My Seat Project

With the colder weather, I've been forced to park the bike for the winter. Now is the time for all those projects that you never want to do when it's riding weather. One such project is to recover my seat. When I purchased my bike back in April of this year, I knew the seat was going to need some attention. You could see where the threads were starting to pop and the vinyl was tearing around the seat pan. With all the riding over the summer and fall, she really started to look bad.





With that I decided to tear into her (literally). I decided to take pictures and post my progress here for others that have thought about tackling this project themselves. It may give you a better idea of what is involved in recovering a seat.

I started by flipping the seat over and bending up all the shark teeth that hold the seat cover on. Most were a little rusty, but none broke off. After I get the seat cover made, I'll wire brush these off and treat the rusty spots. No sense in going to all that work just to have it fall apart again :wink:.





It took some huffing and puffing to seperate the skin form the seat carcass as the manufacturer had glued the skin to it pretty well. I felt like I was skinning an animal because I had to use a very sharp knife to shave the adhesive away from the foam.



You can see the adhesive here (black patches). It appears they used it to center the shin on the carcass, then after it dried, they could flip the seat over and pin it down with the shark teeth and not worry about it shifting. I imagine it probably keeps the cover from moving around while you're riding, too.



That's all the pictures I've got for now. I've started disassembling the cover with a seam ripper. In taking it apart, I'm making notes as to how the pieces are coming apart. I guess you could say I'm reverse-engineering the cover. Right now, it looks like there are three main pieces. There's the front-lower piece, the rear-lower and back piece, and then there's the seat cushion, itself. Each of these are made up of smaller pieces, but I'll get to those in the next update.

Speaking of which, as I go along I'll update this post. For those following along, I'll bump it so you'll know when there's an update.

Now, where's that seam ripper?

(And we're back from commercial...)

To start with, there was a border piece that ran the entire perimeter of the seat cover. Locating the overlap, I used the seam ripper to remove it. Once that was finished, I began to disassemble the whole into it's three main components. Here's a couple pictures showing them:


Front Piece and Seat Cushion


Rear Panel

The big empty area on the back panel will be where I sew the Yamaha logo... if I feel comfortable enough with the sewing machine, that is :wink:. Or maybe an "XJ" type logo... Who knows? I'll think on it.

Continuing, I next turned my attention to the front piece. There was a piece of piping that was sewn onto the upper edge that met with the seat cushion and the back panel. After removing that, I split the seam at the front apex. Here is a picture showing it disassembled:



The back panel was a little more difficult to break down. The first thing to remove was the piping that wrapped around its perimeter. Then I removed the panel that faced towards the rear of the seat. This left me with the piece that wrapped from the left side up over the top and down to the right side. I removed the piping, then broke it down into it's three parts:



Here's a little tip for you. I marked the front pieces F1, F2, and F3, and the rear pieces B1, B2, etc. However, I discovered that when you have multiple pieces that make up an assembly, you also need to make witness marks so you know which pieces go together at which faces. Once you take it apart, it gets pretty confusing. Also, keep the pieces grouped together in bags so they don't get mixed together. It's like having all the puzzle pieces but not the picture on the box. :?

That's it for now.

(And we're back from commercial...)

I've worked on the seat cover on and off for the last week or so, but I've been tied up at work with lots of overtime and it's really slowed the project down. As such, I haven't been able to update here and work on the cover as much as I would like. Oh well... That's life.

Getting back to the seat cover project, after I broke down the major pieces, I had to flatten them out so I could use them for patterns. A quick going over with an iron worked well for this. I also pinned the parts to the ironing table to hold them flat while they cooled.



Once I had all the pieces ready, I used an old bed sheet to make a few prototype covers out of. I layed all the pieces out, traced around them with a sharpie, then cut them out.



Sewing these pieces together was a breeze (for the most part). I'm sure glad I paid attention in Home Economics when I was in high school :wink:!

Here's a picture of one of the two prototype covers...



My wife sure liked the rose patten!

Some tips when making your pattern pieces: when you have mirror image pieces (say one on the right and one on the left) only use the better of the two pattern pieces to cut from. Double your fabric over, pin it, then cut both pieces from the same pattern piece. Along the same line, when you have a piece that has a "center line", cut your piece out on the better of the two halves, fold over the other half along the center line, pin it and then finish cutting. This will ensure symmetry in your pieces. And don't be afraid to use lots of pins when you're assembling your pieces. If the pieces shift while you're sewing them together, you'll just have to tear out your stitches and start over.

Once I felt comfortable with the process, I headed to our local fabric store to pick out the material for my new cover. I decided on a nice naugahyde that had a flat finish. Because of this, it has what I call a lot of "butt traction". I've been on seats that are real shiny and found that you tend to slide around a bit because of it. I don't know about you, but when I'm leaning into a corner, I want my butt to stay put on the bike.

Well, that's about it for this installment. I've got more, but I'll save it for later in the week.

 

What kind of skin do you plan to use for the new cover? Or you just gonna kill another nauga? :lol:

 

Hey, Jeff. Yeah, more of the same material on the cover. I'm going to stay faithful to the original except for the piping. I've never been too crazy about piping and will leave it out in my version.

I was also thinking about sewing a Yamaha logo onto the back panal... We'll see.

 

Nice Gamuru, I've got the same seat, and the same rips, so I can't wait to see the process, and the final results

 

Thanks, Ace!

I've added an update with more pictures of my progress. <bump>

 

<bump>

There's a new update.

 

yes, please keep the updates coming......I have two of these seats and will be following you closely soon. THANK YOU! What are you going to use for the seat bumps? Or are you just going to go with a flat surface now?

thanks,

dave