Amalasuntha wrote:I'm having exactly the same problem with the seat post! I rode home in the Monday storm two weeks ago and it was such hard going I didn't realise my seat had dropped literally several inches during the ride. I have adjusted it up and I'm sure that it has slipped again. I will do as you say and clean the post.
Yep I also had this issue, on the first weekend I had the bike I did about 100km of riding only noticing, after my knees started hurting on the ride home, that my saddle had slipped down almost 2cm from where it was originally positioned. The issue is caused by the smooth seat post and seat tube, especially if there is some grease on the seat post. I spoke to Noel McFarlane from Vivente about this issue and he stressed that if the post is slipping you need to take it out and thoroughly clean BOTH the seat post and the seat tube (use a clean rag and a screwdriver to stuff it in and spin it around) with some grease cutting solvent of sorts. This fixed the issue for me straight away. The store I bought it from instead told me to use a shim from a aluminium can to make it fit tighter - this didn't work for me though and the cleaning was far easier and effective.
I don't think my original fit was great - which makes me concerned that I might have ended with the wrong size frame. However I think the biggest mistake was that I tried out the shimano pedals it came with. I think this might be what triggered the knee issue. I have swapped these over to my old Time pedals and I am not noticing knee pain during the ride - just after it now.
Off the top of my head, I'm ~178cm with ~81cm inseam. The fellow at the store fitted me to a medium VWR with STI drop bars. I've had a 'professional' bike fit done and the fitter didn't have any issues with the frame size. However we did find that the original seat post was too short, only 250mm, which meant that at the correct extension it was above the minimum inset mark. The easy solution to this was to contact Vivente and have a longer 350mm seat post sent out to remedy this. I asked the bike shop I bought the VWR from but they only had posts for sale, not to swap.
The store which assembled my bike, Quantum Bicycles, also had the head stem on a downward angle which was flipped around during my bike fit. The result was a more upright and comfortable position while sitting on the bike. From the pictures on the Vivente website it appears that the head should have been angled upright from the start as this is a touring bike, not a racing bike.
Just have to get this sorted as I love this bike.
Yeah, it's a really nice bike. I've been smashing it along all sorts of bumpy roads and forest trails in the area and it has handled it very well. It's nice to have such a tough, versatile and capable bike.
Look forward to reading more about your trip on your blog when you get back.
I will be doing some big review updates and new articles once I get back to Australia and settled in. So stay tuned.