Something instead of a Brooks (or a Spa for that matter)

[Polar Bear]

My view is that he best way to replace a tension bolt is to dismantle the saddle and re-rivet.   By doing this you put no strain on any part of the leather or metal.

I would not be surprised if this is what they did at the factory.

It has occurred to me to buy rivets as well as tension bolts and give it a try.

[Polar Bear]

Been out again.  Oooooh yes!  I love my Flite.   

[Polar Bear]

And a black Charge Spoon has arrived in the post.   Matching it up against the Flite they are very similar in dimensions with the Charge having slightly bigger wings and also being a couple of mm wider on the nose.   It weighs 280 grams compared to the Flite weighing 240 grams.   

Having ridden the Flite a couple of times I am now tempted to stick the Charge on to see how that feels for the rides tomorrow and Friday. 



Correction:  the Flite weighs 250 grams.   Each gram of saved weight costs about £2!

Anyway, the Flite was ridden on Sunday, Tuesday and today.   The Spoon will get ridden tomorrow, Friday and Sunday.   After this I will decide which is staying on the Thorn for the foreseeable.

[Polar Bear]

For various reasons I didn't get out on Thursday and Friday which means that the Charge Spoon has yet to be tested.   Further, I now have a repaired B17.   I'm tempted to put the B17 back on for tomorrow.

The Charge may never get used.

[Polar Bear]

And I did.

Observations:

1:  A properly tensioned Brooks is as comfortable as ever.
2:  It does not creak.

I've been cogitating recently over the failure of three B17's in exactly the same way.   There have been similarities - that being that the saddle has started creaking and no amount of tensioning would stop this.   Clearly* it would appear that when my B17 creaks the tension bolt is on the way out and a replacement is required. 

*  Perhaps not statistically significant...

The Flite is consigned back to a storage box, the Spoon will be up for sale and the remaining two Brooks B17's will get the replacement tension bolt treatment.

We did 83 kms today, our longest ride of the year to date and I recorded my fastest rolling average of the year.   Clearly a mended Brooks has little or no detrimental effect on my pedaling efficiency.