Doing up a motor sickle seat

[DeuceKustoms]

This is technically "exterior" cause it's on a bike, but trimming is trimming, so Here it is. This is a project i just did yesterday, any of you guys with a motor cycle/ snowmobile/ etc. that are wanting to re-do your seat here is how its done (at least how I do it) so now you know if you'd like to tackle a project like this or not. of course if you dont have the correct tools its impossible, but its not too much of an investment for the basics.

- Good pair of upholstery shears
- Upholstery Stapeler ( I paid $55 for an off brand that works just fine)
- Compressor to run stapeler
- Industrial Sewing machine (this is the biggest investment, new ones can be $1500 or more, depending on what you get, but I scored mine for $300. Although its at least 25 years old, its exactly the same as a new one so what the hey!)
- Misc. supplies: thread, staples, needles, welt cord, etc
- Material: Vinyl is good for a seat, unless you never plan on it getting wet you can use leather but its way more expensive and your ass can't tell the difference anyways.

Ok so here goes:
This is what I started with"


1) The customer wanted his rear seat modified so it didnt hang over the sides of the fender, so first I marked out how i wanted the finished seat to look.


2) Start by pulling off the original seat cover as a complete piece. This includes pulling a lot of staples, especially if a staple-aholic like me did the seat the first time.





3) Since the front seat remains unchanged, I will set that off to the side for now, while I modify the rear seat.  First I transfer the pattern that I made on the rear seat cover to the foam to get ready to cut down the foam.



4) Then with an electric knife cut away the now "excess" foam leaving a little extra that you can finesse down with a grinder later. You just don't want to cut too much off the first time and be screwed. We've all been there before!







4) Now you are going to have to cut down the seat pan, I just used a regular old cutoff wheel.



5) With a 3" angle grinder you can shape the foam to the exact contours of the new seat. go slow, cause if you take a chunk out, it will show!

[DeuceKustoms]

6) Now that your seat is modified, it is time to make patterns off of the old seat, and make new patterns off the the modified seat. So use a razor blade and cut apart all of your seams being careful not to slice the material, until you have the seat all apart to make new patterns. once you have all of the pieces apart, Iron them with steam (from the back side) to lay all the creases flat, makes tracing the patterns much easier.





Here is the pattern that I made for the new rear seat, i marked out 3/8" for the seam allowance (that was what the stock seat was) and will cut that out to trace a new pattern.



Here is making a new pattern for the new rear seat, just simply modifying the original pattern.








7) Start tracing all of your patterns onto your new material using chalk. don't ever use sharpie marker or pen, it will bleed and get on your rulers/squares etcetera and transfer over to the next piece of material. just dont do it!





Once all of your patterns are done, and laid out its time to head to the sewing machine.  notice I also cut out fabric for the welt cord as that will all get sewn together at one time, to keep everything cleaner.





9) The sewing begins with making the two side pieces into one piece. remember, all you are doing is just putting this back together just the opposite of how you took it apart. (when you trace your patterns, there will be small notches cut out all the way around the pattern for alignment. be sure to transfer these notches to your new pieces too so you make sure everything stays lined up!)





Now you go ahead and sew your top piece and your sides together with the welt cord in between, (remember to put your fabric face to face so its all the right direction when you turn it right side out)





And here is what you end up with:

[DeuceKustoms]

10) Now its time to sew on the bottom part of the seat, which is what you will staple to the seat pan.





Here is the first test fit. Looks pretty good!



11) Now its time stretch the material and staple it to the bottom of the seat pan. Like i said before. I go overkill on the staples. oh well, i just hope i don't have to do this one again later!



and here you go. If you don't have a rear "bitch seat" you would be done now. but i will continue the rear seat.



12) basically just repeating all of the steps you did with the front seat, i will just show the progress pics here.





test fit



Once its all stapled up, I put the two seats together to see what it looks like.



There is a few wrinkles in the rear seat, but a little bit of steam will take care of that. if you don't have a steamer, all you need is a wet cloth and a household iron. put it on high/steam and make sure to iron with the wet cloth between the seat and the iron. a couple minutes of steaming and everything tightens up nice.

here is the finished product

[Tom]

and your ass can't tell the difference anyways.  :lol:

Thanks for taking the time to do this thread!!!