Today was a great day, minus one nagging detail! My new semcycle xlw with monty cranks, gazzaloddi tire, + yellow viscount seat (yeah, i ran out of money, but now i regret that i didn’t upgrade!) arrived today! I put it all together, and it was SWEET, except for one thing… The viscount seat was BENT right from the very start. If you look at it from the front, you can see that it is quite OBVIOUSLY sloping from right to left downwards… As such, every time I ride, I am forced a bit to the left, and have to lean right to go straight! With everything else being great, I was really disappointed. I gave it several HARD mallet strokes to try to bend it back, but no such luck. I adjusted bolts… i tried everything… Has anyone else had this problem? It’s terrible that a seat defect hinders everything else. I REALLY don’t want to replace it, because that would mean i have to send it back! And every day without my unicycle, i die a little! Any tips or similar stories, please tell me! I guess I need/want the velo seat more than ever!
Maybe you could shim the low side of the seat with some washers between the seat and the seat post. The bolts on my Viscount seat are pretty long, so you should have room to do it. Best of luck. Joe
hmm, interesting thought… oddly enough however, just the frontal two thirds seem to be bent, the back end seems more or less ok. I’ll give it a shot, but hope that correcting the tilt for the front doesn’t create one in the back…
hmm… I don’t know if i can post a (decent) pic… I have a webcam, but that will not do… Maybe I can ask around some friends if they have a digital camera. Tomorrow, I will call the 800 number.
Hey Ross, I have a gallery up here; http://www.unicyclist.com/gallery/album28
with some before and after shots. I had to dent the frame in a little more after I took these pics, because the tire would rub when I pedaled hard. Since I dented it more, I’ve had no rubbing. I think I done this in March, and I’ve had no probs with it. Good luck.
what i’d try if the front of my viscount seat was bent, ymmv.
put the front of the seat in a bench vise,
get annother bench vise and clamp it to the back of the seat,leaving a gap at the back.
stick a metal bar in the second vise in the gap,
then gently apply brute force and ignorance.
remember what archimedes said, “give me a lever and fulcrum big enough, and i shall move the earth”,
amongst other obvious caveats, he forgot that he’d probably leave a few squished patches in the foam of his viscount seat.
Alright, I borrowed some of my friends tools, and we managed to bend the seat back a little ways, but not completely. I thought it would be rideable, so I went out for some fun. It was terrible! I had avoided all sorts of drops, except small curb ones, rather, I spent all day freemounting on and riding a 50 yard long, 4 foot hight, maybe 9 inch wide wall. It was much fun, so I found an even scarier skinny stretch to ride on. This was maybe 10 yards long, but falling would not have been an option. There was a 6 foot drop to the right, and about a 2 foot drop to about 3 foot sewer water river to my left. I did it about 6 times, with my friend as witness (though he was too scared to try ;)). Anyway, no sooner do I upd hard for the first time, on the grass after hitting a rock with my tire. (this was not on the walls of course) I looked down at my viscount seat, and something is loose… I see that the loose object is one of the 4 bolts holding the seat to the post! I go to tighten it with my hand, and it turns out that the bolt just broke straight in half as soon as I touched it. Now I know there was nothing that I did that would warrant that kind of breakage during my ride. Furthermore, one upd later, BOTH bumpers came off, I lost one screw alltogether, and realized that there really is nothing to hold either bumper on, except some foam. So, I stuck/screwed the bumper on as best as I could, but now every time I so much as hit a bump in the road, the bumpers fall off! I got this seat just 3 days ago!!! It’s so terrible, that the seat on my old savage has held up better! I can’t believe no one noticed this before! People only say it’s uncomfortable, but this means much more to me than that!
I’m getting a replacement per the parts warranty, but I really don’t WANT a replacement if it will only last 3 days as well before it breaks… I can’t believe it.
I suppose I have just one question. What is the most durable seat out there? Whatever it is, I will buy it, so this never happens again… I really don’t care whether or not it’s too comfortable, (in the case of miyata) I just want one that will last me a while.
