New Bike Upgrade - Thudbuster ST

I know, adding weight to a road bike, sacrilege, but it's for a measure of comfort, so I thought it was worth it and it was only a net addition of ~200g. I purchased the Cane Creek Thudbuster ST -- ST for Short Travel (~1.3"), there's an LT version that has ~3" of travel. It claims you'll ride faster, longer and with less fatigue, so I plan to give it a try.

Unboxing day:

The box it came in was huge.

Once I opened it, you can see that there was a little over kill in the packing, but hey, better safe than sorry, thanks PERFORMANCE Bike.

The installation was pretty simple, the default urethane elastomer (blue), came pre-installed and was the the correct one for my weight, so I didn't have to change it. The ST comes with three urethane elastomers; grey, blue and black (the grey and black ones are on the box just to the right of the seat post in the picture below).

Getting started, here's the obligatory "before" picture, with the standard carbon seat post that came with my Specialized Tarmac.

The swapout was just a matter of removing the old seat post, changing my seat over to the new post and installing the new assembly. It took a little tweaking to get the height and level set up the way it was before, but as you can see there was plenty of length for the ST. Heck there was probably enough for the LT version.



The test ride was great, I took a route that I've travel before, it has a combination of flats and some rolling hills, and main roads and paved trail. I'd have to say that it lives up to the claim of less fatigue (not sure about faster) but I still felt pretty fresh after ~40 miles, so I could have gone longer as well.

You may want to shop around online, if you plan to buy one, but PERFORMANCE Bike had a good price (in fact they have theLT and ST versions for the same price).


Safe riding all.