Blazing Saddles.
Difference in philosophy. Bigger the better and Smaller the better.
If you are happy with the original saddle comes with your A-bike, you are blessed. Well, I’m not. The day, I went for 30mins ride for the first time with A-bike, became the last day I sat on the tiny saddle. It knocked my bottom so good, I couldn’t properly sit on any sort of chair for two days afterwards. This made me to get my Cane Creek Thudbuster LT, but let’s look at more generic saddle upgrade this time.
My girlfriend asked me to change her A-bike saddle to more comfortable one. she is a casual A-bike rider and mostly each riding time wouldn’t exceed 10mins. According to her, the saddle was not very comfortable, but not too uncomfortable either for her use. In fact, she never strongly complain about the saddle until we went to Lock Ness Trip, where we rode reasonably long distance.
The clamp and the rail.
A-bike’s original saddle and seatpost are not in any standardised format, which is used by conventional bicycle. If we want maximum flexibility with saddle, it’s best to go for a saddle with ‘two rail system’ and seatpost with ‘seat-rail clamp’ and the clamp better be ‘micro-adjustable’ to get the comfortable saddle angle and position.
The A-bike’s seatpost size is 25.0mm diameter according to official data, but it is actually around 25.2mm to 25.4mm. Since the seat-tube (=where seatpost goes in) is made of thin metal tube, a little difference in diameter can be forgiven by tightening seatpost clamp (=the silver alminium clamp on top of the seat-tube), but anything more than 25.4mm would not even goes into the seat-tube. So, I would say seatpost diameters compatible to A-bike are: 25.0mm, 25.2mm, and 25.4mm. 25.4mm is the most common size among these.
I bought a saddle and a seatpost off eBay UK. The saddle was Velo Plush branded soft comfort saddle with center hole (£8 including postage) , and the seatpost was 25.4mm unnamed black colour seatpost (£10 include postage). Then I found I made a mistake. They didn’t fit together!!
Too bad he was 9mm. I liked him, you know?
The reason was simple. There are two different size for seat-rail. one is 8mm and the other is 9mm. Most of saddles (including the velo) in the market uses 8mm, whereas 9mm is used by some BMX saddle system. Yap, the seatpost was for 9mm and the eBay listing clearly stated “for BMX”. Well, it was a good lesson.
I bought 8mm seatpost again from eBay for less than £10. This time was Kalloy alminium seatpost 25.4mm, the common product we can find it on eBay all the time. As above picture shows, it did fit to the velo saddle nicely…. but my trouble continued. It was fat…
Look at how much dust I had to bite for doing this ‘supporsed to be a simple’ job. haha.
It seems that cheap seatpost often miss its supporsed size. This is why these are cheap. My kalloy was slightly more than 25.4mm. I could put the seatpost into A-bike’s seat-tube, but it was very tight and it was obvious once it goes in, it would never come out again. It needed a bit of sanding with sanding paper to slim it down.
Sanding process was straightfoward. Wrap a bit of sanding paper around the seatpost and rub, then sometimes wash the paper and the post with water. (This should prevent heating up and clogging of the paper.) Phew, it was tiresome, but if I could save £20 or so by going through this, it’s not too bad, is it?
Tube Cutter in action.
Can you see what happened to the cut section?
The kalloy seatpost got right size, but this isn’t the end of the story. I still had to cut the length of the seatpost. My girlfriend is about 155cm (5foot 2″), and she demanded the seat to be positioned as low as possible.So, I had to cut the seatpost shorter.
The lowest position with conventional saddle has to be higher than the one with A-bike’s original saddle. It is because conventional saddles has ‘nose’ and the point this meets A-bike’s top frame is the lowest it could go. (see pics) If we want saddle to go even lower, we have to get one of those ‘noseless saddle’.
Cutting seatpost can be done simply with metalwork saw, or tube cutter, which I used this time. I bought a tube cutter (for tube up to 30mm) for £8 from UK’s big DIY store, B&Q. Cutting was easy. Just clamp on the seatpost with the tube cutter, and rotate it as tightening the black screw at the bottom little by little. However, the thickness of the seatpost and the capability of the tube cutter probably didn’t match — A strange bump appeared around the cut section. Yes. It grew fat once again!! This time I used mini rotary kit to grind down the grown edge. I guess this extra work could be avoided if I’ve used the cutter to only mark and used metalwork saw for the rest.
I refer this A-bike as ‘Hip-Heavy’. My girl isn’t happy with the nickname though.
Anyway, as you can see in these pics, it’s all set and done!! Don’t you think the velo saddle goes well with A-bike?
The ‘Velo plush’ name is used by several different product actually. They have more slim and sporty looking one named same and also in same colouring (other colour also available) too. (pic below.)
My Velo Plush is comfort model and weight about 520g. The Kalloy seatpost weight about 200g after cutting it down, so it makes 720g in total. The A-bike original seat assy is only 330g, so it’s good 390g weight gain. Adding to that, the shape of the conventional saddle doesn’t fit with A-bike’s folding mechanism and spoiles its portability. This is a shame.
Having said that, this saddle upgrade does gain A-bike’s mobility so much by providing comfort to its rider. In my opinion, this is worth sacrificing size and weight for. A-bike is smaller and lighter than any other folding bike even after the modification in the end of the day. I also tried her A-bike with the new saddle for short while. Obviously it was too low for me, but besides that I couldn’t feel any bump of the street at all! It feels even smoother than my Thudbuster. haha. The velo saddle might not be a looker, but this is the power of puffy comfort saddle.
If my words aren’t enough to convince you, hear what the girl said.
“I cannot believe your reaction was so calm when you changed your saddle! This is almost like a different world!! Now I feel like I’m riding a conventional leisure bike. It’s sooo comfortable!!!! Ah, I won’t go back to the tiny saddle anymore.”
Hear that? It’s good.
I heard the stories of A-bike owners gave up A-bike because of their bottom compatibility issue with the saddle. Before you give up, try changing the saddle and think again! It’s not difficult to do! (well, I just went to bothersome path by accident, so don’t take my case as a model.)
There are many other ways of make your A-bike ride comfy. We shall feature them some other time.
Check out saddle/seatpost related topics in A-bike Central Forum for more info!
http://www.abikecentral.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5
http://www.abikecentral.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15
http://www.abikecentral.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26
http://www.abikecentral.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=213
