Butchering my Brooks B67 saddle

 Here's the result of that butchering -

and here's the story behind it -

I haven't ridden my Koga much this year, owing to the Brooks saddle becoming uncomfortable again. When I first had it, once I had got the tilt and height correct for me, it was extremely comfortable, and I could ride long distances on it without needing any padded underwear. Then I had some trouble with it last year when it became very uncomfortable, and also creaked a lot, and on that occasion tensioning resolved both issues. Did it now need more tensioning? I tightened it up a small amount while it was on the bike, but it didn't really help. I was a bit mystified as the change seemed quite extreme. I had read one or two cases of people finding their Brooks saddles uncomfortable after having been comfortable, so thought that perhaps I was unusual in this, but maybe not unique.

I decided to take the saddle off, and have a good look at it to see if I could see any reason why it might have changed. Amongst other things I found that underneath it wasn't quite symmetrical, and that the tensioning bolt didn't run parallel to to the rails, but I couldn't see why this would affect it now and not have done in the past, unless perhaps the extra tensioning that it seemed to need now just wasn't happening due to this. I had tightened the nut quite a lot more  and tried it out again, but although the creaking was much improved, probably due to my having given the saddle clamp and seat post a good wipe (though they weren't very dirty) it was still uncomfortable.

Tension bolt not parallel to rails

I should explain that the discomfort was at the front of me (that's quite enough explanation...). At the back under my sit bones was fine. Another important thing to take into account was that the saddle on my Trek, which I have had for years, was also not quite as comfortable as it had been, so I was beginning to think that maybe it was me and not my saddle that had changed. So I started to look online at saddles with cut-outs, thinking that this was what I probably needed. In the end I bought this Bontrager one from my local bike shop, as it was only £20, had good reviews online and I knew I could get a refund after 30 days if I didn't like it -

Bontrager saddle

According to the width measurement, 167mm, it wasn't as wide as I needed, but with the 30 day comfort guarantee I thought I might as well try it. As it turned out, it was surprisingly comfortable, but in the process of tightening the two bolts, which I should add I had always found very fiddly compared to adjusting the saddle on my Trek, which has one bolt, I managed to break one of the washers, although I didn't realize what I'd done until I went to adjust it more - 

Broken washer and underside of seatpost

I contacted Cyclesense where I bought the bike and asked if it was possible to get new washers. The answer was no, and the only solution was to buy a whole new seat post, for £30. That seems to be the case with a lot of things these days - you can't get a tiny replacement part for something and have to buy a whole new one. My local bike shop hadn't got any similar washers either. However, Husband is very handy and cleverly managed to fix the saddle back on by using a different washer and a bit of wood. Very Heath Robinson. It worked, but although I had made sure it was in the right position before he finally fixed it in place, I could no longer make any adjustments to it at all should I want to, or swap the saddle again, without having to ask Husband's help again. Although this new saddle was pretty comfortable - and on the whole I'd recommend it - I knew the Brooks was more comfortable under my sit bones. I really sit "in" the Brooks, rather than on it, which someone somewhere on the net said was what you should be doing. Maybe, maybe not! Not all experts agree, as we have all been finding lately.....

After some more weeks of thinking (slow thinking is good sometimes...) I wondered what I would now do with the Brooks saddle. Sell it? Probably hardly worth the bother. Keep it and maybe try it again at some point in the future? Or - have a go at butchering it, which I knew some people had done? I really wanted it back on my bike, for the comfort under my sit bones, so I thought I might as well go for the latter, and after reading anything I could find on the subject (not a lot to be honest) I got out my Stanley knife..... I made a stencil of the cut-out bit on the Bontrager saddle, drew inside it on the Brooks, and then began to slowly cut through the leather.

Just in case you're wondering, Husband had written "Haven't seen cat"

I was expecting the cutting to be difficult, but it was quite easy. Once done I skived off bits to make sure it wasn't too rough. I did a bit of filing as well using the emery board (I'm not a nail filer - it came with  corn removing stuff!!) and the grater that came with a tool kit -

After this photo was taken I did enlarge the cut-out slightly at the front.

Now I had to try it out, which of course I couldn't do on the Koga, so I put it on my Trek. I did a bit of riding up and down the road, and it seemed pretty comfortable, so a few days later I rode it a few miles. Still seemed good, so after another few days I rode it about 14 miles to go shopping, adding on more miles to give it a better trial. I also altered both the height and tilt of the saddle en route. I was very pleased! The next step was - put it on the Koga..... but to do this I'd have to ask Husband to go through his Heath Robinson thing again, and I wouldn't then be able to adjust the saddle further. I decided then to bite the bullet and buy a new seat post, not the £30 one from Cyclesense but a Bontrager one I had looked at earlier in the year (£22) but which I had decided against partly because it did not have as much setback as the Koga one. This was important to me as I had had the Brooks set back as far as it would go and even that at times didn't seem enough - a common problem with Brooks saddles owing to their short rails, and the position of them on the saddle. I looked at seatposts online with more setback but there wasn't one that would fit my bike (31.6mm). However, knowing that I had possibly not had the saddle as high as I needed it, which would give me more set back - as you raise the saddle, it goes back further -  I decided to buy it and hope for the best. Here it is back on the Koga, higher than it was previously -

It actually makes adjusting it easier, as you can see what you're doing from the top -

Note the trendsetting combination of Keen sandals, socks, and rolled up jeans...

I rode it up and down near our house and am now pretty confident that all will be well. That's as much as I can say at present as I haven't been able to ride it more this week as my lovely little granddaughter kindly gave me a present of a cold last weekend, since when I have done very little, but am now on the mend and am looking forward to trying out the saddle properly.

Just for comparison, here is the Bontrager saddle on top of the Brooks -

Actually, now I come to look at them both, there doesn't seem to be much difference in the length of the rails, but if you imagine that the Bontrager saddle were set as far back as it would go according to the rail markings, then you can see that the rider would be sitting further back on the bike.. It's not just the rail length that counts, but the position of them on the saddle.

So hopefully I have now got an improved version of my Brooks saddle! I wonder why Brooks don't make a version of the B67 with a cut-out as they do of some of their other models? If this really works for me then I'll suggest it to them.

I would love to hear of anyone else's experiences and opinions of butchering their Brooks, so if you have any please let me know in the comments!

And here, for your delight and delectation, as they used to say on some old TV programme, is another little bike bag I made from a rucksack I got from Freegle. Not at all waterproof, but useful on dry days! I might try a waterproof version.

 

Wellgo LU987B pedals, and update on the Brooks B67 saddle

 As followers of this blog will know, I have two bikes, a Trek mixte which is at least 20 years old, and a Koga Traveller, which I bought last year. I had never even given a thought to the pedals on the Trek, which shows that they suited me fine.  These are the ones -

(That is the garage floor, not carpet....)

They are still giving excellent service, although now that I come to examine them more closely they are definitely showing signs of wear. They measure 110mm (across from where the pedal buts up to the crank) x 78mm  (call that depth).

The pedals that came with the Koga are these -

They are Koga Sole Mate pedals, and currently cost £38 at Cyclesense, where I bought the bike. They measure 95 x 88mm, so are considerably narrower than the Trek pedals, and not as deep.

I did notice a difference in the feel of these pedals, regarding how stable I felt on the bike, so I changed them. I had hoped to find something very like the ones on my Trek, but couldn't find anything when I searched online. (I also discovered that there was a huge variety of types of pedal, which, as usual when I start thinking about buying something new for my bike, meant the search took me ages as there was so much to learn!! "A whole new world......" as the song says.) All of what I would call the "normal" pedals, even ones labelled as touring pedals, and whatever the price, were narrower. I then decided to see what my local bike shop had, as for all the advantages of the internet there is nothing quite like seeing products in the flesh. I took the measurements of the Trek pedals with me and as these el cheapo Raleigh (but made by Wellgo) pedals matched up fairly well I bought them -

The measurement from the crank was 110mm across, the same as the Trek ones, so I thought they'd be fine. Local bike shop comes up trumps again, I thought. However, as you can see, they have rounded corners, and get narrower from the inside edge to the outer edge, and this made a big difference in how they felt under my feet, compared to the Trek ones. I just felt they weren't big enough. 

Some time later I came to the conclusion that they gave little advantage over the Koga ones size wise, so I thought I might as well be vain and have the more expensive looking ones back on the bike! But I really wasn't happy with them, and when one day not long afterwards I rode the bike in the rain and found that my feet were slipping so much that I only just managed to get where I was going a few miles away, I thought that there just must be something better and started looking again. Perhaps this was the first time I'd ridden this bike in the rain, as I certainly hadn't noticed this slipping before. That made me think I really needed to get some that were bigger and also more grippy.

So, after searching once again on the internet, I came across this blog post by  The Everyday Cyclist. where he reviews the Wellgo LU987. Combined with other reading that convinced me to try some. Here they are -

They are Wellgo LU987B flat pedals. I can't remember what the differences are between the LU987, or the LU 987U, and these, but suffice it to say that I am very happy with my purchase.

Husband had a little bit of a mock, as he thinks I have changed quite a lot of things on my Koga, and doesn't quite get why....... He has changed nothing on his beloved mountain bike since he bought it over the internet from Germany, whilst I have changed the handlebars, the saddle, and now the pedals, on this bike. However, like a boy with his toys, he was very keen to put them on for me once they came, so I let him even though this is one of the things I have learnt to do. 

What a difference!!! These pedals have made a HUGE difference. When I was on my 5 day trip back at the end of June, I was so glad I had bought these pedals. I feel much more stable on them due to the increased size and the fact that they are more grippy. The size is 112mm across x 104mm depth, so they are in fact only 2mm wider than my Trek pedals but are quite a bit deeper. Interestingly, I bought them where the link takes you at £17.75, but they can cost much more elsewhere, e.g. £29.99 at SJS Cycles. I don't know why I didn't buy the very similar, and cheaper, Wellgo LU987U model although it was possibly because it might not have been available in black at the time. 

It occurred to me during my research that logically foot size must make a difference to what size pedal people prefer - one size cannot fit all - and then lo and behold I find that there are such things as size specific pedals, where you can get the model of pedal you want in more than one size, although they are pretty expensive. Incidentally my own feet are UK size 7 and narrow. Both length and width of foot will make a difference.

Brooks saddle update

So, a happy ending to the pedal tale, despite Husband's mocking. The Brooks saddle tale (I'm sure there's a pun in there!) is also going along very happily indeed. I have now ridden 408.13 miles on it (for a while I gave up such preciseness and started rounding my mileages up or down but then I thought - no, why should I? If I want to be precise I will!). When researching them someone said you needed to do 600 miles to break one in so I'm roughly two thirds of the way there, but actually other people say that they are comfortable from the word go and just get better. I would say that mine was uncomfortable at the beginning, but it didn't take long to get much better once I'd got the position correct for me, and it is now indeed getting better and better.

On my June trip, I rode for 4 days out of the 5, doing about 35 - 45 miles a day, during very hot weather, and I only wore padded undershorts for one of those days. I recently did a 51.74 mile day trip and again did not wear padded undershorts.  I keep looking for dips where my sit bones go, and although I can't really see any yet I think that it has flattened out slightly.