DIYing a custom seat

[TominMO]

Was thinking about ways to make my KPX both lower in seat height and also more comfortable to ride. Searched the Interwebs.

Here's a guy in the Seattle area who builds custom seats, butt* you have to go there with your bike for a custom fitting.
https://www.richscustomseats.com/

Luckily, there is a video on how he does this. Naturally, it ain't cheap.



Thinking I can do a half-a$$ed* but serviceable job myself, for about $60.

https://www.amazon.com/GoTo-Foam-Hei...ef_=ast_sto_dp

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CCB4M74D...ing=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/Lisyline-Moto...30&sr=8-7&th=1

* All plays on words are intentional

[TominMO]

More ideas and materials:

https://www.sailrite.com/Allsport-4-...4-Vinyl-Fabric

The last five minutes show installing the seat cover.



Aaaand another one:



And another one:

[ProDigit]

All I did was buy a sheet of quality foam, buy a sheet of vinyl (AliExpress sells seat vinyl), put the foam over the stock seat, then stretch and staple the vinyl sheet over the foam to the seat.

Then cover it with a 3D mesh cover. Seat comfort is improved by multifold.

[TominMO]

What type of foam did you buy, and how firm/dense?

[ProDigit]

Originally Posted by TominMO

What type of foam did you buy, and how firm/dense?

I use this foam with great success:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07S6ZY5J9

Get the 1inch firm version. It's got enough foam for 3 seats easily, so you could double up on foam even.
Awesome for the longer trips

[TominMO]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

I use this foam with great success:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07S6ZY5J9

Get the 1inch firm version. It's got enough foam for 3 seats easily, so you could double up on foam even.
Awesome for the longer trips

That's exactly the one I was looking at.

[buzz]

Come on guys ,its a motorcycle seat. Do you put seats in your cars you don't like,no you don't. This is just stupid, cry baby stuff. Man up or quit riding bikes.

[TominMO]

Originally Posted by buzz

Come on guys ,its a motorcycle seat. Do you put seats in your cars you don't like,no you don't. This is just stupid, cry baby stuff. Man up or quit riding bikes.

Got my seat cover off in about 12 minutes. About 50ish staples. A good tool for this is a 1/4" wide flat blade screwdriver with a good taper on it, which was on one of my multitools.

Here is a pic of the plastic pan and the seat foam. The foam is about 3" thick at the thickest part, where you would normally sit. It seems nicely dense, just too narrow for good distribution of rear-end weight.

I just ordered marine vinyl in blue for the cover, plus dense 1" thick foam and a 1 cm/0.4" thick gel pad. All due to arrive by Monday. Total cost $62.50. I'll keep you posted.

[culcune]

Originally Posted by TominMO

Was thinking about ways to make my KPX both lower in seat height and also more comfortable to ride. Searched the Interwebs.

When the Bashan dual-sports were popular a few years back (they included the Brozz, the Storm, the Raven, as well as the motorsports company, BMS, rebadged a Bashan and called it the BMS Enduro 250 CRP, a husband and wife bought two of them to go riding locally and haul them long distances to use on trips.

The Bashan lineup of bikes used the 'oddball' 19"/16" wheel setup (except for the Raven if I am not mistaken) so are a bit shorter in height. However, the BMS-branded CRP used 21"/18" and an accompanying traditional 36" seat height.

The wife had a long thread of her ownership of the bikes, including how she used a hot-knife to shave off a couple inches out of her seat. She even re-used the seat cover. Pictures she displayed looked completely stock. She wasn't a professional seat customizer, but just figured out how to do it, and did it well.

I do not recall her screen name, but I do believe if you search under BMS CRP 250 or thereabouts, her thread will come up. Of course a lot of the thread was general ownership experiences, but there were several posts of her seat customization trick. You might want to find the thread.

[TominMO]

Just out of curiosity, I put the plastic seat pan back on the bike and sat on it, using a thick pair of folded sweatpants to simulate 1" of padding. I have a 31" inseam, and could easily flatfoot it with a slight bend in my leg. This is what I am going for, a lower more street feel to the bike. I'm not used to the high offroad riding position and frankly don't like it. Feels too unstable to me. This also effectively raises the handlebars, adding to the stable feeling of being in the bike, not on it.

My plan is to use the very front of the stock seat foam, where it rises up onto the tank, and the rear 6", which is about 1" thick. This will help seat the new foam setup to the pan. For the middle 70% or so, I will use the 1" dense foam plus the gel pad. I will connect the three sections with gorilla tape on the underside, then of course install the new cover, which will keep it all secure. Gonna buy an electric carving knife to blend the shapes.

[ProDigit]

The dense foam is much like a memory foam gel mattress in terms of stiffness. Not like those spongy yellow mattresses of the 80s. But it's still foam. Once you sit on it, it sinks in.
I myself have a layer of the foam that comes with the bike when delivered.
That water proof, denser foam you can also get from buying things from AliExpress.
Some of the items will be wrapped in the foam.

So the dense foam on the bottom, and a denser foam on top to distribute the weight.
What you want to get is a wider seat, so more of your bee-hind is supported.

You also want to be supported evenly. Meaning, when you ride, and your feet are on the pegs, and your thighs are not parallel with the road, you want to pad for support of that angle and height.

That being said, the stock seat of my Vader was only extended by roughly 1 inch on each side. The 3D mesh cover also helps with removing water, keeping the seat cool in summer, and blood flow. Just moving back a tiny bit, will cause the 3d mesh pattern to support the skin on a different place.

[TominMO]

Here's the thread culcune mentioned in post #8.
https://www.chinariders.net/showthread.php?t=22506

Seat height modding discussions are in posts #21, 48, and 61. Reading this, I am going to try something else first. I will cut the stock foam down in the center section to a 1" depth, then put the 1" aftermarket foam on top of it along with the gel, to see how I like that. This will give me a fully stock foam base for the seat pan. I will just put the stock cover back on for testing purposes and see how I like the feel and height. Then make any mods to the plan after that.

The 1" seat foam is not arriving until at least the 10th, the other items today or tmw.

[TominMO]

As it sits now, awaiting the arrival of the new foam. I cut too deeply in the center with the electric knife, so had to piece together the original foam I wanted to use from what I had cut off. Hence the gorilla tape. Tools used are shown. The ninja rubber ducky supervises.

I might end up re-using the original seat cover, since it is already cut and sewn to fit. We will see.