Seat post for steel touring frame

kevbcp

Can anyone recommend a good seat post for a steel touring frame? I am most concerned about getting the material right as I have read that alloy seat posts can fuse to the steel frame. I was looking at the Thomson Elite Setback seat post but this is alloy so I am not sure...

Also, how do I know which length to buy? I know the width is 27.2mm, but this shows a choice of lengths too...

Advice much appreciated : )

Kev

cycladelic

Alloy will be fine. Just apply some grease before fitting it.

What length do you have now? Just get the same. Or you could buy a longer one and saw the unwanted bottom part off.

Tourist Tony

I used a good lithium grease (Pedro's) and an Easton seat post on my Galaxy. No problems.

If I had a stalker, I would hug it and kiss it and call it George...or Dick

kevbcp

Thanks for the advice, I will get an alloy post and grease it up before I fit it : )

Cycladelic: That would work but I bought the frame with no post : ) Any ideas now?

Kev

andrew_s

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by kevb</i>

Thanks for the advice, I will get an alloy post and grease it up before I fit it : )

Cycladelic: That would work but I bought the frame with no post : ) Any ideas now?

Kev
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
You should take the post out and clean and regrease on occasion (annually?)

A black anodised alloy seatpost will be less likely to corrode in place than a polished silver one.

Uncle Phil

Length: You want a seat post that's long enough to allow you to get the saddle at the right height with five or six inches left inside the frame. If you haven't yet built the bike up, well, you can estimate this length, or, you're unlikely to have too long a seat post, so you could just buy the longest you can find.

Adjust it so that you're comfy on the bike, and then, if you want to save weight, you can simply cut off everything that's hidden inside the frame except for five or six inches.

The only other reason not to have one that's too long is if you have bottle bosses on the frame's seat tube. These will stop the seat post sliding right down inside a very small frame. We had to cut down Mrs Uncle Phil's bike's seat post so she could get it low enough for this reason.

Beware of fluted seatposts where the grooves extend down inside the frame. They're a great way of channelling water to just where you con't want it!

The grease advice is good.

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot
Nothing is going to get better. It's not"
- Dr Seuss

Give Baby Elephants Room!

Uncle Phil

The Thomson seatposts you linked to aren't straight: they have a bend in them to get the saddle further back thean it would be on a straight seatpost. I wonder if this makes the length thing more complicated? - you have a choice of both angle of bend and length. Some of this length must be above the bend. To get this sort of seat post length/angle just right, you probably have to try it out.

Unless you know before you've built the bike up that you'll need this sort of seat post (which probably means your frame's a bit small for you?), why not stick with a straight one? Why make life more complicated?

In any case œ60 for a seatpost is a bit sledgehammer-to-crack-a-nut unless you really need something high tech. Why not go for one of these?

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot
Nothing is going to get better. It's not"
- Dr Seuss

Give Baby Elephants Room!