Brooks Cambium C17 Update: It's a Keeper

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I had just received one of Brooks' new Cambium C17 saddles. Since then I've logged a few hundred miles on the C17, so I suppose it's time for a more proper review.

The C17 has bounced around among three of my bikes as I've tried to figure out what kind of riding it's best suited for. It started out on my Bianchi Volpe that generally get's used for off road stuff, spent a few days on my Trek 760 in full roadie mode, and eventually settled in on my Trek 614, the randoneuse. All three of these bikes have the handlebars set at least 4 cm below the saddle, so I have yet to try the C17 on a bike with a more upright position.

The rides I've done on the C17 have ranged from short hilly intense training rides, to several-hours-long gravel road adventures, to lazy daily commutes to work. I had a chance to ride it on sweaty hot days, and cool drizzly ones. The longest ride I've used it for was a little over 80 miles.

In the riding I've done on the C17, it has mostly disappeared beneath me. That is to say, I didn't really notice it after the first few minutes of the ride. To me, that's the greatest compliment you can pay to a saddle.

Notice I said, "mostly disappeared." In the first couple of rides on the C17, I was a little distracted by its "stickiness." Not sticky like honey, but the texture of the top of the saddle grabs onto the seat of your pants pretty well, especially when you're wearing spandex riding shorts. If you're used to the slipperiness of a classic leather saddle like a Brooks B17, you'll probably notice this right away. However, the C17 is far from the stickiest saddle I've ever ridden (that distinction would go to a cheap plastic Performance house-brand torture device). I spend a lot of time riding leather Brooks saddles, so I'm quite used to being able to easily shift my position on the saddle without lifting my bum at all. The C17 requires that I put a little more effort into shifting positions, but once in the right position I tend to stay there better. After some time on the C17 I came to consider the texture as more of a feature than a defect and quickly stopped noticing it at all. On my Brooks Pro on the other hand, I still sometimes find myself sliding around a little more than I'd like.

Early on I also noticed that my riding shorts would catch a bit on the chamfered edges along the nose of the saddle. This soon became a non-issue not simply because I stopped noticing it, but because it stopped happening. My guess is the exposed rubber edge where the cotton fabric ends is a bit grabby when fresh out of the box, but after grinding in a bit of sweat and road dirt, the grabbiness goes away.

The C17 achieves long distance comfort in exactly the same way a classic leather Brooks saddle does it. The suspended vulcanized rubber/cotton canvas/textile top feels quite firm to the touch, but it gives slightly under the weight of your sit bones. The firmness of the C17 is very similar to that of a year old Brooks B17 I have, but it's not as firm as my Brooks Pro (which is also fairly new but broken in). With a classic Brooks, the leather eventually retains the impression of your sit bones even when you're not on it. This hasn't started to happen with the C17 and it seems unlikely that it will ever happen.

I spent some time in a typical Seattle drizzle on one of my rides. I was riding my Trek 760 at the time which is proudly fenderless. (Riding a bike without fenders in Seattle is a sure-fire way to bring on the rain.) The C17 was of course soaked and covered with road grit. Had I been riding my B17 or Team Pro I would have been digging through garbage cans beside the road looking for plastic bags to cover the saddle so I wouldn't ruin it. With the C17, I had no worries. I hosed off the road grit when I got home and the saddle was as good as new.

One commenter on my previous post mentioned that when the top of the saddle gets wet, it doesn't easily wipe dry. This is true. The cotton textured top holds onto water better than your typical plastic saddle. So, if you park your bike outside in the rain and then hop on in your street clothes, you'll end up looking like you wet your pants. This hasn't been an issue for me as my bikes tend to be parked under cover when I'm not riding them, but if you park your bike outside you may want to cover the saddle to keep it dry.

The same commenter also complained of the rivets on the back of the saddle being uncomfortable. So far, I've never felt the rivets at all. Perhaps it's more noticeable if you ride with a more upright position? My position seems to be well in front of the rivets.

As I mentioned before, the C17 has settled on my Trek 614 for now. That's the bike that usually gets ridden on brevets and other long rides so it has to have a saddle that is comfortable from sunrise to sunset and beyond. It still hasn't been tested on a ride of more than 80 miles, but from my experience so far I'm confident that it will be at least as comfortable on long rides as the B17 it's replacing.

For sportier short rides like the kind I tend to do on my Trek 760 the C17 worked well. But with the deeper handlebar drop that bike has, I suspect a narrower saddle might work even better. I'm anxiously awaiting the introduction of the Cambium C15. Brooks claims it will be a narrower version based on the classic racing model, the Swallow. Sounds like just the ticket.

Reynolds-shmeynolds! All Steel Frames Are Alike.

For the longest time, I naively believed that one steel framed bike was pretty much like any other. I saw the bike frame merely as something on which you hang the components. I figured a cheap old frame with nice wheels and Dura Ace or Super Record components would beat the pants off of a high-end steel frame with a mediocre component gruppo and wheels.

Sure, I knew the old frames built with the top Reynolds, Columbus and Tange tube sets were a bit lighter, and were highly coveted by experienced riders. Weight matters to a certain degree, but the frame alone is far less than half of the total weight of a complete bike. And as far as being highly coveted, I figured those poor saps doing the coveting were just victims of marketing and hype.

I've slowly been outgrowing that belief over the past few years, but I recently had a massive growth spurt when I had the opportunity to compare two bikes that were very similar in every way except for the tubing they were built with. Remember that racy Trek 560 that I bought a couple of years ago? I loved riding that bike, but finally came to the conclusion that it was a size too small for me. So, I put all of the original parts back on it and put it up for sale on Craigslist.

The plan was to replace it with another Trek 560 of the right size once I sold it. Serendipitously something even better came up on Craigslist almost immediately after I sold the 560.

Say hello to my "new" 1985 Trek 760.

When I bought the Trek 760 its original Campy Victory parts were long gone. The guy I got it from had bought it as a bare frame and built it up with a mostly meh assortment of early 90s Japanese components. I decided to strip it bare and rebuild it with all of the parts that had been on the Trek 560. This gave me a rare opportunity to compare two frames with the exact same components so I could get a good feel for the differences between the frames.

So, with the 760 rebuilt the differences between the two bikes came down to this:

• The 760 is a size bigger than the 560 (the 760 is a size 56cm, and the 560 is a size 21" or 53.34cm)
• There are slight differences in geometry between the two models.
• The 760 is built with Reynolds 531C tubing while the 560 is Reynolds 501.

The size and geometry differences look like this (the 560's numbers are in the red box in the top section and the 760's are in the lower red box):





The head tube angle is a fair amount steeper on the 760, but other than that differences are either attributable to the different sizes (i.e. the 760 has a longer top tube and seat tube), or they are extremely small and probably not significant.

So what about the difference in tubing? How is Reynolds 531C different than Reynolds 501? According to the 1985 Trek brochure, there are differences in tube wall thickness.



The top tube's walls are thinner, the down tube's are a little thicker and the seat tube's are thinner in 531C as compared to 501 tube set. There are also differences in how the tubes are manufactured and the composition of the steel, but those differences supposedly have little impact on the strength or ride quality of the finished bike. There's some weight difference in the tube sets, but the difference is negligible when it comes to a fully built bike. Both bikes weigh about 22 lbs ready to ride with peddles and everything.

On paper this all looks pretty trivial to my inexperienced eye. I expected these two bikes to ride very similarly. I doubted that I would even be able to tell them apart in a blindfold test. Not that I would ever try riding blindfolded!

So, the next Saturday morning after building up the 760, I went for a good long ride...

By the way, I had ridden the 560 just a week before so its ride quality and handling characteristics were still pretty fresh in my mind. I rode 70 or so miles on some of my favorite roads that day with lots of ups, downs, twists, turns, smooth pavement, rough pavement and even a bit of gravel.

The difference between the 760 and my beloved old 560 was mind-blowing!

As I've said before, I loved the ride of that 560. Everything about it was quick and precise. When you jumped on it, it took off. The downside was that you could feel every pebble and crack in the pavement, and the handling required constant attention.

On the 760 I instantly noticed a smoother and more stable ride. There was little of the jarring and buzzing that I had come to associate with the 560. The ride quality was more like my Cadillac-like Trek 614 than it was like the 560. And the handling of the 760 had all of the quickness and precision of the 560, but with less effort and attention required. I never felt like I was having to force it into a tight turn. The handling was more intuitive and invisible than on any other bike I had ever ridden.

Talking about ride quality and handling characteristics of bikes is a little like wine reviews. It can be a lot of meaningless hyperbole that is really just trying to say either "I like this" or "I don't like this." So rather than try to use up a bunch more words explaining my perceptions, I'll just say this: I found my new Trek 760 to feel very different than my old 560, and I really liked the difference.

Since that first Saturday ride, I've ridden the new 760 a few hundred more miles. I'm still a bit blown away every time I get on it. It's by far the best riding bike I've ever owned. It has very clearly taught me that one lugged steel frame is not like another, even if they may look very similar on paper.

What accounts for the differences? I'm still not sure. It could be attributed to the different tube sets, but I suspect it's more complicated than that. That's one of the things I love about bikes. They are amazingly complex for such simple machines.

"Just like women" says a friend of mine.