Right, so i have a Giant TCR Advanced with an integrated seatpost. The post was cut to the right size for me at the time but due to an evolving riding position and recently a more toes-down technique, i now need slightly more length – which is just not possible when it’s already cut.

Giant don’t make a longer seat post clamp, and i don’t want to sell the frame as i’ll make a massive loss and it’s by far the best bike i’ve ridden to date…

…so…

I was thinking of buying myself some carbon and building my own seatpost extension (probably built directly onto a saddle). Does anyone have any experience with this? I’ve read a fair bit about building carbon parts, but i’ve not found anyone trying to make something exactly like this. Thougts would be handy before i go and spend £50 on bits to make it, only to find that it doesn’t work and i get penetrated by carbon shards 8O.

Cheers, Pete

If you’ve never built anything composite before, then my word of advice would be “don’t”. I’ve done a fair amount, yet still wouldn’t want to try something like that, where you’re not going to get the quality with a home build without access to proper (expensive) moulding stuff, and where the consequences of failure are potentially so high.

It might make more sense to have a custom seatpost clamp made up. If you can get a friendly engineer to draw it up for you, it would probably cost around £150 to get it machined up.

Incidentally, I’m an engineer and I will work for beer.

Could you try and find a saddle with slightly deeper rails? i.e. more distance between the rails and seat, might get an extra 10-15mm like that. Or longer cranks…extra 5mm minimum.

agree with Spooky here, if you haven’t made a dramatic change consider looking at deeper seats, possibly longer cranks or pedals with a lower stack height. I had a Planet X frame and had reached the max height on that seat post and used these techniques go gain about 20mm. obviously the seat rail option is best as changing crank lengths may not be desirable.

Ian

Also worth asking a question like this at Weight Weenies where not only do they know a lot more about road bikes, but there are also some folks who do make their own CF parts.

How much more length do you need?

The seat post itself has about 20mm of adjustment, buying a ‘taller’ saddle will add another 10mm ( standard SLRs are pretty flat, carbon SLRs are 10mm taller, Ariones are taller), given that you are evolving your position, have you tried moving the saddle back on the rails? -this effectively lengthens the distance from the saddle to the BB, and you could try thinner soled shoes, my Northwaves are very thin soled, my Sidis and Adidas are less so.

I reckon you can get 30-35mm more distance easily.

i thought giant (like trek. and scott) make a longer seatpost clamp, for these incase circumstances?

Toe down technique?

Out of interest, why is this? is it a technique to overcome a physiological problem? short hamstrings? Only pedaling high cadence on the flats? trying to build your thighs? bad ankles?

Do Giant not sell an extension for their seat posts? I know its possible to get some length back out of the Scott integrated stuff by using the old cut off parts of the seatpost as ‘shims’ under the seatpost clamp.. you could probably get 10mm or so from that.
Its suggested that you cut a sliver through the cross section of the removed part of the post and stack it on top on the existing post before re-attaching the clamp. Not sure if it would work in your case.

And have a look for the K-wing integrated seatpost made by FSA, I think it might fit a Giant.