seat molding breaking

Looks like I have not visited this forum for some time…
But, I have interesting thing to share! ))

Apparently, the weight of my butt multiplied by the number of all those potholes, that I had encountered, has done its job:

So, this has to be replaced of course, but I think that the design of the molding is not optimal - too much weight is supported by those little ‘wings’…

Hey that is to bad, I have not seen that happen before. I have a couple of thoughts, the saddle is positioned as far back as it can go almost, I do the same with mine. That will put more pressure on the parts that broke. Was the bolt tight? The tighter the bolt the less strain on those two parts I think!

Bill

This is usually due to:
a) Over tightening the M8 seat bolt (which puts additional stress on the plastic).
b) Rails pushed too far forward or back so that the bends in then dig too hard into the plastic
c) Wrong saddle - with angled of too big rails
d) Mk1 seat mounting which has more brittle acetal (cf later Nylon).

I don’t know what was the tightening torque, because I hadn’t had a torque wrench when I bought strida.
It UNscrewed with the approximate torque of 16-20 Nm.

As for the the saddle being moved too far back - well, sure it puts more stress on that part, but I assume that it is ok if I don’t move it too far (i.e. if that clamp is still on the horizontal part of the railings, then it should be ok).

Other things - both saddle and molding are the original ones of strida 5.2, so c) and d) does not apply.

Probably I should consider buying bent handlebars along with the new seat molding, because knees touching the straight handlebars was what forced me to move the saddle backwards.

I’m only 182cm tall, so that seemed unnecessary…

Ok, now I have a new seat molding (big thanks to BlackStridaAustria!)!

I have moved the saddle forward as much as possible to prevent such breaking in future.
Interestingly, strida manual does not provide tightening torque for regular (non-QR) seat molding saddle bolt, only for the QR one (25-35Nm), but I think that both are built from pretty much the same material, so I used 30Nm to tighten.

As for the knees clearance - I’ve inverted the eccentric bottom bracket as described here. Knees still touch handlebars, but don’t bump into them. So, it seems to be fine even with flat handlebars (will try those later).

Ah, no - that must mean “Thanks to Vanmoof” because they sponsored the molding a couple of days ago :laughing:

Well, I do also believe that the QRS torque should be OK for the older molding.

However; flat or bent - have a safe ride :wink: