Please pardon a question that’s probably been answered several times before. I’m fairly new at this.
I was watching Kris Holm and Nathan Hoover’s trip through Bhutan on OLN lTV ast night and was struck by the incredible skill they displayed. The impact they endured on some of those drops must have been bone jarring! Do their MUnis have some sort of shock absorber like the Rok Shox on my mountain bike?
Pat Moore
p.s. I just got my new KH seat last night. Nice!
No shock absorbers on their unis. They just know how to land their drops. I have heard of, but never seen, unicycles being fitted with a shock absorbing seat post. I’ve seen the shock seatposts in bicycle catalogs but I don’t know if they’re the right diameter to fit a uni without modification.
A non-uniing friend of mine was asking me about the same thing the other day, so here’s the explanation:
Riding over insignificant bumps: weight on seat (i guess)
Landing/riding over everything else: weight on pedals
Thus, the seatpost shocks would be good to smooth out the insignificant bumps on the trails (and maybe to soften the blow of being slammed down onto your seat after screwing up a big drop), but that’s about it.
If you wanted shocks for (big) drops, they would have to go somewhere between your feet and the tire, because the force travels: tire <> rim <> spokes <> hub <> cranks <> pedals <> you. And, as i’m sure you’ve just imagined, applying shocks to any of those parts makes little sense.
As a solution, KH and everybody else just bend their knees to absorb the impact of the drops. They have no choice.
Hope this explains it.
Shocks
Okay - thanks for the responses. Still seems like a little “give” under the seat would help but I’m unlikely to ever have to experience the need. At 58 I should be content wtih just cruising.
Pat
The main shock absorbtion for Kris and Nathan is their 3.0" Gazzalodi tires. If you’re riding on a regular sized tire, you’ve got to try one of those to feel the difference!
That said, many of us have tried suspension seat posts. They are useful for seated riding, but obviously not drops or technical riding, because you aren’t sitting down for those anyway.
“Cruising” is when you DO have weight on the seat–and it’s nice to have a suspension post. I sometimes use the Cane Creek Thudbuster when I’m riding a 700 size tire with fairly high pressure.
When I’m off road I use a 3 inch Gazz tire, which has all the suspension I could want.
David
I used to have a uni with shocks in the frame (see my website www.muniman.2ya.com for some pics of it)
Though I wouldn’t really recommend it, like whats been said it only makes insignificant bumps smoother, but I found it made the frame weak and it broke twice?!?! So yes uni’s with shocks are out there but like John said, your best schock abosrbers are you tires 
Re: Shock absorbers?
I also find an air seat to be more forgiving than foam when doing
modest drops (say 2 feet or less). Don’t know about big drops,
though.
Ken
You reduce impact by bending forward at the hip when you impact, and by rolling out of a drop. Combined with the 3" cushion in the tire alot of the shock is absorbed before it becomes bone jarring; if your technique is good enough.
Real unicyclists use their knees as shock absorbers. Kinda odd though how I almost broke my arm doing a drop a month ago.
There are a number of suspension unicycle frames made by Creative Geckos. One has an elastomer and the others rely on the flex of titanium fork legs. See the Creative Geckos page. The suspension Coker was designed for Bronson Silva. Has anyone ridden one of these? Is the suspension useful?
+0||y
Re: Shock absorbers?
Pat,
Curious, your profile at www.unicyclist.com/profile/7356 shows your
birthdate as Dec 31/69 and your age as 58…
Now, my birthdate is Dec 3/50 . I have started to learn how to ride my
unicycle and worry how old this will make me…
Dave Carlson
Re: Re: Shock absorbers?
It’ll be all the time travelling…
I’m sure KH has a suspension seat post in Universe… But then he didn’t have a 3" tyre, did he?
Birthday
That’s weird… I checked my user cp and I have it entered correctly. Date of birth is Oct. 25, 1946 (technically I don’t turn 58 for another 2 months) but when you click on my profile it reads December 31, 1969. Heck, I was already married then!
Still married but not to the same lady. 24 years to the first one, then 8 years off for good behavior…
P.
Re: Shock absorbers?
On Thu, 12 Aug 2004 07:52:19 -0500, “patmoore” wrote:
>That’s weird… I checked my user cp and I have it entered correctly.
>Date of birth is Oct. 25, 1946 (technically I don’t turn 58 for another
>2 months) but when you click on my profile it reads December 31, 1969.
It’s a well-known bug in the software. Internally, the date is stored
correctly (as you can see in our user cp) but on the profile it
displays as Dec 31, 1969 for all the folks born in the 60’s or
earlier. But hey, doesn’t it feel good to be 34?
I like the idea of not having to balance when out on a ride - joe