Ok.
@R120 my Oneupcomponents seatpost arrived today. Unfortunately I can't fit it as the E-sommet has an internal butted ring inside the seat tube at the bottom restricting how deep I can insert the post.
I had a play with it before i realised it wouldn't fit so I'll give you a quick review from the parts I recieved though.
The post. from top to bottom:
The saddle clamp is a two bolt system with quality (what look to be stainless) steel fastening hardware, the top nuts are the recessed type you find on a lot of twin bolt saddle clamps. Bolts are pre-loctited. The saddle rail cradle is well made and easy to use. it's not far off a Reverb in design (not a bad thing) but cleverly holds the saddle at a lower stack height than other designs.
Underneath the saddle clamp lies the schraeder valve which is covered by a really nicely made and well thought out rubber bung to keep crap out.
The stanchion is shiny anodised and looks to be as good quality as a Reverb.
The wiper/dust seal is a quality garter sealed item.
The post itself has anodised markings for height but they are not numbered. instead they spell out O N E U P C O M P O N E N T S with the letters evenly spaced apart down to the MIN insertion line. looks good and it's a practical enough solution for remembering the height you prefer it at.
down towards the base of the post an external section is butted inwards and then the last cm ish goes back to the same diameter as the rest of the post. I'm not sure why they've done this. no doubt something to do with how the cartridge sits inside. The actuator is quite a clever design. instead of a lever being pulled like so many mechanical droppers. it uses a button where the cable end is fixed and it's actually the outer (ferrule) that depresses the button on the cartridge. this whole assembly is anodised green, feels very well made and is cleverly thought out. The action is very light and attaching the cable is a dawdle.
The psot raises and lowers smoothly and fairly fast with a fairly powerful top out clunk. I didn't check the Psi so this may be adjustable by altering pressure.
I ordered the SRAM Matchmaker lever. Again a quality solid piece of kit. Very lightweight. so light infact it seems like cheap plastic until you loook closely and see it's far from it.. Action is smooth in operation with a sealed bearing for the lever pivot. Only time will tell how long the bearing here will last. but it should be easily replacable when required. The lever is shorter than most so should also have a shorter throw allowing you to activate it with less of a stretch. The lever has two mounting holes for fine tuning the distance it sits relative to your grip. a nice touch as we don't all have our levers in the same position on our bars. The cable end is pinched with a decent sized grub screw which looks properly made for the job.
It comes with a length of inner and outer cable and 2 ferules.
There are no instructions in the box but they are available online should you need them. (once you've figured out how the actuator works here's really no need for instructions).
I've emailed OneUP to ask to exchange the post for a 150mm which should just fit. if not. it'll only be a few mm too long so I can shim it down.
I really don't understand why Vitus didn't ream the seattube straight through. Well. I do. it'll be to stop numpties inserting their satpost too deep and damaging the shock. A warning would have sufficed though.
Talking of the bike. My car was in the garage overnight last night so this morning I commuted to work on the Sommet. With the new tyres fitted the bike rolls so much better it's actually noticable when you exceed the motors limit on the flat. To my work it's a 10mile commute with a couple of short sharp hills and the ride normally takes me around 35mins on my roadbike not murdernig myself but putting in a fair effort. As I was riding an mtb I went off road (doubletrack, singletrack and farm roads) for the first 2 or 3 miles. The commute took 40 minutes. I knew the roadbike aws faster. The difference was I wasn't even sweaty when I arrived.
After work I had an hour and a half free while my youngest was at football training so I did a local XC loop on it too. 13.5 miles of mainly dry woodland trails (fairly flat with one technical muddy rooty loop). The new tyres have transfomed it's playfulness. the 3C were too draggy but also so grippy it was a major effort to make traction break free when I wanted the bike to drift. Now I can break traction in corners at will. in the mud/roots in boost this is sooo much fun it's unbelievable. power wheelying and drifting while pedalling is amazing fun!
I hit a small tight set of dirtjumps the local kids ride as I cut through one wood and.. .erm... Yeah.. .well.. .this bike's still shit at that... I over jumped one so had to pump hell out of the next transition to make the next gap but ended up supercasing the next landing. (I built the jump years back so didn't feel too guilty
