Friday, April 05, 2013

Ti Bolts for a Thomson Seatpost

Today the titanium bolts for my Thomson Masterpiece seatpost arrived.  I bought them through Amazon and until after ordering didn't realize that they were going to be shipped from China.  The estimated shipping date was over a month out, but the bolts arrived as if they had been shipped from the East Coast.  After wrestling the envelope away from my 17 month old daughter, I was able to inspect the goods.  They're beautiful, like most things that are polished titanium.  The difference in weight is minimal, but they sure do look better than the zinc yellow finish of the stock bolts.  I weighed the bike before and after with my Feedback Sports Alpine Digital Gear Scale and the difference was about 20 grams.  One of the main reasons I like to change my bolts to titanium has more to do with corrosion than weight.  Living in Monterey, with the salt air, can be hard on components and I've had chrome bolts on high end brakes start to pit and rust.  Not cool.

The current weight of the bike is 7.170 kilograms or 15.81 pounds, with a Topeak Micro Rocket CB pump and Bar Fly with a Garmin Edge 200.

And now for the photos.  The red lines on the rails were so I could get the seat back in the proper location after replacing the bolts.  I removed and replaced one at at time, torquing to 5.1 Nm, as recommended by Thomson for the Masterpiece (6.8 Nm for the Elite).


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