Has anyone ever made a unicycle with suspension? Seems like it would not be hard at all to make frame that utilizes a pair of MTB fork tubes. Being a newbie to the sport I’m not sure how useful suspension would be, but it seems like it might be at least worth a try.
lobbybopster has made a few:
Please use search, that why they named it a search engine, it keep the rest of us from burning brain cells…
I generally do, and I did do a search, but nothing obvious showed up when I searched under “suspension”. At the moment I couldn’t think of any other obvious things to search under…
…I did just take a second shot at it, limiting the search to the title alone. Came up with a lot more stuff, thanks.
Sam
These look rad, but the problem is that an rough terrain most of the weight is on the feet and thus the suspension is without effect.
It might be of advantage during road rides when most of the weight is in the saddle.
I think, best way for suspension is a fat tire
This is what I tell anyone who asks the question “why not use suspension?”
A 3.0" tire beneath your bum, at a pressure that suits your terrain, offers the best compromise between impact absorption and control. If you want more, perhaps try an air bladder in your saddle… although at the wrong pressure, the bladder may work to bounce you off your seat.
Anything more starts to work against the rider’s efforts: either propelling the rider off the uni after a hard hit, or absorbing the rider’s work. Of the few suspension unis I’ve ridden, all have been far too “springy” to be of any help.
I think it would be cool to make a pogo-uni. Using a giraffe insert shocks in the frame and put chain tensioners on both sides of the chain to take up the slack during compression. Could be fun…
suspension Muni
You people do not know what You are talking about.
When it comes to Muni suspension, I stand by my statement!
What statement is that?
I’ve ridden some that were, and some that weren’t, but it’s the springy ones that were comfortable. The problem is that you can’t mix the springy with rough terrain.
I still would like to think there would be benefit in a short-throw, suspension seatpost for road riding. Got to try it someday, if I can find one that’ll still work with whatever handlebars and other stuff I’ve got on there.
For a long time I had an inexpensive, spring-type suspension post on my MUni. It worked well, but was limited in that it was a fixed length. A shorter person would not have been able to use it, and I would have preferred it a little shorter. Got to find one that doesn’t require long length…
No, I most certainly do not know what I’m talking about; I can barely ride 150 feet on a unicycle and have never been near one with suspension! But i have lived through people saying front suspension is silly on an MTV, then full suspension was silly…up to the point where today it seems like the majority agree you can’t compete w/o suspension in the MTB world. Unis are different, of course, but still…
I think suspension may have some benefit, But my reason for originally (re)posing the question had nothing to do with trying to fix a problem, I was just thinking that it would be rather simple to use conventional MTB front end tubes as the basis of building a rather simple suspension uni. I’m in no rush to make one, but I’m certainly going to keep giving it thought.
Sam
I’d agree if you spend a lot of time riding out of the seat or ride light on your seat, but I woudl imagine having a suspended seat would be nice at times, though it would change the distance between seat and pedal.
Suspending the wheel seperate from the rider without changing inseam length, that’s the challenge.
Now Eric, clearly that is a thread that went a long ways and never got anywhere 
I spent $100 for a high quality suspension seat post, cut it down to fit my uni, then took it for a spin. It didn’t seem to add a whole lot of cushioning, probably not much more than a nicely padded seat, though it did add some weight and I’m thinking that in time it woudl start to wiggle from side to side 
What a unicycle really needs is more gears, more stability, then some suspension.
But wait, I hear there is this “new” thing called a
Bicycle
Okay, in all fairness to the OP, who is just now learning to ride a uni. What most new riders find is that uni riding requires a lot of strength and the development of new muscles. With this development comes the ability to “cushion your ride” through the use of your inboard stability system, ie muscles and joints.
As I become a stronger rider, my ability to smoothly ride though jarring terrain is growing. I have found that I can smoothly ride through rocky terrain as easilly on a skinny tire as I can on a fat tire, in fact there are times when a Larry 3.8 is too bouncy and fat, imagine that!
Who are you, and what did you do with Nurse Ben?
Nurse Ben is currently being held against his will in an undertermined location.
We wil return him on one condition:
All muni riders must give up their fat tires and ride nothing wider than 2.2".
That is all. We will be in touch.
I figured as much.
To sum up the solution to proper unicycle suspension in one word… “Tweel.”
In the early days, all we had was 1.75". If you want to make a relatively easy trail really challenging again, try it on a 1.75" tire. You’ll have to run high pressure it it, otherwise you’ll get pinch flats on every ride. So it was a street unicycle wheel (the old kind of street, not Street), at street riding pressure (60 or so). No wonder I got my first suspension post back in 1998 or so!