Evening

Mrs B fancies a dropper post but her 2013 Trek Lush doesn’t have any cable Routing for one (internal, stealth or external) and she doesn’t fancy the aesthetics of cable tying the remote cable to the top tube.

Has anyone used any dropper post type that doesn’t have a bar mounted remote? Xfusion HiLo or similar? Are they any good? Worth getting / using?

Crap and annoying, I have a remote and lever post, might get round to using the lever on the XC bike as it’s either up or down but for trail remote all the way. Getting prissy over cables is not a good enough reason to go lever

You can get wee cable guides that clip onto another cable (reverbs come with them). They work well, and are a much much better idea than not having a remote

Been using a XFusion with the underseat lever for over a year now.

Works well (with an element of forward planning) and no cable maintenance needed, nor a remote to break.

I used to have a KS with a lever and it was good, but switching to a remote was a big difference again. There are other cable management options like stick on guides or clipping it to other cables for neatness which I’d definitely recommend over limiting the usefulness of the post.

try to grab your crotch with one hand as you ride across rough and unfamiliar terrain – that is what a seat lever is like
Not much use IME swapped after about 5 rides

Decent if with mates who stop to lower as you stop – then again you may as well just do your QR if you stop

Would not buy a non remote one personally

FWIW i swap my GD between bikes and tuck the cable between the loop for the front mech and the frame
IMHO if you are worried about the aesthetics of a bike then you have your priorities all wrong. It should make the riding be more fun not the bike look nicer.

Down tube shifters used to work but they’re so much easier on your bars. Same deal with droppers. Given the choice of finding a way to fit a remote or going for a seat lever I know what I’d do.

My first was non remote. Never again.

As above cabling isn’t enough of a reason.

No remote = useless.

Not quite useless but much less usey. My gravity dropper was a lever version initially, it was sometimes handy but mostly it made me think “Wow, this’d be great if it had a remote”. Luckily it was a convertible.

QR seat clamp? 😛

Might not be a comment for the missus but it’s like when you love from solo sexy time to somebody else present. It just makes sense

Cable tie it to one of the cables that runs down the top of the down tube and then run it up the seat tube. If you put it on the inside and use small cable ties it’ll be completely hidden. Don’t get one without a remote, not quite a waste of time but almost!

solo sexy time

See above – Junky grabbing his crotch.

#strangest

Everyone I know who has used a non remote post now uses a remote. Make of that what you will. Do they even make them without anymore?

You can use Thomson posts without the cable.

I used to like my xfusion dropper with the under saddle lever. Nice clean lines on the singlespeed, easily swappable between bikes is a big advantage. Only use the remote now as the lever fell off somewhere in France.
dont get the no remote=useless thing.

Another advantage is when it inevitably starts to break, your hands in the right place to assist the saddle back up.

+1 for no remote: I’ve been using one for a few years with just the lever. It works well IMO.

The KS Dropzone is available without remote. You can buy one without and then upgrade it to the remote later on, I believe, if you want to.

dont get the no remote=useless thing.

On a typical ride, I must use the dropper dozens of times. I have no wish to remove my hand from the bars dozens of times, especially coming into something steep techy. Simples.

So, no remote = useless to you. Fair enough.

Yip, just my opinion mate.

OP – You are the bike expert in the house. Tell her that she is wrong! 😡

Remote is the only way to go IMO. I have 2 KS Lev droppers, and both cables are ziptied to other lines on the bike w/no problems.

Thanks all for the comments.

Personally, I wouldn’t go for a non remote dropper. I only have a dropper on my full suss which has stealth routing. I can kind of understand her concerns about aesthetics though as the Trek Lush top tube routing is internal so dropper remote routing would need to be cable tied in place which would look a bit naff.

Anyway, it’s her bike so her choice. Your opinions may help the decision though.

Cheers

I run my Thompson without the remote – still way quicker than getting off, wrestling with a q/r clamp, adjusting saddle, trying to get it straight again, etc.

Cable remote is also just another thing to try and keep working through the winter.

Got a reverb on another bike (obviously with the remote still) – the ability to tweak saddle height without removing hands from the bars is nice but something I rarely do (for me anyway!) – saddle ends up fully down, fully up or at ‘woods height’.

So, extra benefit from having a remote seems to be relatively small compared with having the dropper in the first place.

Used my HiLo with and without the Remote and I’d never go back to the lever under the seat, it works but it’s not particularly convenient, the last thing you really want to be doing on the approach to something a bit tasty is making a grab for your crotch…

I’m sure she could put up with a couple of unsightly zip ties for the sake of having a more useable dropper…

See, I change mine in the woods, often, not just before and after, but I suspect it depends a lot on where you ride. I wouldn’t be without a remote. I can accept that need varies based on that, but aesthetics are for people who should have bought a road bike (I’d put a winking smiley here if I didn’t half mean it).

Thing is I find that having a dropper post fundamentally changes the way you ride a bike. It’s not just ‘I’ll drop the seat just before I hit this steep drop’. I find I use the dropper in tight singletrack sections where you can get that much lower and faster into corners. Power into the corner with seat up just before you hit the corner, drop the seat, rail the corner and power out whilst you hit the seat post return button, feeling smugand repeat. This wouldn’ be possible without a remote.

We live / ride mostly around the Chilterns so it’s not particularly technical. Never bother riding full suss around here (usually ride fully rigid single speed), and don’t have a dropper on any of the bikes I would ride around here.

I only put a dropper on my full suss last year and that only gets used for trips away (trail centres, Alps, anything likely to be more technical than local riding). So really she’d only be using a dropper in the same circumstances. I do enjoy the ability to drop/raise on the fly when out on technical trails so no argument from me that a remote is “better”. Pros and cons and personal preference and all that. I’ll leave it to Er Indoors to decide what she wants to do.

Cheers

I’d say it’s more useful on the local stuff than in the Alps for me.

^^This. It’s not about long ups and downs. It’s about the undulating trails with patches of flowy stuff, and rock gardens, and everything else inbetween.

Yeah, I broke mine in the alps one year in a crash, really didn’t make a lot of difference, and trail centres tend to be mostly up or mostly down in a section. It’s normal, naturalish riding where you might ride half a mile and have a 20 foot techy section, or just have undulating trails, or flat bits with a fun root to jump off- Basically anything when it’s neither one thing nor t’other.

As I said, personal preference. For me there is no need to change my seatpost height for anything I ride locally. It’s just the way I’m used to riding.

It’s not so much ‘need’. I could get round my local trails with the seat post jammed all the way up or down. The dropper has changed the way I ride. I can have it all the way up the road bits and fast flats to save my knees. Keep it fairly high for linking bits knowing I can instantly drop it if it gets tighter or rougher. It’s vastly improved my body positioning for corners and short tech bits. I now go looking for challenging lines rather than just getting past them.