Any recommendations as to a general life expectancy of a saddle - 1 year, 5 years?? I have a specialized avatar gel saddle that is beginning to give me some discomfort after two full seasons now. I’m not sure if this is due to the saddle going bad or the fact that I could use some new shorts. If I’m beyond the usable life of the saddle, that’s much easier to replace than 4-5 pair of bib shorts.
thanks
Barry
I have some saddles that are >10 yrs old with 1000’s of miles (I’m sure there are others with even more). My favorite saddle is the plain ol’ Selle Italia Flite (no gel, no embroidery, nada…). Not a whole lot to go “bad” in a simple saddle like this except maybe the TI rails and even then it would be a catastrophic failure more than wearing out.
Now your avatar is quite the opposite and has a lot of junk in the trunk (cutout, gel, embroidery, center channel, etc.). I’m not gel materials expert which makes me ideally suited to comment in ST… Perhaps the gel has “flattened out” and has lost some of it’s viscosity? Why not just buy another pair of bibs to disprove the theory.