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 Chain management: Why so many chains? In designing this bike, chain management and chain noise were two major concerns. The first thing that I did was put the shifting where Shimano intended it to be, in the conventional BB location. The chain weight is what Shimano intended, so the rear derailleur works like it should and give you crisp shifting. This dictated that we make a spider to carry four chain rings so that the spider is driven via the inner most chain ring from the single chain ring on the crank set. By changing those two chain rings, we can over or under drive the spider to change the gearing (see Gearing, below). Then we put an adjustable idler sprocket behind the head tube to raise the chain above the fork and create shorter manageable lengths of chain, rather than one really long chain. This keeps slack chain weight to only what the rear derailleur is designed to handle and minimizes the chain noise. It may look complicated, but it is really quite simple and follows conventional wisdom in industrial design.
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Comfort: Standard "Hip Hinge" seat provides for independent adjustment of seat tilt and back recline. Seat bottom rotates on the seat mount for tilt adjustment. This allows you to set a posterior tilt to prevent you from sliding out without causing so much back recline that you strain your neck. The four incremental adjustment positions allow a seat to back angle of 95-115 degrees in 5 degree increments to fine tune the back position as well. A pair of adjustable struts provide support between the frame and the seat assy.
Quality: We don't like wimpy components. Our dovetail seat rail and mating mount are examples of our attitude toward proper design. No light duty parts which could slip cause an accident. A lot more work on our part, but the Longbikes design philosophy dictates certain things be done the hard way!