Recovering my Ugly 2up OEM.........singing the tall rider blues.

[ChilliDrift]

After more research, I have decided to turn my seat into a chummie style.  It solves two problems. 1. I cant go back far enough when riding solo, and 2. when I have a rider she has too much room so I have to adjust the backrest forward which crowds me even more, or at least gives the feeling. With the chummie style I can continue to use my backrest that I paid an arm and a leg for I can increase my riding room and with it being pretty much level height front to back the passenger and I will be more spoon fitted if you will. I think this will work. I only have pics to go by. But I think the design is simple and dooable. I will just have to remove some of the sides of the seatpan to narrow it a bit and add some new bonded foam. I will photograph document this process.

[aclone]

Hated the stock two up my wife would slide forward as we road.  Sound like good idea post pictures when finish, hope it work well for you.

Mark

[ChilliDrift]

Great info and advice Waltervl. I am thinking I will follow your lead and get a Classic/Nomad seat as they are much easier and cheaper to start with. The website is a perfect primmer for getting me started.  Thanks!

[waltervl]

I am doing that at the moment too. I do not like the looks and the softness and the shortness of the standard seat. I wanted a disconnected passenger seat. So I am making a new seat myself. In this way I can also keep the OEM untouched in case I sell the bike or the self made seat experiment fails

I have bought a second hand Nomad or Vulcan Classic seat (driver and pillion) for 50 euro and mounted the driver seat on the drifter (see also mod page). The pillion did not fit at all so I made a wooden frame myself were the foam will come up.

The nomad seat I stripped and cut of the foam as much as possible. The seat frame has a very uneven form and used the old foam to make it even. I used a large bread (or flesh?) knife with small teeth, no need for an electric knife. For the finishing touch I used a lamell grinder blade wich I mounted on a hand drilling machine.

I bought polypress foam (rebond foam) which is much stiffer than the oem and glued it on the old foam. I bought the glue in spray tin from the same company as the foam.

I found this site a huge information source: http://diymotorcycleseat.com/

At the moment I am test driving to see if it holds up. I upholstered it with some old vinyl i had still around but I have it upholstered properly by a professional when I am satisfied with the form. I have a sewing machine but both my wife and I do not know how it operates

[ChilliDrift]

After much pondering over seat options I am going to attempt to rebuild my stock ugly dbl. I find myself too far fwd. My passenger with too much room. I have decided to remove the cover, add foam in the front lower to build it up to match the upper passenger level,then add another two inches to the passenger height and take the driver area two inches back into the pasenger area. I have seen videos of people who do similar work and the shape the foam with electric carving knives. I am curious of what type of foam to use if anyone has any recommendations. Im going to ride over to the fabric store to see what they have.  I am hopeful that I can accomplish this without completely destroying the thing. I plan on using the original cover as a pattern to try and construct a new one. If that fails I will take it to the local upholstery shop and see what they can do.. I wonder if anyone has tried this. And if you have any advice. I am going to wait till it gets a bit colder so I dont shorten my riding season of course. But I just feel like there must be something more that can be done. And if not I'll pull the trigger on that 750 dollar Corbin with backrest. Either way my inseam wont be riding up on the tank any longer. I'd also like to raise the rear brake pedal and front shift arm as my toes dont really fit on the floorboards without taking chunks out of my boot toes. Ive seen other people lower the floorboards but I think they are low enough.  Thanks!