[Closed] Child Seat advice: Knee clearance with Weeride and Thule Yepp Nexxt Mini

you will have to ride like a Cowboy with the weeride. I had our 2 using a weeride, but have changed to the shotgun seat now for my youngest. You still are slightly obstructed, but its not nearly as bad. Your child will have to be a little older though as no belt and no back or frontguard to rest against.

Thanks superfli - When the time is right I hope to get a Shotgun/MacRide but for now at 12 months the front options seem the best.

What I was really hoping is that someone had used both the Weeride and Thule and could compare. I bought the Thule thinking it would be OK clearance wise so a bit surprised that there is an issue and wondering if the Weeride would be better/same/worse or if my old Rockhopper has a very short top tube.

I have a Wee-ride and still have to adjust knee position a little.

What I would say is - fitted on a modern bike with a long, low top tube would give you a huge improvement - the wee-ride is rubbish on my Partners cheap old bike, but on my On-one Scandal its great - I just need to bow knee a tiny amount. Can easily ride it for an hour or so.

i found this to be an unsurmountable issue with my we-ride - I had some of these which helped

https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/pedals-cleats/20-jtek-qplus-pedal-extenders-916-inch/

but it was still bad enough (used it on a commute) that I got rid of it for a cargo bike in the end. Much better 🙂

I thought a new bike might come into it 🙂 I can try it on my Cotic Soul (Mk3 so not LongShot) rather than Rockhopper but thinking that a 29er might help quite a bit.

I borrowed a wee ride from a friend and really struggled with knee clearance on my rockhopper.

I have a weeride on an old 2006 26 inch rockhopper (far to small for me by modern standards but oh so "chuckable" as was the trend). Serious cowboy legs fitting round the seat. Not tried the Yepp but it looks like it clamps on further forwards and is less square so can't imagine it would be worse than the weeride.

Never had any major issues with a Thule nexxt mini on my 2016 Hybrid

Think it comes down to if the bike has a sloping top tube which helps

I did 15 mile round trips most days with the seat and child on the bike and i only had to adjust my legs ever so slightly

My mate had a wee ride, I have a Thule /Yepp mini, I use it on an inbred with 27.5 Rebas.

I still ride knees out, and the footrest rail hits the lock out and air valve cap on the forks. The seat acts as a bit of a steering limiter but only makes an impact on switch backs.

For those with the Thule Yepp Nexxt Mini, how are you mounting the bracket?

With the washer/shims which change between position A and B I cant get the bolts to engage, if I remove these and tighten the headset the headset washers spin when the seat is mounted!

@oikeith I think the best way is to remove a suitable amount of spacers from the steerer tube and then put the Thule bracket (with A/B washers) onto the steerer to act as spacers. The Thule instructions are poor as they only show a quill stem setup and I have been in contact with them. I may be getting somewhere now I have persuaded them that a threadless headset is not 'bike specific' as they first suggested.

Despite this I am still getting knee clearance issues. I suspect the best fix is to get a LLS 29er with longer reach/top tube but that is rather costly so for now I am wondering whether a stem raiser like this would help get the seat out of the knee zone:

Stem raiser

I would mount the stem below the raiser on the steerer and the child seat on the raiser section to get it higher but wondering if the weight of child on seat would be an issue. But I guess it is clamped onto the steerer and still a preload bolt holding it down. What do you think just a matter of checking bolt torque regularly and it will be OK?

I gave up the weeride after a handful of rides for a rear mounted seat, then mac ride when older. The rear mounted seat makes the bike a bit trickier to handle, but they aren;t in it for long.

That Thule Yepp Nexxt Mini might be a good call but you are gonna be sitting pretty upright.

I settled on removing the washers/shims and mounting onto the headset washers, initially I didnt have enough clearance under the stem so popped a washer underneath the stem, it clamped on fine and would hold without twisting, put the seat on and pedalled in the road, came back to remove it and the clamp had rubbed a hole in my invisframe kit... I'm not willing to raise my stem any more so am going to flog the Yepp Nexxt Mini.

Have lined up a weeride to replace it, but I am on a very long bike and not sure if the wee ride bar will reach between the seatpost and headset!

@Oikeith I can't quite work out why the seat would wear a hole in any frame protection as mine is only touching the steerer tube of the forks but interested to hear how your switch to a WeeRide goes.

It wasn't the seat, it was the clamp/bracket around the steerer. The bike is a slack enduro bike so the rear of the clamp/bracket angled down towards the frame when tightened, I thought it was close but not touching, turns out it was touching and cut a hole in the invisiframe after a few practise