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Old 05-26-19, 10:31 AM
  #25  
The_Joe
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Originally Posted by Road Fan

Adjusting width, height, and tilt are not the only issues in saddle selection and adjustment. The shape of the saddle and the locatin of potential pressure points can be critical.
This is something I'm now realizing. My first thoughts were: wider saddle for wide sit bones, and groove for soft tissue. At first I rode this saddle more on the nose which was obviously bad for the soft tissue. Then this started as I began sitting back further.

I should really express something that I didn't make clear in my original post. This was less about saddle suggestions and more about how a wide saddle could affect one's hips/legs. There is almost a feeling that the wide saddle, despite supporting my sit bones, was pushing my legs apart at the hip joint.

Originally Posted by Road Fan
I think I have a similar affliction. I have a few ideas, if you still have your old saddle. One is to do a quantitative comparison between your old saddle and the new one. Put the old one back on the bike, level it, set the height to what you have been using (if you can't reproduce this state of affairs, do the heel on pedal test to set the saddle height to a nearly correct point) and set the saddle as far back as possible. Measure the saddle length to find where the halfway point is, and measure the width at that point. Measure how far back from the middle of the bars it is from the middle of the saddle. Unconventional I know but i just want to compare how the two saddles fit the bike.

Write down all the numbers.

Put the new saddle back on, and do the same thing: level it, set the height, slide it back (staying level), and find the halfway point. As before measure the width at the halfway point, then measure how far back from the middle of the bars it is from the middle of the saddle. Again write down all the numbers.

What I'd be looking for is which of the two saddles can be placed far enough back to correctly locate your sitbones and satisfy your need for weight distribution, wide enough to correctly support your sitbones, and meeting those constraints, is narrow enough at the middle point of the saddle to give you clearance for your hamstrings and whatever else has been pained down there.

Also, you said your old saddle was great until you "continued to adjust it." If you do get it back into its best setup, stop and measure the height, setback from a plumb line through the BB (with a level frame), and measure the saddle uptilt (this will also tell you downtilt, lol!). Probably the best way for this last one is to put the bike on a flat floor, like a kitchen or garage floor, and measure the height of the front of the saddle above the floor and the height of the rear of the saddle above the floor.

This may seem like an unnecessary big production, but you thought enough of the problem to ask, and this process would give me the kind of information I want to be able to narrow down the range of saddle choices. I would probably have eliminated that EC90 in favor of a Brooks, that Selle Italia, a Terry, or a Toupe Gel of suitable width.

Many saddles (or their makers) tell you their width across the widest point. Few of them tell you the width across the middle, the length of the attachment area of the rails, and the location of the attachment area relative to the front or back of the saddle. We have to deal with those issues ourselves.

Sadly I no longer have the old saddle but I do have a few other options around. Next in my list is to try an old leather Belt saddle from Japan. I'm hoping it works because an old Japanese saddle on an old Japanese bike would be much better for the aesthetic.


In this process I have adjust for/aft and I have adjusted height and angle. For one short ride I rotated the saddle slightly to the left (side of the pain) and that was incredibly uncomfortable.

Since this post I have visited a doctor. They think I either have an inguinal hernia (which I doubt), some form of snapping hip syndrome, or something is torn. I'm going in for an ultrasound on Wednesday that will hopefully help me to fully recouperate so I can get to the bottom of this.

Thanks to all of you for suggestions and advice.
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