New Custom Seat on my VN 750

[burkbuilds]

I've been working on this a little at a time for almost six months and I finally got it in gear and finished. I just wasn't comfortable on the O.E. seat and wanted something I could ride all day without being in pain, but I also wanted it to look good. I've done custom seats on my other bikes and although they have been very comfortable I was never that happy with the look. This time I'm pleased with my results both visually and from the comfort aspect too.
I started with an OE seat pan, added some plywood to get the seat shape I wanted and then fiber-glassed the entire thing together. Then I added seat foam I bought from Sargent's in Florida and sculpted it to fit my fanny and give me the support I knew would keep me pain free on long rides. Finally I had a local shop, Brother's Upholstery, cover it in some top grade vinyl. Ron, at Brother's, is a fellow rider and he's covered several seats for me in the past and I've always been pleased with his work. So here area a few photos of the finished product.

[Triangles]

WOW that looks nice! Do you have any picts from the construction of it? What was the cost break down? Fiberglass, foam, seatcover?

[burkbuilds]

Hey Triangles,

Sorry, I didn't document anything much on this seat. I used some foam left over from my last seat customization, a scrap piece of plywood and I probably spent $50 on fiberglass resin and cloth. I paid $100 to the Upholstery shop and about $75 for a used seat on e-bay to get the seat pan. My guess would be about $300 out of pocket for everything if I had to buy the foam and plywood to do it. My apologies for not documenting the build, I just wanted to get it done and didn't take the time to snap photos this time around.

[Triangles]

I have a spare seat for my EN500C Originally I was going to send it of to get reworked, but I think I'd like to give it a try myself. I never fiberglassed anything and don't have a clue how to get fiber glass to become one with the plastic pan let alone wood. I guess it's off to searching youtube to learn. How did you get it all to stay together? My biggest fear would be it falling apart when I sat on it.

[burkbuilds]

Well, I'm a fiberglass novice, but I've done two seat so far and the first one I've put a lot of miles on already and no problems yet and about 20,000 miles on the seat.

Basically, all I did, and again I'm not telling you I know what I'm doing, is strip everything off the seat pan down to the plastic, then I cut some 3/4" Exterior grade plywood

to the shape and size I wanted the seat to be. I put some screws up from the seat pan into the wood to hold it in place then I simply started putting resin soaked

fiberglass cloth onto the plywood and wrapped it down around the bottom lip of the seat pan and up the inside about an inch. Several coats of resin and cloth later I

sanded it down, painted it all black with some spray paint just to make it look uniform and then started gluing the seat foam down with some specialty contact adhesive. I

used a hot knife to cut the bottom of the foam out around any humps or bumps that I wanted to smooth out or just to make it fit tightly to. Finally, I shaped it to fit my

fanny with a small surform file (rasp) that has a curved face so I could kinda "scoop" out the foam where I wanted to go down and I rounded the sharp edges off with it

as well. After several trial fits where I placed the seat back on the bike and sat on it trying to discern any pressure points I wanted to eliminate I finally arrived at the

shape I wanted and took it to the upholstery shop. Probably the only drawback to the fiberglass is that it makes it more difficult to secure the vinyl to. The shop tried

to staple the first seat I did, but the fiberglass was so hard the staples wouldn't go in and it jammed up his staple gun, so he screwed this one on and riveted the last

one.

Again, I'm not trained or experienced with fiberglass so others may have better information for you and I may have used more hardener than I should which might

have caused it to be more difficult for the upholstery shop to staple into, I don't know. It seems to bond to the plastic seat pan without any problems I can find

though, so that part was good.

Good luck with your seat.

[Triangles]

thanks for the explaination. I think I may to just widen the pan and add foam to make it comfortable. low priority so probably won't get to it for a while.