Hi guys,

Got a B 17 a 10 days ago for my new stock LHT. It really was pretty comfy from the start but in the last 3 rides I have noticed that the left side is really painful for the first 6-7km. After that, the pain disappears and its a wonderful saddle for even a 5 hour ride.

I then noticed that the saddle has a slight left side up tilt, and this does not seem correctable with the existing Kalloy seatpost. The seatpost clamp seems pretty lousy for any adjustments anyway. Is it known to be a bad seat post?

Do you think this left side higher than the right is a seat post issue? Or is it that the Brooks is breaking in to this shape [with a tilt]?

I have done about 900 km on it till date.

PITA problem. It could be two separate issues. Do you have any way of knowing if the uptilt on the left side is the root of your pain problems?

Speedo

Is it the metal frame that's tilted, or just the leather?

10 days is a pretty quick time for a Brooks break in, but it's totally possible that your sit bones are lopsided. My brooks has a pretty big dip on the right side simply because my right sit bone is bigger/pointier and when it the saddle was getting broken in, it molded to my body.

You've ridden 900 km in ten days ?

Whats amazing is that it is so painful for the first 10km and the remaining 90+, its like the best saddle that I have ridden ever [admittedly only 4].

I'm pretty heavy and the sit bone impressions started forming by about 500km.

YUP :-) 895 to be precise, with 4 metric centuries. Was actually 850 yesterday when I posted. Also, its about 15 days not 10. BTW - love your signature.

Good news. I realized that the after the first few comfortable rides, I had put the nose a wee bit up, as I was slipping a lot with cycling bibs. I corrected that, and voila - todays ride was pain free.

Still, since small adjustments seem to make such a great difference in comfort, I'm planning on getting the Velo-Orange 30mm setback seatpost. Reputedly easier to make micro adjustments? Any experiences?

I had to return (Nashbar, I think) a B17 for the same reason. One side was higher than the other, and the nose curved slightly to the left. New one was fine. I spent a lot of time trying to adjust things, before someone on a group ride said "Hey, how come your saddle is bent?"

I've had a similar problem with a b-17 and with 2 velo-orange saddles - if frame rails were parallel, then the top surface of the saddle was canted off to one side. This caused me some pain with the b-17 before I noticed it, and I caught it early with the VO saddles. The last VO (last one I'll buy too) I tried bending the saddle while clamped to the seat post - I was able to do this to get the surface of the saddle flat, but then the rails weren't parallel to each other, and I was concerned that there could be structural issues in the future. Simple quality control issue that's hard to spot unless the saddle is mounted.