rebeccmeister | Bike maintenance

Monday morning, as I prepared to rush out the door for a morning meeting, I discovered that the Jolly Roger had a flat front tire, so I parked it and took Froinlavin instead. I spent some time Monday evening and again yesterday fossicking with the tube and finally found a pinhole. Hopefully the only one. After I located the pinhole, I went back to the tire to see if I could determine the cause, and found that the tire was full of tiny lacerations, all filled with sand and rocks. Time for a new front tire.

I also did some saddle-swapping this morning because a package from Nashbar finally showed up. A new Selle Royal went on Froinlavin. It's wider than I had expected, probably because of how annoyingly frustrating it is to shop for saddles online - every place I checked listed different dimensions for the two models of Respiro saddles ("Athletic" vs. "Moderate") and it took a while for me to determine that while the "Athletic" is unisex, the "Moderate" isn't. Well, saddle-shopping can get frustrating, period, even when you can go to a shop and examine things in person. I just got lucky that this particularly fairly inexpensive model that's full of gel cushion seems to work well with my posterior.

Then I moved the second-newest Selle Royal over to the Jolly Roger, which was a slight project because I bashed the tops of the seat bolts while trying to get the seatpost unstuck. I really need to get that seatpost off the bike. Penetrating oil, hammering, and boiling water haven't done anything. I think it's going to be time for a blow torch and pipe wrench pretty soon.

I'm still contemplating options for the Jolly Roger basket replacement, and the Novara pannier replacement/fix. I could upgrade the Novara thing with a better piece of backing, if I knew where to get one, and an Arkel Cam-Lock hook kit. Or, you know, spend about twice as much for something that might last a lot longer, and avoid having to fiddle with the project.

Along those lines, it might make the most sense to just bite the bullet and get a handlebar bag that's functional for randonneuring AND everyday use on the Jolly Roger.

These two items are things that require a decent amount of research. More than anything, I just want items that will be functional and last forever, like the Overland panniers and the cooler-pannier, so I can spend more time smugly riding and less time shopping.

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It makes me feel a little better to realize that my saddle drama is not just me. (New saddle: not better than old saddle, just differently bad. Damnit.)

Oh god no, it's definitely NOT you. As I noted in another recent tl;dr post, the bike fit guy had this awesome butt pressure sensor that he used to double-check some aspects of saddle fit. One cool part is that it would measure the distance between the sit bones. A number of bike shops have things you can sit on to get similar, crude measures of the sit bones, but that still only gets you partway there. In my case, he noted that my sit bones were right at the edges of either side of the saddle, suggesting I could benefit from a wider saddle.

I didn't mention that Tad Hughes also had a full wall of different saddle types, and if I had to guess, I'd guess that if the saddle shape is a person's main sticking point, he would have her or him test out some from the wall o' saddles. I still think a trip over to R&E to visit Smiley will be your best starting point.

Stupid question time: are there companies that make custom saddles? If so, would one be worth the price?

I haven't seen such a thing.
There are saddles that are somewhat adjustable, but

rebeccmeister has already tried one (Brooks) and disliked it, if I remember correctly.

Strange. Given what people pay for bike components, it seems like an obvious niche to be in.

A problem is that it's hard to tell if a bike seat's actually going to fit until you've had it for a week, so you get a lot of returns, and a custom return is painful.

I don't know if it's even possible, at this point, to do any sort of thorough analysis of a person's pelvic anatomy and come up with a good prediction of the best saddle. Most places start with a measurement of sit bone width, which is helpful for figuring out saddle width.

But many people also have problems with too much pressure on soft tissue, and I have a feeling that there's a lot of variation in soft tissue anatomy. And then there are things like my situation, where the biggest problem with the leather saddles was that they didn't agree with my skin chemistry.

And yeah, leather saddles are about as close as it gets to custom - my dad's riding on one that's >30 years old, and its shape looks lopsided and pretty crazy-uncomfortable to me, but he's very happy on it. But it can take over 6 months to break in a new leather saddle. Or you can wind up with things like the Selle An-Atomica I tried for a while, which had leather that was way too soft to begin with, and which was on its way to wearing out prematurely (plus, aforementioned skin chemistry issues).

I don't know if it's even possible, at this point, to do any sort of thorough analysis of a person's pelvic anatomy and come up with a good prediction of the best saddle.
It's possible with Science! :) I do wonder if an instrumented and adjustable saddle would provide adequate data to make custom ones by letting people ride around on the adjustable one until they're happy with it. Yet another project to throw on the notional list.

I still don't think so...mostly because of the complex parameters involved. Keep in mind that the saddle construction material can be a big factor for a lot of people, in combination with their preferred riding clothes (padded shorts vs. nylon, for instance). And the distances covered. The guy who did our bike fits said he actually thinks the ideal also changes over the course of a long ride because muscle mobility ranges change with fatigue. And a lot of people have been tinkering with bike saddles for a very long time. Some of the historic ones look pretty incredible now - hammock-like devices and such.

What's the frame material on the JR? I'm trying to think of other approaches to getting that seatpost out.
Dipping it in liquid nitrogen certainly seems attractive.
Or, less enthusiastically, getting some dry ice from the local King Soopers and making an isopropyl alcohol/dry ice bath and dipping it in there.
I've had luck with dripping some ammonia onto the interface, as well, if it's aluminum seatpost with steel frame.

Extracting the aluminum quill from the steel steerer tube on the Gios took penetrating oil and a custom-built press that pushed against the upper headset lockring, which I'd replaced with a steel one because the aluminum one mooshed under the pressure. I also bent a piece of 3/8" thick aluminum plate. Galvanic corrosion is really amazing.

Man, it's tempting to get some liquid nitrogen, for, uhh, research? ;-)

The JR is steel, with an aluminum/composite seatpost that can go in a garbage can, for all I care (although maybe I should have a replacement on hand).

I should try the ammonia method, too, while I'm at it.

I suspect I won't have time to tackle the project again for a little while yet, argdarnit. Too much to dooooo...

If you have a reasonable chunk of time, pull the BB and dump some PB Blaster up the seat tube from the bottom, too.

You know, I should probably just bite the bullet and make time. I've also been hearing a lot of scraping, indicative of an unhappy bearing somewhere between the pedals and bottom bracket, so I could pull the bottom bracket and then just go ahead and replace it. What was I saying about bike maintenance being neverending? ;-)

I guess the main issue is figuring out whether I can go back to sneaking Froinlavin in to work every day, for the sake of buying myself a couple of days or weeks to do some thorough work on the Jolly Roger.

Bike maintenance - it never ends.

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