, so I want to know – how does a brilliant idea for a new unicycle solution get turned into something someone could buy? Or is anyone making gusseted seat posts already?
It makes me think that there ought to be a pretty easy way to put a handle on there at the same time. Or would there be no point?
(to mister cookie face) Well, what I banged on with the hammer was the front of the top plate on the seat post. I did this because it was bent down and I thought it was probably pulling to hard on the screws.
(to john childs) That pic looks like just what I need. To bad it only fits a myata (sp?) I forgot!
I didn’t know that you could get a CF base for a KH seat. that would help a lot I bet.
That design was custom fabricated for the Miyata seat. You can’t go out and just order a seatpost like that with a gusset. You’ve got to have it custom made. Since it’s a custom made item it can certainly be made to fit a KH seat.
There are two versions of the carbon fiber seat base. One version to fit the Miyata style saddles and one version to fit the KH style saddles.
Unicycle.com USA only has the Miyata version listed in their online catalog. They don’t have the KH version listed. They may or may not have the KH version here in the USA. Just because it’s not listed in the online catalog doesn’t mean that they don’t have it. Sometimes you have to call (or email) and ask if they’ve got something.
You need to consider another aspect before you build an unbreakable seat.
They break for two reasons; one the manufacturer builds in deliberate weaknesses so that it does not last forever and you have to buy another (cynical but true). The other reason, if the seat does not break you would possibly sustain an injury; the breaking of the seat reduces this possibility.
On Thu, 9 Sep 2004 15:48:49 -0500, “rogeratunicycledotcom” wrote:
>Yoggi… Question, are you Yoggi from France? If not could you and he
>sort out your names, it is confusing. :-S
They spell it differently (last letter is i or y), so we just have to
look carefully. I don’t think the forum software allows the exact same
forum username to be used by two different posters. Usenet would not
mind though.
Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
“The more you think, the less you have to do. - Leo Vandewoestijne”
There is no such thing as an unbreakable seat, they can all break. Just it takes more force to break them.
I do agree, the failing of parts does save injury quite often in my opinion as well.
On the design and manufacture of the saddles. They are made to a cost, that is one of the main reasons that they are not as strong as we would like. Also when the KH seat base was initially designed over 20 years ago it was conceived as a seat for a childrens toy. What Kris has done is develope it from that to be a very good Muni saddle by adding abundant decent foam and a handle on the front. He has also included stronger and stronger reinforcing to try and combat the breakages. It is now the heaviest saddle that we sell! If you want strong, unfortunately is takes good design and good materials, and lots of it… and all that costs.
