Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)We bought this to go on my wife's Trek 800. We have a total of 4 bikes, but that is the only one we were sure it would fit (there were 2 bikes that were questionable) based on Kettler's site of Bikes that work and Bikes that won't. You should only believe the bikes that don't pictures.
If you expect this to fit your bike, the following has to be true. 1. seat post tube has to be round and between 28mm-44mm and have 6 inches of free space up and down. 2. bike has to have a "traditional" rear triangle design that is not too wide (never measured that, but the gist is that the seat rails must go by the frame, so if it's too wide, you can't slide the seat in.) 3. shifter cable has to either run straight up and down the middle of the seat tube or not be on the seat tube at all. 4. no side pull brakes, only V-style (side pull brakes block the seat rails). 5. this is the kicker. If you get all of the above right, Kettler has a dot on the side of the seat showing the center of mass. This dot can not be more than 10 cm (4 inches) behind the rear wheel axle. What this means is that the distance between the adaptor mount (the thing the rails slide into) and the axle must be at least 16" (the distance from the adaptor center to the dot when the rails are in the adaptor is 20"). 6. And the real kicker is you can get all that right, but when you pedal you can be hitting your child's feet with your heel on the way up. The seat has a decent range on the rails, but you can't move it back beyond the 10 cm, so you move it forward and hit feet or move it back and go beyond the limit.
I tried this on several bikes at a store and then gave up. The seat itself was nice or I'd have given it 1 star. The instructions are pictures, which would be fine if they were better at it. http://www.kettlerusa.com/Flipper.pdf A few words would help, even if they were in German. The support people were not as helpful as I thought they should be. It took a phone call and many emails to get to the point where they could definitively tell me why there is a 10 cm limit. (And their reason, that it is a structural issue (quote from Germany - "If the center of the red dot is more than 10 cm from the middle of the wheel away - the leverage effect of the seat and the fitting of the seat would be to high. The structure of the seat could get damaged --> and so the child could get hurt too.") is different from the reason given for the CoPilot
( http://www.bikedock.com/custom/pdf/08/CoPilot/Co-Pilot_Taxi_manual.pdf page 3, which is that it is a balance/braking issue. I know they mount differently, so take that for whatever you think it's worth. The instructions (the part at the beginning that is words) say " ¡ The load centre (marked by a red point) may only be within 10 cm behind the wheel hub (explained in detail below)." The only detail below is a picture.
Kettler has a demo gif http://www.kettlerusa.com/flipper.gif showing how easy it is to remove the seat. It is easy to remove. The balance dot (not shown) was right above the large circle at the base of the seat. In my opinion, no way that seat ends up less than 10cm behind the axle. Just my opinion, but my wife's bike is so similar to this, I doubt I'm incorrect.
My thinking is that this bike seat has a better chance of working on old style men's bikes than anything else. I also think that more than half of these are not mounted to within that 10 cm limitation. It's kind of like wearing a helmet. If you don't have anything to protect back there, then don't worry about the spec.
In contrast to my experience with the seat, returning it, which I was dreading since so much time had passed waiting for Kettler's responses, was so easy I couldn't believe it. Thank you Amazon. All I had to do was box it back up and print something. And I had extra time because they extended returns due to Xmas. Good timing or the 30 day would have been an issue.
My recommendation is to only buy this if you can try it on the bike first. If you are getting a new bike anyway, get your LBS to order one to make sure it fits before you waste money on either the bike or the seat.
Good luck.
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