Dave, can you recommend anything to stop the saddle tipping down during a ride?

I bought a Felt AR5 2014, and 4 out of 5 rides the saddle has tipped forward / down (ie going from 3 o'clock to about 4.30 - 5 o'clock, my first ride was from the bike shop and it slipped after about a mile and a half, I had initially put it down to the bolt not being tight so I bought a torque wrench and torqued it up to spec and it is still doing it.

I found a sachet of fsa carbon paste in my owners stuff that I got from my bike shop and I applied that on last night, there was no paste in the inside of the top of the post before last night.

I got 60 miles into a ride today before it slipped again.

The thing is when I undid the bolt the mechanism was stuck in the down position it took a lot of effort to get the saddle rails horizontal.

One thing from looking at the AR manual on page 3 step 5 it show a picture of the chamfer where there is a mark that you line up with the mark on the seat post, I don't have any of these marks to line them up.

Cheers

Mark

Mark,

Everything that should move should have grease on it. This is important especially on the sliding cam that rolls down on top of the saddle rail. This is the patented part of the saddle clamp that allows any seatpost rail size to fit in the side-mounted clasp.

Everything that shouldn't move should be cleaned then have torque paste applied on it. The surface of the metal ring inside the seatpost was blasted to provide additional friction. If the seatpost was ridden loose it is possible this surface was "rubbed" smooth. That isn't the end of the world but it could necessitate that the steps be followed with greater accuracy.

The threads of the bolts should have grease on them along with the head of the threaded bolt where it seats on the saddle rail clamp.
Tighten to 12Nm minimum, 20Nm maximum.

I've yet to see any problems occur with this seatpost clamping system when installed properly.

Best regards,
SD

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https://www.kickstarter.com/...bike-for-the-new-era

Dave, thanks very much for the reply.

Just to confirm when I took everything apart on Saturday there was no grease or paste on anything.

I greased the bolts on saturday and I put carbon paste on the chamferd surface of the seat post and torqued the bolts up to 14nm, as the seat post says 12-14 max.

As I say it was 60 miles into the ride yesterday before the saddle tipped down, the saddle was still held securley on the rails.

Is my only option now to torque the bolt higher as it appears that the carbon paste isn't working either?

When I get time I am going to take the bike back to the shop to see what they say but from your user manual the post should have had torque paste in there from the start, is that correct?

EDIT. I have just bought Finish Line Fiber Grip Carbon Fibre Assembly as this seems to get great reviews, I will see how I get on with this.

Cheers

If you don't mind my asking,

What do you weigh?
Did the saddle slip after an impact?
What stops is from slipping further?

Not trying to be rude. :). Building mine today. Well, I hope.

Hi MisterCee, no problem and thanks for the reply.

I am 12 stone 12 lbs

Possibly going over a rough bit of road but nothing worse than any of the road that we had been on that day.

I don't know what stops it but it always seems to stop at the same bit but there is more space for the sadddle to tip further down. Also I am well within the saddle safety measurement, ie no where near the max travel on the saddle. The thing is, trying to get the saddle to move back to the horizontal position took a lot of effort.

I had an inspection last night and I had to tap the two clamps out of the seat post from opposite sides as they where really stuck in ie. I could not pull them out by hand.

Yes, you should have had torque paste installed if you paid for assembly. This is among the reasons we include $5 worth in every bike in a pre-packaged tube.

-SD

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https://www.kickstarter.com/...bike-for-the-new-era

Dave,

I saw that there is the option to run just a 4mm headset cap spacer on the non FRD frames.

Is there a shorter option for the FRD frames than what comes with the frameset?

Thanks,

greg

Yes, the non-FRD frames use a thin aluminum headset cover. This can be used on the FRD frames as well. The 1.125" upper bearing size for the #38 headset used on the aerotaper steerer of the AR is the same as the #42 upper bearing used on the NINE, Edict, F, Z, ZW, FX, and even our dirt jump/street BMX bikes. For the most part any ~46mm diameter cover can be made to work using the thin shims to ensure clearance between the cover and head tube.

-SD

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https://www.kickstarter.com/...bike-for-the-new-era

Dave,

I sent you an email, but to anyone else that has this bike................

Has anyone had issues with trying to get different saddles to actually secure? Tried swapping out my flite saddle for and ares and an adamo attack, but neither of those saddles have rails big enough to secure it seems. they are not as tall as the flite rails, at any rate and the flite is an old saddle. I tighten the bolt and the saddles wil slide effortlessly within the clamp.

what the heck did I do wrong?

Jeff

Take the seatpost pieces apart 100%. Lube the rail surfaces that should slide. Use torque paste on the sand blasted "cups" that shouldn't slide. Install to 12Nm. The inner/upper saddle rail plates have to slide down and pinch the top of the rail as the outer plates close from the outside. Both movements need to occur before you develop the torque on the binder bolt.

-SD

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https://www.kickstarter.com/...bike-for-the-new-era

I actually put some lube on the cups this past weekend, as the darn thing requires being hit with a rubber mallet to be able to move the one side. I changed saddles and angle needed to be different. will wipe that clean and do as you say here.

still not working. the part that goes over the rails won't clamp down that far it seems. can do a full 12 Nm and still just slides around event though parts are fully lubed.

I'm looking at the parts of the seatpost here at my desk and I can't figure out how the outer clamp would bottom out before the inner clamp slid down on top of the seat rails.
Got SKYPE? I'll hold the parts and assembly diagram up to my laptop camera. :)

-SD

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https://www.kickstarter.com/...bike-for-the-new-era

no Skype at work

I can't for the life of me figure it out either. works fine on 2 of the 4 saddles I try. just not the other two. all saddles have grease on them now, well they did anyway :)

the assembly is pretty straight forward. only one way for it to go together. hence my post

without the saddle in the parts move more than enough to clamp down. they move and I have to disassemble the whole thing to get them open enough for rails to fit in again. when saddle is put in, for some reason the inner clamp does not seem to want to rotate down near enough. it touches the top of rails and that is as far as it goes.

shoot a vid and I will shoot one later tonight myself

Have about 2k miles on an FRD.

Put a Rotor 3D with a power2max crank on it and the stock bb is just not that good, ceramic or not. Creaked, needed a lot of spacers...my opinion.

Putting a BB30 to 24 adapter single unit BB (parts screw together...rotor, wheels manuf, ceramicspeed, real world, etc.). Voila, the way it should be. I chose steel bearings....at 120rpm, I am not worried about ceramics...and I consider the bearings disposable....

NO MORE NOISE: did a bb30 to 24 conversion unit (rotor/wheels manu/real world...).

On top of this, it feels a lot stiffer now laterally (a good thing to me). It looks nicer (not important). The new unit will be trivial to replace.



Saddle: with the carbon friction stuff and toque to superdave's specs in this thread, no issues.

I put a spacer from rotor on my front derailleur to improve things. Shifting was fine stock...it is sublime in front now..and back.


So: the bike is fast as heck. Super comfortable for 4+ hour fast team rides at over 22 mph...great up and down hills, and it looks super too (I was just not into the S5).

j

(the dual elite crono cx bottles a few pages back....)


How are those bottles...does the front one make getting the rear one in and out hard.

Thanks in advance!

The seat post bottle bumps the downtube bottle cage slightly when you take it out or put it in, but nothing that is distracting while riding or that gives you a real hard time. That said, I have a 61cm frame so on the smaller frame I'm not sure if the bottle cages are placed closer together.

You do have to be careful if you have squeezed the bottle and placed it back, it can have a tendency to stay slightly narrower and if you hit a big bump, it could launch the bottle. I've only launched twice, and both times it was the downtube bottle. You could probably use a little skateboard grip tape on the cage arms and it wouldn't happen. The biggest drawback as I see it is that they are not able to accept standard bottles if you were trying to resupply at an aid station, and that they are only 16oz bottles, that, and they're pricy, but replacement bottles are reasonable compared to the initial cage+bottle investment.

Thanks. I am going for it. Their cage pricing is silly...


Jeff

The bottles are a tight maneuver on my 51 but I can swap them while racing as I did in my RR this weekend. The technique I used was to pull the rear bottle out and stick it in my jersey (upfront) and then swap the empty bottle from the front cage to the rear cage. I then placed the full bottle into the DT cage as there are no clearance issues there.


I also like to squeeze the bottle once it is in the cage to let air back into it. This helps to keep it from flying out. "Knock on wood," but I have yet to lose one in a race (12 and counting for this year).

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My YouTubes

That doesn't look like an AR to me.

I thin you meant to post in this thread: http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...g=felt%20ia;#5083628

I do the same even on my 61. I swap the full bottle to the down tube for easier access and also squeeze the air back into the bottles to puff them back up to prevent launching.

Also, to drink from these bottles, they don't seem to respond well to just squeezing, you do need to suck slightly at the same time to let the valve really dump fluid.

I also have about that many miles on an frd and also have a very creaky bb with a rotor 3d+ srm and the stock bearings.

So replacing the bearings is not likely to fix the creaking?

I was going to take it to myshop to try and resolve this tomorrow.

It is really quite unbearable. Especially on a bike like this. Coming from a cervelo r3 and the same crank and it was quiet as can be.

Why would this bb30 be more creaky than bbright? Have to do with the extra spacer. Anything I can do about that? An adapter is out of the question.

Superdave? Any suggestions I can take to my guys?

BEST STORE EVER!!! Love Tri Bike Run :D

To clarify, I removed the ceramic FSA unit and adapters that came with the bike and put in a wheels manufacturing angular bearing (steel) unit (BB30 to 24)...no noise. Frankly, the bearings are more outside (lateralized) so I like the engineering of this option better...probably stiffer. The only gotcha per the mechanic was it is slow and tedious to put the unit into the bike as the washers on the unit want to come out of their grooves as you tighten the unit into the frame. If one is patient, it is not an issue.

Basically left side of the bike threads together with the right side. I plan to stay with this way for my BB...not sure ceramic bearings at 100 rpm is enough to use them.....derailleur pulleys are another matter in my mind. But, I can put ceramics into this unit later as needed. Got a spare too.


http://wheelsmfg.com/...s/bb30-outboard.html


fyi only

jeff