Monday, March 12, 2012

Dremelizing the Seat Thingy

Okay, so I busted out the Dremelizer to try and see if I could make the Dedacciai Corto seat thingy work with the Selle Italia Flight Gel Flow seat.
As I showed you, the reader, yesterday, it is not a very good combination:



The flex of the saddle is causing the low hanging sides come in contact with the rail clamps.
Actually this isn't a Deda specific problem, as other seat posts have this type of clamping mechanism, and I suppose it depends on where you clamp the seat as if the seat was further forwards you wouldn't have this problem.
Anyways, this is what the clamp looks like, along with the earlier modification I made:



You can see the rather hard edge on the original clamp thingy, and the area I softened up on my first pass with the Dremelizer. The exposed area is where the saddle edge was making contact.
This time around my goal was to remove more material to create a larger area so that the edge of the clamp wouldn't bite into the saddle.
Out came the ole Dremelizer:



That small little block I think is silica carbide, it's used to clean the bullet thingy when it gets all clogged with aluminium.
So anyways, a Dremelizing I went:




Of course I didn't leave it looking like that!
A bit o'nail polish and voila!



Just like from the factory!
Sort of.
Unfortunately I am not able to show you how the modification works as my camera batteries just died, but trust me, it looks better.
If it doesn't work, I have two alternatives.
Change the saddle, or change the seat post thingy.
I like the saddle so far, so I went looking for another seat post thingy.
There aren't too many aftermarket seat post thingys floating around, but I did find this:



As you can see, the rail clamps on the Ritchey Seat Mast Topper are different and they look like it would solve my problem.
I guess I'll go out for a ride and see if what I did works before changing it out.
I may just change it out anyways as the Dedacciai Corto thingy is a boat anchor and now I'm officially a Weight Weenie.
Kinda sorta.

4 comments:

Tracy W said...

Well, I have heard that true weight weenies will get out a dremel and shave off unneeded corners of things in an attempt to save a gram....

limom said...

I was looking at the seat clamp thingy and had to resist the impulse to haul out the drill press.

rlove2bike said...

Good job on the seat thingy. My teenage daughter had/has a wide selection of nail polish and several times I have used them...for projects, Not my nails!

Thanks for the post!

limom said...

The woman at the store asked me if I was touching up my car.
I guess there's a secondary market for nail polish.