last week milan san ramo was won with a dropper post
but it's a road race a dropper post is a mountain bike thing isn't it
so a dropper post is a seat post that drops and most of them look a bit like this this is an
externally rooted corjac i think it's called by pro and basically you put this in your bike you
connect a cable from this part here all the way to your handlebars and then when you press the lever
and you're sitting on the saddle your weight pushes it down there's usually an air spring
inside these they're pretty reliable you can get different amounts of drop so this one's actually
quite short i think it's like 100 mil whereas ones that you'd get on like enduro mountain
bikes would be twice as much as this so you can get your saddle really low the benefits
of getting your saddle lower is the lower center of gravity and the lower center of gravity means
you've got more control you can move your weight around a bit better on the bike without the saddle
getting in the way and you can get your weight back without having to go behind the saddle
when you're descending which means there's no weight in your front wheel and then you don't
have as much control so in the mountain bike world and off-road cycling world these have
become very popular you very rarely however see these used on a road bike but in recent times
we've been seeing them used on road bikes in an aid to get more aerodynamic when you're
going down descents now until recently it was legal to do what is called the super tuck on
zwift so essentially sitting on your top tube in as much of an aerodynamic position as you
can possibly get in which means you're not sat on the saddle at all and the uci the governing
body that dictate all of the rules around pro cycling currently banned it because essentially
people were trying to copy it copy what the pros were doing because it came increasingly popular
in road races and they i guess thought people were going to have accidents so the latest example of
this was in milan san romo last week but it has been done before i remember spotting this photo
years ago which i think is of ivan basso's bike and he was using a pretty funky looking dropper
post all the way back then now i found this photo in an article which was actually from 2011 which
i'll uh link down below so it really was quite a while ago where i just started using it i don't
know if the super tuck was that popular back then though i think i've only got two examples
of dropper posts here in the studio but backyard bike shop has a lot more so let's go over there
you want to see the beauty of titanium the beauty of titanium yes my bag has completely
scratched my frame and with the help of the miracle sauce from the gt85 or kitchen sponge
bit of elbow grease
obviously i have to put a disclaimer in here do not do this on a painted frame
or an alloy frame or a steel frame because you will sorely regret it what a wiping look at that
it's actually like new almost as good as new and that's kids that's why you
want titanium guess you could work on it for even longer and get it like back to
oh yeah you mean you can get like that actually jk makes a squash bright um which is the exact
same grain as what they used to get the finish i mean like you'd have to go finer and finer
so here's someone a lot more qualified than me to talk about dropper posts
because nick claims we had an argument about this he claims he was the first person in the world to
do dropper posts on road bikes it's a lie it's just a lie that's the first time i solved so
obviously it has to be true the first one i saw was even basso when they were riding for liquid
gas it might have been nebali anyway i think the liquid gas team were the first ones to do
it years ago and then they're green cannondales and they had dropper posts ugly dropper posts
what do you mean i'll send you the proof yeah i mean like i told him about it
two thousand four you don't know even better i'll give you some proof later
it does work though i've been running it on my road bike for quite a bit um and it's just nice
because the super attack obviously has been banned but not for you it's been banned from people in
uci races it's much safer to do with the drop of post i would agree with that yeah and yeah um
if also i mean the extra weight that adds quite a bit of weight but if i was to go on a holiday
to the alps or somewhere like that definitely i wouldn't go with that it would be fun yeah
yeah what's that one wireless so drop-off biggest problem with them is that's a massive
[ __ ] on trying to fit one because you have to root all the cables through the cable stretch
some of them are probably you have to get drop bar levers because the mountain mic levers
work quite well but it's a completely different lever for your road bikes
where sram's invented the wireless dropper excessive excessive price yeah excessive looks
but it's cool it's cool though i'm not i'm not denying it's not cool 750 quid
they've released a new one that fits in all by 27.2 as well which is 500 pounds bargain
but it's just ease of use also because i run tram rate got a spare battery on the driver
post a few times my actual shifters i forgot to charge them real max died take the battery
out of my dropper stick it on there jobs are good but to show you how easy it is to swap
how do you make it work just to clarify this is the premium the most premium option
of the rockshox ones which are wireless and really expensive that i think the cheaper one is 500
pounds and that's the one that doesn't come with a remote which you can use with an existing light
sram system so you can because it's a wireless isn't it the mountain bike one is more expensive
because it comes with a dedicated lever because when you've got mountain bike handlebars it's not
the same like a system for changing it but the 501 good one is nicer it's explore version what
they've done is obviously can fit into normal road bikes because 27.2 but also if you were to
drop the you can stop at any point so you can change the saddle height if you want to but if
you drop it by a couple of millimeters and stop it over there it uh acts as active suspension
so when you hit bumps and things like that the actual saddle will go up and down
doesn't do it does that one let you drop it halfway though yes because that's quite
important but it doesn't have the suspension when you've dropped it so with the 500 quid the
explore range which i've made for gravel if you do that one and you drop it a tiniest little bit
um after that you've got a better suspension so it acts like explaining the seat post as well
there are tons of other options on the market like the ks or kind shock one that i bought was 150
pounds and that actually weighs the same as this rock chucks one but it does have a cable so you
have to root it all through your frame it doesn't look as nice and it's not like a nice feeling but
it is a lot cheaper it's a lot cheaper you can get one of them with the lever for drop bars from
about 150 quid yeah it's just like a thumbnail it works really well that's a decent price
mark and lucas and all of them running with us they all have the case version yeah it's good i
mean we've haven't had any issues you go slightly more premium i've got a carbon ks one which is a
little bit more expensive on my mountain bike at the moment uh which is one you saw on the clips
this morning and if you want to go even cheaper i think brand x which is planet x's brand i think
that's actually do they own it i don't know brand x anyway they're the they seem to be the cheapest
option and they're about 100 quid online at the moment so if you wanted to experiment with a
dropper maybe check with your bike shop first in terms of the cable routing and everything
you can get external ones which i guess you could just like tape the cable on if you were really
stuck you get one i've got one of those you've got ones where there's just a leave underneath
your saddle oh yeah just reach back and drop it like that that's probably the easiest because
the flip side to it that's genius that is that's really good some bikes are rooting it's
gonna cost you more money than what the actual extra virtual seatbelt is going to cost what
the labels are taking 100 tape off oh yeah it's internally rooted yeah it just becomes a bit of a
nightmare what brand make the ones where you can adjust it with this has got one
really someone quite a few has done over the years um usually that's the cheapest secrets to make the
original dropper post used to work like that just to leave it and the most accessible big time yeah
i have a few times when i've landed somebody my bike on a ride or switch bikes and i've been
slightly shorter or if somebody test rides my bike around here which just work quite well because
it's at the shop we just drop it slightly to their saddle height the shimano service bikes at bigger
aces have droppers on because then you could the riders can just lower them just a tiny bit
to get close enough to their own saddle height and that's how jimmy rides my mountain bike
when we go run together why did they ban the super tuck in the first place was that
a safety thing because people were gonna copy it yeah right so this is the perfect solution
in terms of like i think for most people it is a little bit sketchy descending on your top tube
in the in the super tuck like i get that not everybody can feel comfortable at speed
doing that so the drop is a cool way to achieve it yeah nick it's a dropper now it kind of makes
sense for professionals to use this kind of thing because their bugs are already hitting the uci
weight limit of 6.8 or 6.9 kilos anyway so a bit of extra weight from a dropper is sometimes needed
and there has been proof that getting into that position on your top tube or slightly lower down
in the saddle uh is faster than seated at a normal height and tucking like that anyway does it make
sense for non-professionals though i would say do whatever you want if you enjoy descending and you
enjoy going fast and a lower central gravity means you can have more fun doing it then
absolutely how long will it be though until companies start releasing
super light road bike droppers about 500 pounds more than the normal ones probably quite soon