Sunday Morning ... and a new seat-pin

Slowly the temperature at ride time is rising above 40F/5C, which means I have no further excuse to delay getting on the bike and ride. Not that I really need an excuse not to ride  ... but I hate the cold. It must be my age.

The Sourlands

Anyway, the ride wasn't that far, about 25 miles / 40 km, but, like my previous road effort this year, hilly. I can't really ride north of here without getting into the Sourlands, and that's a good thing.

The ride got off to a shaky start; I've had a nasty cold. So the first couple of steep bits saw me wheezing and coughing, but once that was over, things weren't too bad.

On the whole ride I must have seen six cars and even fewer cyclists. So it was very quiet.

There was an upgrade to my bike though. I've fitted a full-carbon seat-pin. This did provide a better ride. I was careful measuring the position of the old seat-pin/saddle combination; centre of crank to top of seat and nose of saddle to steerer and first attempt seems to be a pretty good fit.

The seat-pin, a fizik Cyrano - why? - has a device for adjusting the angle of the seat microscopically and a rubber O-ring which I assume helps prevent moisture and grime seeping into the seat-tube.


I didn't want to over-stress the pin - carbon is sensitive to crush forces - so I set all bolts and screws using a miniature torque wrench. As usual half the recommended settings were in units other than indicated on the wrench itself, so I found this page useful.

I used bike grease on the micro-adjusting screw to, hopefully, keep the thread running free and Fiber Grip on the seat-pin/seat-tube to:

1. prevent it sticking
2. hold it firmly without slipping

Next Sunday isn't looking so good at the moment, so who knows when I'll be riding again.