Is my USE seatpost going to kill me?

R

red_dread

Dirt Disciple
I'm not even joking - this thing is scaring me. Every time I ride the clamp clicks and creaks like it's about to fail catastrophically. All I can think about when riding is the saddle snapping out from under me and pitching me under a bus. Can any experts on metal fatigue, or USE historians, let me know if my paranoia has any basis in fact? Is there a deadly reason why this model of seatpost became so rare?

I have disassembled, greased every thread and contact surface, played with bolt torque, moved rails fore/aft and run out of ideas. The clicking and creaking foretells disaster. I believe it is heralding my death.

For the YouTube connoisseurs, this seatpost, on a '93 Dave Quinn build, can be seen in more detail on the world's best retrobike YouTube channel:
 

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Well at least you'll die doing something you love. If all goes well, It'll be death by cake for me.

al.
 
Have you tried different saddle to check it isn't the rails in the saddle body, or even a deep skirted saddle flexing on the edge of the rail clamps? I mention the latter as i got a USE post off ebay and the previous owner filed big chamfers onto the rail clamps because his saddle was making a weird squeaky noise where the skirt was rubbing. Another thing to look at, and it depends on the length of the rail screws and how saaggy the saddle, is check the underside of the saddle and see if the ends of the screws are rubbing on the saddle. On the subject of saddles; also check the saddle rails are parallel and straight. I had a squeaky saddle once and it was a bent rail. Does depend on the clamping system for this to be an issue.

Metallurgy wise; see if you can find a local engineering that has a decent QA dept. and ask nicely if they could do some NDT inspection on the parts. It is an oddball thing that would be good for an apprentice to take on. Just got to find the right interested people.
 
I've had two similar seat posts (not actually 'use', but similar design) fail at the clamp. I don't use this design anymore. Too fragile for me.
 
I've had a couple of USE Alien posts which needed alarming amounts of torque to ensure the saddle didn't move. One did a kind of slow fail when the head of the post unbonded itself from the shaft. This made itself known when it began to swivel from side to side, giving plenty of warning. It had served for about 15 years on four or five different bikes so I can't be too hard on it.


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cannot comment on the USE but this did happen to me on another post and the culprit was indeed the saddle rails and the way they were making contact with the clamp plates. the whole clamping mechanism looks kind of like a deathwise. is that bottom plate bonded to the post itself or just laying on top on axis? probably best to retire it but you strike me as a ride it til' the wheels fall off kind of fella so, do that! any foretelling cracks will be the materials telling you 'no more no more'

that being said. have loved the channel for quite a while. awaiting more restoration and pickup videos for quite some time! the pace fork painting extravaganza was a beautiful disaster.
 
Like many components of the era, the original USE post was designed with one thing in mind… Lightweight.

That’s great for the first year or so of use but that was 30 years ago and anyone running retro lightweight kit should really think hard before using it, especially if you’ve not owned it from new and don’t know it’s history.

Stories like the one above of people taking lightweight kit and removing even more material fill me with horror!
 
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