Vol,

Since you brought up the thigh angle at the top of the stroke, I git curious. In over 50 years of riding and fitting I never looked at it,or gave it any thought, except for short people where high knees affected their breathing. Saddle height has always been set off the bottom of the pedal stroke, and the top simply was what it was.

So today, on my commute home, I finally thought about it and looked. Turns out the top of my knee is just shy of the top of the saddle, so my thigh slopes down only about 20-30°, or by the thickness of my thighs. I've been riding this way for almost 50 years and 100k miles, and though they're well out of warranty, my original equipment knees have been holding up just fine.

As I posted earlier, I think your fears are misplaced because you don't apply driving force at top dead center since the foot can'tmove down. The tensor muscles are used to help bring the pedal forward by opening up the knee, but it's low force, and pedal momentum is what really achieves this without much help from my legs.

I'm posting this to help dispel any misgivings, so you'll be more comfortable (mentally) with the classic seat height methods, all of which yield very similar results.