Attention Brooks owners!!
 

While getting ready to get back to riding after a rest stop today I noticed the tension bolt for my B17 had fallen out. I think it had fallen out about 200 miles ago too, and the ride home wasn't much different than the ride there either. I looked on the Brooks website for a replacement and didn't find one for the B17, but I did find something that said the tension should be checked every 6 months. Guess I shouldn't have believed all the people that said to not adjust the tension to avoid over tightening it.

So now I need to replace the tension bolt and anything else that may have fallen off too. Does anyone know what the thread and pitch of bolt is? I hope it's not some weird Whitworth thread that's only available in England. What else may have fallen off?

Thanks!

"Don't fiddle with it unnecessarily" =/= "never look at it".

Exactly. I guess I was lulled into a false sense of security by enjoying the comfort of the saddle without having to worry about something else. Guess I'm going to have to ruin this one by overtightening the bolt (after I get the replacement) so I can experience the other extreme and then aim for the middle ground on the next saddle. Or just get one that needs less maintenance and can handle getting wet......

This is your tension bolt:

https://www.niagaracycle.com/categor...-bmp173-chrome

If your saddle has stretched out you may want a longer tension bolt:

https://www.niagaracycle.com/categor...-70mm-with-nut



You may also have lost the shackle clip:

https://www.niagaracycle.com/categor...17-narrow-flye


But it may be very difficult to get the tension bolt into the saddle without damaging the leather. The steel frame is rather springy, so what you need to do is attach the shackle clip and bolt, then compress the frame (push the front toward the back) until you can slip the end of the bolt into the hole in the nose piece. It is really hard to do. Really hard. Don't try to stretch the leather; it will tear before it stretches.

If you can't get the tension bolt in by compressing the frame, you'll have to remove all six rivets from the cantle plate, put the frame together with the rivets out, then re-rivet. You don't have to use Brooks rivets; 8-6 or 7-6 brake lining rivets will work.

There is US distributor , several for Brooks , My LBS got 2 complete frames , replacing them, keeping the leather.

Highly recommended. I used Brooks for 40k miles but don't even think about my saddle anymore now that I don't.

Their tension simply changes too much with changes in humidity. Also I found the workmanship/materials to be shoddy with loose rivets, bolts falling out, defects in leather, new frame rails breaking, etc.

That sound like more trouble than it's worth, especially with the prices Brooks lists for the hardware.
I got my girlfriend a Serfas saddle at REI that she just loves, that may be my best choice now.

Yeah, fair enough. Of course it also depends on the condition of the leather.

If you're not going to fix it, though, I hope you'll pass it on to someone who will. :innocent:

Just because her butt loves that saddle, and (presumably) you love her butt, doesn't mean your butt will love her saddle. Transitivity does not necessarily apply here.

I'm going to see how easy it is to bend Friday. I've been noticing how my bike seemed to flex when cornering after I put different tires on it, and I think that must be when the part fell off. If it's that easy to flex I'll try and fix it but the leather has to come off then it's time for something better.

Yep, and listening to the opinions of others about the B17 seems like it wasn't the right thing to do. She liked it from the first use, and the other saddles she tried were painful after a while.

So, did you lose the shackle clip as well as the bolt? If not, now that I think about it, you could substitute a plain bolt with two nuts, one against the nose piece, the other against the shackle clip... You wouldn't even need to bend the crap out of the frame this way. A little less elegant, but functionally the same.

I'll get back to you with details tomorrow. You'll definitely need the shackle clip, though; I can't think of a way to get by without that.

Here are a few measurements taken from Brooks bits in my parts bin. To make sense of these, you may need to refer to the photos of the parts I linked previously.

The tension bolt that comes on a B.17 is 64mm long; the one on a Professional is 70 mm long. The difference is in the plain (not threaded) section at the front; about 7 and 12 mm respectively. The bolts are 8 mm thick, except for an 11.5 mm band at the head end. The tip is a rounded bit, 8 mm wide, 3 mm long.

I'm estimating 20 tpi.

The nut is 9.5 mm long, half of it hexagonal (13.3 mm), half round (10.5 mm tapering to 10.0 mm).

The hole in the shackle clip is 10.8 mm.

If you want to make yourself a replacement tension bolt, anything with a width in the area of 8-9 mm should work. I would file the head to shape while spinning it in an electric drill. You'll also need to file half of the nut round. The rounded section of the nut is important: it protects the threads from the shackle clip.

The advantage of a home made tension bolt would be that since it doesn't have the non-threaded section at the head, it will be easier to mount in your saddle.

You will need the shackle clip, though. If you lost yours along with the bolt, you will need to replace it. I can't think of any suitable home made substitute.

Thanks, I was thinking of heading to the hardware store and trying to find a longer bolt and snug it down with a pair of nuts. Thanks for the measurements too. I think I lost the shackle clip too, this could work after a bunch of mcguyvering. Good thing I'm used to that.

Well that was interesting. I took the saddle off to get a better look at things and found that the tension bolt had become loose enough to allow the leather to be flop around, but nothing had fallen off. I tightened things up again using the official Brooks wrench I got when I got the saddle and now need to no how much is enough but too much tension.

I did try to see how much force it would take to get the frame reals to move and those parts aren't going to move without a lot of force.I'm glad I didn't need to do that!!

Cool.

It needs enough tension that it doesn't rattle. When you aren't sitting on it, that's almost no tension at all.

I had the same problem and fixed it with a hex-head carriage bolt and matching nut. One side benefit is that it is easy to assemble and tension can be adjusted much more easily.

Thanks. That's what I guessed and it felt good enough allow me to continue rebuilding the muscle tone lost over the winter.

It was kind of hard to see the underneath of the saddle while it was on the bike, and once I took it off I was able to see the parts were just loose and not lost. Thanks again for the help.

Cambium owners complained about The Rivet-bolts falling out

and read one where the rubber failed, tore, was the lighter gum , not black type.

In those cases, did Brooks step up and repair or replace?

I really like a Brooks but it turns out I like a lot of saddles and most of them cost less and, while I have found Brooks to stand up fantastic to neglect in our hellaciously rainy environment, I still feel guilty about not being a helicopter parent to them (even though there has definitely been no ill effect). So I have debrooksed all my bikes except the Pugsley with the sprung 'conquest'.

Why would one have to "helicopter parent," a Brooks saddle? I just ride on mine. I apply Proohide maybe once a year if I think about it.

My brother's Brooks, was procured on a used bike he bought in the 70s. He rode it on numerous Ragbrais, a ride from Iowa to Oklahoma, then on a ride across Oklahoma, has never done anything to it, and I do me has done nothing to it, and it is still on that same bike and is fine. I guess if that is your definition of "helicopter parent," a Brooks, then we are in complete agreement.

I took a second look at the tension this morning to make sure it wasn't too tight and saw that I really hadn't changed much at my first attempt at increasing the tension. It seems the friction holding the adjusting nut in place is greater than the friction holding the tension bolt (and mine is a lot shorter than the ones posted above) and I'd merely rotated things instead of tightening them. I did manage to get the tension bolt, adjusting nut and shackle clip to fall out when attempting to increase the tension. In attempting to put everything back together I was able to easily get the shackle clip and tension bolt in place with enough tension to get the front end of the tension bolt close to (but not in) the nose of the saddle as pictured below, but couldn't get the parts to all line up so that both ends of the tension bolt were centered in their respective holes. Is this the hard part you mentioned earlier? It seems that if I take the saddle off (again) and put it on the floor so it's upside down I could probably force everything back together before trying to hold the tension bolt with a pair of pliers so I could turn the adjusting bolt to increase the tension. It sure seems like they should have designed this better in the first place.