What do you use on your road bikes?

Time to get a new saddle for the road bike, use bel air’s on my MTB’s and they couldn’t be comfier for me but stuck as what to put on the roadie

Ummm, sdg Bel air 2.

Have a few bel air’s love them, got a bel air 2 horrid over 30 miles been tried on 3 bikes just dont get on with it.

I don’t own a road bike

I use a Bel Air 2 on my Fatbike, Road bikes have a B17 and a Spesh Toupe 143. I’m pretty much saddle agnostic.

Fizik Antares. Fits fine.

Fizik Antares Versus

Original bell air on my road bike. Not pretty but it is comfortable.

Spesh Romin

Ti one on the road and cx.

Toupe too

25 year old San Marco rolls.

Bontrager. Paradigm rxxxl on the posh one, standard one that came one the trek 1.5

SDG Bel air 2 Ti rails on my CX stylee gravel/road bike which i really like older Bel air on my hardtail which I hate seems too wide

but saddles are very individual and depends what suits I measured the Bel air carefully to see that it matched a specialized that i bought 2nd hand off here for next to nothing and had literally worn it out

Bel Air on my MTB and a Specialized Romin Evo on my road bike- looks like an S&M device but it’s really comfy, nicely padded and supportive.

The ti. railed Bel Air RL is my favourite saddle of all time so the Bel Air 2.0 was a natural upgrade. Sadly the Bel Air 2.0 was horribly uncomfortable (the 30 or so grams it claims to have saved over the original seems to have made a massive difference).

As above thought, saddles are very personal things and what works for one doesn’t necessarily work for another.

I don’t like the new Bel Air either, so I find old knackered mk1 saddles like this….

Take them apart….

Find some nice leather

and make it into this….

The leather is way more durable than the original fabric and you can colour code the colour to your bike!

When you recover a saddle like that, it looks great obviously, but isn’t all the old padding underneath all compressed and degraded?

Doesn’t seem to be. I’ve recovered 3 of the BelAirs and they’ve been good underneath.

Doesn’t seem to be. I’ve recovered 3 of the BelAirs and they’ve been good underneath.

What’s the process of recovering the saddle? Do you need to treat the leather or soften steam it into shape?

PJay – Member

The ti. railed Bel Air RL is my favourite saddle of all time so the Bel Air 2.0 was a natural upgrade. Sadly the Bel Air 2.0 was horribly uncomfortable (the 30 or so grams it claims to have saved over the original seems to have made a massive difference).

made exactly the same experience..
and bought directly another Bel Air RL with Ti rails
from wiggles..

Didn’t do anything to the leather but the red one in the pics could probably have done with steaming as the red leather was a bit thicker than I’d normally use and was a bit of a pain to get right.

Hmm tempted to give it a go. Any advice/tips to pass on where did you get leather from? do you glue it all over?

Fizik Arione

Bel air ti on mtb and romin or aliante versus on road

Just out of interest, I’ve got a couple of old worn out ti. railed Bel Airs with perfectly good rails; I was wondering whether it’s possible to extract the ti. rails and use them to replace the cromo. rails in a standard Bel Air (the Bel Air 2.0 only seems to have replaced the ti. railed original with the cromo. ones still being made).

So that’s the appalling durability/quality of SDG saddles sorted with a bit of old leather. Now to turn our attention to the hideous creaking noise they make.

The original Bel Air, the most comfortable saddle ever, that falls apart and creaks loudly. Pity they never got it quite right.

I have Bel airs on my MTBs and Ti Fly on my CX bike which feels similar, but gives a more comfortable and accommodating feel on the road than the Bel air