I’ve now got my Onza 24" muni (which to be honest, scares me a bit!) and I have a question regarding saddle height.
Even after I’ve chopped lots of the seat post and about 10mm of the frame, the saddle still feels too high with it as low as it will go. I’ve set it up according to the normal advice i.e. leg slightly bent when my heel is on the pedal at the bottom of the downstroke.
The trouble is that when my leg is extendedI feel that I have no control over the machine at all - This is in stark contrast to the feeling that I have when on my freestyle uni.
I know that saddle height is largely a subjective matter, but could the awkwardness be due to the longer cranks on the muni (now 165mm, but 127mm on the freestyle).
Will I get used to this or should I butcher the Onza some more?
As stated yesterday, I cut about 3" off my seatpost when I got it. 1 week later I cut another inch off, and then at BUC two weeks after that I cut another inch off.
I went from 127’s on a 20" to the big onza and it did take ages to get used to. I had been unicycling for 3 weeks before I got it and it took 2 days to be able to do everything I could on the 20", on the 24". Seriously different machines.
I’v had it for over a year and when I go out on it I feel that the seat could go up a bit now!
As I’ve said before, unicyles are not designed for those of us with shorter-than-avarage legs.
Cathy
PS I don’t know how to do the fancy thing and show you where the thread is. If I could, I would.
I chopped another 30mm off of the frame, although it turned out that I only needed to go about 20mm further to get comfy.
I took it out to the patch where I learned to uni - a kind of car park/parkland with some pot-holed roads and paths compromised by tree-roots.
The first hour or so was so frustrating. I couldn’t freemount, it felt like the machine was trying to pitch me off the front all the time and I was having a heck of a job moving my feet on the pedals because of the long pins.
Believe me I was getting very cheesed off with myself, the muni, and everyone who encouraged me to get one. I even got so frustrated that it went into the bushes (softly - I didn’t want to damage the plant life :)) at least once!
And then, following the unicyclists mantra of “never give up”, I finally started relaxing.
It was FANTASTIC. All of the stress inducing holes and lumps that bothered me on the 20" just disappeared and I was tearing around. I even started to ride onto the grass and really rough areas of broken tarmac.
I know that this kind of stuff is considered childsplay to many on this forum, but to me it was a revelation.
I’m blown away by the skill of some of you folks, and get bummed knowing I’ll NEVER be that good no matter how much I practice.
But then, last night, I was practicing riding backwards, and as I got longer and longer rides before falling, I felt like a kid learning to ride all over again!
Today, 30 feet backwards, tomorrow… a 360 hop off a stack of palettes into a backwards one footed wheel walk!
Given your implied height… mind if I piggy back your thread?
I’m starting to get back into my old habits with unicycling - but this time for recreation as opposed to pure utility. Now my wife is expressing some interest in learning. I have a spare unicycle for her, my old landis 24"
The only reason I piggy back on your thread is because she is only 4’ 10" (compared to me, 6’ 1") and we’ve come to the conclusion that her legs just aren’t long enough - even with the seat all the way down to the top of the frame. We really don’t want to drop her down to a 20" because we don’t own one and we want the same wheel size for eventually riding together. So, question for the experts:
I guess it’s ok to hack part of the frame off to get the saddle to go lower - pretty soon it will just be a saddle directly on top of the wheel.
The ideal height for street / paved trail riding is to have some bend in the knee when the pedal is at its lowest point in the rotation? Also curious for myself because I plan to get and ride a muni and any new unicycle I get will be a lot more flexible on saddle height options than my current schwinn.
Incidentally, I tested what will be her unicycle with the seat all the way down, I may even be raising my knee above my waist on the upstroke, and I crashed like I’d never ridden before.
Yes, you seem to have room to take a couple of inches off that old frame. Pipe cutter is best, if you have one. Then you have to make a slot for the clamp to work. A simple way to do this is to first drill a hole, where you want the bottom of the slot to be, all the way through (front to back). This will mark the bottom, then you can hacksaw straight down to there, twice, to make the slot. Make sure the slot extends lower than your clamp, and especially make sure you file away all burrs on the inside, your you’ll hate getting the seatpost in (and especially out)!
i cut my seat post about three weeks ago, y chopped like 6 cm,( y think a little more than 2 inches) and now im happy, because i am making si noob trials, but as soon as i learn sif i will want my saddle high again to have a more comfortable grip!
