36er, handlebars and bike seat??

[brycer1968]

Bike seat on a 36er for road riding??

Those of you with significant, larger handlebars or even aero bars that effectively hold you into the saddle and reduce the need for the forward part of the hour-glass shape of a standard unicycle seat, someone here (I think that Sasquach-Saskatchawanin?) suggested trying out a bike seat. I think this idea will only work well with a significantly forward leaning riding position.

Any one tried this yet?

I'm looking at adapting a standard bicycle touring seat to the modified rail adaptor that is the backbone of the aero bar set that I'm using now.

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[brycer1968]

Oh and the three objectives behind such a move:
1. Increasing comfort
2. Decreasing weight
3. Increasing the efficiency of "the spin", not having the front part of the seat to rub against your legs.

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[boisei]

No experience myself but I am so on board with trying it out. Saddle soreness did not begin to describe what I felt on Saturday's long ride. Contrary to all expectations, 109 miles on a conventional unicycle seat did not make my wiener feel good.

[gangstertaco]

Originally Posted by boisei

109 miles on a conventional unicycle seat did not make my wiener feel good.

lol true... but i guess a bike seat would be better for the inner thigh soreness but ethier buy lube or try puting little more weight on the handlebars less off balls

[chuckaeronut]

I'd love to try a bike seat, but I'm just too lazy and/or overstretched to bother trying to set up a good handlebar far out from the seat....

I know I'd want to keep the T7 though, to have both. I think. Imagine having a magura brake hose "splitter" so that two separate handles (on different bars on your uni) could be used to compress the pads into the rim. That'd be awesome...

[saskatchewanian]

Originally Posted by chuckaeronut

I'd love to try a bike seat, but I'm just too lazy and/or overstretched to bother trying to set up a good handlebar far out from the seat....

I know I'd want to keep the T7 though, to have both. I think. Imagine having a magura brake hose "splitter" so that two separate handles (on different bars on your uni) could be used to compress the pads into the rim. That'd be awesome...

I am sure you could get some sort of Y fitting for the hose to go to two levers. Or failing that could you have hoses coming from both slave cylinders?


I am down to only my MUni at the moment and it has a bent seatpost. I might get a bike post and seat and throw my handle on there and see what it is like but it would be on a 26x3 with 160s not exactly the ideal road machine.

There is also lots of snow here right now so it is not really idea for testing new setups but I will let you all know how I do if I get around to doing this.

[eenwieler-sander]

i personal have a large handlebar setup and i'am doing a convursion to make it fit a bicycle seat.

just have to order some more items next week (waiting for the money to get in)
will post some pictures if its done.

i choose a seat that has a cut away part in the middle hoping thats it will be more comfy on the longer rides.

[john_childs]

A downhill specific seat like the Azonic Love Seat might be worth a try. The downhill style saddles are longer and bigger than regular MTB saddles. A potential downside to the Azonic Love Seat is that it doesn't have much padding and is rather firm. There are other similar saddles by other manufacturers.

I don't think a narrow road style saddle would work well. The narrow racing road saddles only work on a bike when you're always pushing a big gear and always on the drops. That's the opposite of how you ride and sit on a unicycle. A more MTB specific saddle like a WTB Laser would be a compromise but I still think it would be a little short and narrow up front. The WTB Laser is a nice MTB saddle that works well for a more upright MTB posture and spinning lower gears that is typical of MTB riding and casual cruising.

[saskatchewanian]

I went out and got a seat and post and tried it out.

I am using my handlebar with a Kalloy seatpost (unfortunately 24.0 so I needed to shim) and a KHS saddle from the cheap bin. This is on my 26" MUni because that is the only unicycle I have at the moment.

It took me a while to get the seat angle and height right but I eventually found a setting that was fairly comfortable. I had to turn the seatpost backwards to let the seat sit flat when I rode.

First thing I noticed was how free it felt on the front part of my crotch. the seat felt like... I was riding a bike. All my weight was on my 'sit bones' and the handle. The next thing I noticed was an absence of rubbing. I never really thought of it before but my legs rub allot on a unicycle seat. Since there was less between my legs I found that I was riding with my knees closer together and seemed to spin (160mm cranks, HA!) fairly smooth.

So far it was awesome. I could see myself going indefinitely without discomfort with a better seat. I can only ride for about an hour strait before I start getting discomfort with a unicycle seat.

Then I straitened out taking the weight off the handlebars. It went from weight on my hand and sit bones to weight on my legs and a single point in my crotch. Not comfortable at all.

I think my handlebars are a bit shorter than ideal for this setup but I really liked what I had experienced so far as far as a road setup is concerned. I think that my next road unicycle will have a long handle and bike seat setup.


A bit random but I think that something like the WTB Laser (which I have on my bike) would be the ideal seat for this. A bit softer than a pure road/race seat and actually designed to be sat on for extended periods of time unlike a downhill seat.


and here is an old picture with my handle for those not familiar with it. I don't have a camera to take pics of the current test setup.

[brycer1968]

Originally Posted by saskatchewanian

I went out and got a seat and post and tried it out.

I am using my handlebar with a Kalloy seatpost (unfortunately 24.0 so I needed to shim) and a KHS saddle from the cheap bin. This is on my 26" MUni because that is the only unicycle I have at the moment.

It took me a while to get the seat angle and height right but I eventually found a setting that was fairly comfortable. I had to turn the seatpost backwards to let the seat sit flat when I rode.

First thing I noticed was how free it felt on the front part of my crotch. the seat felt like... I was riding a bike. All my weight was on my 'sit bones' and the handle. The next thing I noticed was an absence of rubbing. I never really thought of it before but my legs rub allot on a unicycle seat. Since there was less between my legs I found that I was riding with my knees closer together and seemed to spin (160mm cranks, HA!) fairly smooth.

So far it was awesome. I could see myself going indefinitely without discomfort with a better seat. I can only ride for about an hour strait before I start getting discomfort with a unicycle seat.

Then I straitened out taking the weight off the handlebars. It went from weight on my hand and sit bones to weight on my legs and a single point in my crotch. Not comfortable at all.

I think my handlebars are a bit shorter than ideal for this setup but I really liked what I had experienced so far as far as a road setup is concerned. I think that my next road unicycle will have a long handle and bike seat setup.


A bit random but I think that something like the WTB Laser (which I have on my bike) would be the ideal seat for this. A bit softer than a pure road/race seat and actually designed to be sat on for extended periods of time unlike a downhill seat.

Interesting report Saskat. This really got me thinking. So I went to the local used bike co-op yesterday and bought a handfull of old seat rail clamp parts to try this out - with a couple of bored holes in the top plate of the adaptor, I think I can mount the bike seat on top of the exisitng rail adaptor. This will add about a half inch to my seat height, but give me the flexibility to try out a couple of different styles of bike seats. The downhill seat John Childs linked to might be an interesting one to try out.

More later.
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[eenwieler-sander]

update:
orderd 2 seatpost to make it fit today on my work i work at a lbs

so hope to finish it this week

[brycer1968]

Originally Posted by john_childs

A downhill specific seat like the Azonic Love Seat might be worth a try.

John: I was hopeful about this idea so I got a hold of an Azonic Love seat and tried it out yesterday - OMG, what a truly horrible unicycle saddle. Way too hard for distance comfort, but the most troubling bit was the width in the center was too much, making it really uncomfortable to pedal - unless your pelvis is bovine-wide. The brief ride I took made me feel as though someone had slipped concrete into my bike shorts. I returned the seat and will keep searching.
See picture
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[saskatchewanian]

haha, wow that seat is massive. The seat that I used was a pretty normal looking one. I can't imagine anyone riding that thing on a bike where they are sitting on it for long periods of time.

Also were you using the single handle that is under your seat in the picture? My handle is quite long and I felt that I would benefit from a longer one giving me an almost bike like position.

[brycer1968]

Originally Posted by saskatchewanian

haha, wow that seat is massive. The seat that I used was a pretty normal looking one. I can't imagine anyone riding that thing on a bike where they are sitting on it for long periods of time.

Also were you using the single handle that is under your seat in the picture? My handle is quite long and I felt that I would benefit from a longer one giving me an almost bike like position.

Yes, not my brightest idea, but worth trying out. Yes the handle seen in the pic is one of the off-road "black cock" unihandles I've made for a while now. I'm with you on the desired bike riding position bit for long distance rides. See pic of the general riding positon I'm using on my KH36 now.

For the saddle test, I just tried it out by its self on a rail type seat post on my 29er - with no handlebar, just around the block and it so completely and fully failed the comfort test in this state that I didn't even go on to trying to fit it on a proper handlebar set-up.
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[john_childs]

I remember the Azonic Love Seat being more narrow than that. I tried it briefly on a Creative Geckos muni 5 years or so ago. It worked better on a muni with the lower saddle height. I can't see that Love Seat working on a Coker.

There is a lot of experimentation in bike seats. Lots of different shapes and sizes. Even finding a suitable saddle for my fixie bike required several tries.

I wonder how the Azonic Journey might work for a Coker?