Originally Posted by
79pmooney
Mark your seat rails with a magic marker at the clamp. Seatpost with a piece of tape 1/4" above the top of the seattube. Lay a ruler yardstick on the seat and measure how far it is above the handlebars. Now go for a ride carrying the seat pin wrench and wrench for the saddle clamp bolts. Stop and adjust whenever you feel things aren't perfect. Keep it up until you can go for entire rides and simply feel the bike is "right". (This may bring you to realize the seat simply isn't and start the search for a new one.)
A big help here is using a seat post with two fore and aft clamp bolts, not just one. With one, you risk losing all reference whenever you loosen it to either slide the seat forward or back or adjust the tilt. With two, you loosen one, slide the eat and tighten or adjust the other exactly (say) 1/8 turn, then tighten the rear. Don't like it? Going back exactly is easy. Or go further (again, say) half that distance or wrench turn.
Thompson and Nitto both make excellent two bolt posts. A framebuilder with machining tools and skills can make you a custom using the excellent Thompson parts. (I have two big setback posts made by TiCycles with that hardware. Joys to adjust.
Every bike I get goes through this routine, Also gets ridden without handlebar tape until I have the brake levers right.
This is all great advice.
The other thing I like to do with my bikes is take a small stick of wood (something like a paint stir stick), hold it vertically against the top tube, and mark where the saddle nose touches. If you have more than one bike, be sure to label it, and also include a stem-nose measurement. I generally mark the stick at the bottom of the nose. This is useful to have as a record on a bike that's dialed in, in case the seatpost clamp loosens, you need to remove the saddle for some reason, etc. It would also be useful during your adjustment process as a reference baseline.
Generally speaking, I like to have the nose as low as possible without creating the feeling of sliding forward when the bike is ridden hands-free. In other words, essentially level, but a few mil either way can make a significant difference, as you have discovered.