First off, there really needs to be a maintenance/repair section of this forum.
Okay, now to my issue.
My muni seat has been sliding slightly left and right, when i pull on the front handle, particularly during seat-in jumping. I’ve tightened the bolts for the handle and seatpost until the acorn nuts have almost lost their tops.
I finally realized that it isn’t the nuts that are loose. It appears that the holes for the bolts in the seat base have widened.
I have a KH Fusion saddle from the 1st year they started the tie-down seat cover (with shoelace). I haven’t inspected any newer saddles, so i don’t know if they’re the same. It has a plastic Velo seat base with holes formed for carriage bolts, i assume.
Just wanted to know if anyone else has had this problem, and if so, did you manage to fix it? (I’m not interested in ordering a new seat from overseas when this is a problem of milimeters).
I’m hoping something as simple as shoving a piece of cardboard in there will fix it, at least temporarily.
hey- are you sure that the problem is with the holes for the nuts? What seat post are you using? If it is a KH adjustable one then where the post attaches to the silver rail grabbing part of it can start to move. To test if this is the problem hold the unicycle wheel in between your legs and reef the seat around a bit while looking at this connection. Older KH seatposts had this design flaw and often fail at this connection point. If this is the case then you can either try to pin the seat post at the top with a bolt or rivets or just get a new one.
Hey, thanks for the reply. Not sure what you mean there, but the seat post looks fine. It is a non-KH, steel seatpost that I just found in a bike shop parts bin. It’s been just fine the first 5 months that i’ve used it. It has slots for the seat bolts to allow for moving forward/back, but the seat is moving side-to-side.
The slots on the seatpost look just fine, but the bolts on the front half of the seat wiggle around when i tug on them, whereas the back 2 bolts don’t move at all. That’s why I assume it’s the plastic holes in the seat base are messed up.
Maybe i should just take the seat cover off and have a look-see. I hope putting the cover back on isn’t as painfall as on a Miyata…
The issue is that the foam is glued/double-stick-taped to the seat base, so you need to peal the foam off sloooooowly, lest you rip it.
I started from the back and worked forward and revealed the bolt head bases in mine to do a mod a while back. It’s all real easy as long as you go slow and are careful.
Edit: and based on what you say, I would look into this. I think it’s highly likely that you’ve worn out the little plastic squares that the carriage bolts sit in, inside the seat base. Not sure what the fix would be, though. . .
That’s exactly what i was thinking. I’ll have a go at the seat tonight. Maybe just shoving little bits of plastic or metal in there will serve as a temporary fix.
I was hoping to get some tips before i just went in there and ripped everything up, so thanks for the advice. I wish a had gotten some tips before ripping my Miyata seat cover to hell. At least i found some colored electrical tape to make a fashion statement
Oddly enough, after taking the seat off the seatpost, re-seating the bolts in the holes, and then putting the seat back on the seatpost, the problem seems to have gone away. That being said, i didn’t do any hardcore hopping today either, so who knows. But at least for now i can postpone the seat surgery.
Thanks for all the tips! They’ll definitely come in handy when i eventually tear the seat apart.
