i recently bought a hilo from wiggle (about £115 after various discounts etc) for my wife’s new trek lush which has a 31.6mm seat tube.
what i didn’t realise until the post arrived was that the 31.6mm part of the seat tube only extends down so far, after which the inside of the seat tube is tapered to an exact 30.9mm diameter (they don’t tell you that in the brochures!).
i now have a 30.9mm hilo dropper post with a cut-down use alloy 31.6mm-30.9mm shim extending about 40mm down from the top of the QR.
the moral of the story is that if you are planning to use a dropper post, make sure that the post can go in the frame far enough for your required height (not just above, but below seat collar level).
on the turner 5-spot frame i’ve just refinished, i fitted a new ks i7 supernatural post (27.2mm). to get it in the frame, i needed to hone out the inside of the seat tube using a brake cylinder hone on the end the a drill.
all good fun…
i am now running a rockshox reverb on the yeti, ks i7 on the turner and hilo on the trek… let battle commence!