The Tale of Two Seats: The Good, The Bad, And The Fugly

I finally got my cafe seat mounted...and I have to say it looks darned

good!

Getting the seat to this point was really involved. My goal was to keep everything reversible, so I could go back to the stock seat if I needed to.

First, I unbolted the outer rear fender, tail light, and seat mounts. Then I bolted two pieces of flat stock longitudinally across the frame. I was able to bolt the front piece to the stock front seat mounting holes, but I had to drill a couple of holes to mount the rear piece.

I then bent up a piece of steel to hold the tail light and license plate. I drilled holes in this piece to mount it using the inner fender mounting bolts and the turn signal mounting studs. I spliced a Molex connector to the tail light wiring (using solder and shrink wrap, of course), and was able to retain the stock tail light wiring plug in the harness. I hooked up the tail light to the mating Molex connector, and wrapped the whole thing in flex loom:



I then covered the bike with tin foil, wax paper, and newspaper, and epoxied three sheets of fiberglass over the box formed by the pieces of flat stock. I then epoxied this fiberglass box to the underside of the cafe tail. When the whole mess cured, it made the cafe tail fit exactly over the pieces of flat stock, which were solidly mounted to the bike.

Unfortunately, the front of the seat was too wide -- each front corner protruded out from the gas tank by a half inch, so I used my jig saw to taper down the sides, and laid up new fiberglass edges.

After all that was done, I filled the gaps between the edge of the outer seat and the edge of the internal fiberglass box with bondo, sanded it down a zillion times, put on primer, rubbed it down with rubbing compound, put on a couple of coats of Rustoleum gloss black, and a couple of coats of clearcoat -- each with a rubbing compound session in between.

So, it was looking hot. I was feeling pretty proud of myself, so I decided to ride it to work...then I found out about the

bad

You see, I'm cursed with being a "measure once, cut twice" kind of guy...here's a picture I took after I got home from work, pulled off the shocks and chocked up the rear wheel:



Yeah...I know. Let me tell you - this definitely made for some interesting noises, and quite a "pucker moment" when I hit the first set of train tracks on my commute. On the plus side, I made it home in one piece.

So, I thought that maybe I should replace the outer rear fender and mount the tail light on that...unfortunately, that raised up the rear of the cafe tail so it was no longer located by the piece of flat stock, and looks downright

fugly:

So, what to do?? I might pull the outer fender and shocks off again and check to see how much clearance I have for the tail without a tail light. If it is ample, then maybe I could still run the seat with a side-mount license plate/tail light or something.

When I rode it with no pad, I have to say that the experience wasn't all I had hoped for -- I kept imagining the fiberglass mounting box delaminating from the seat, so I kept not really using the bum-stop, and instead used all my back muscles to stay near the front of the seat. I think I'll bolt the seat, the mounting box, and the underlying pieces of steel stock together before I ride it again.

Also, I didn't have any padding on the seat yet...this (combined with my lack of confidence in the bum stop), caused me to slide forward and back on the seat -- I ended up holding onto the handlebars with my pinkies and ring fingers, and working the hand levers with my index and middle fingers -- just because I needed more grip not to slide off the back of the seat!

Also, I was at least three inches lower than I sat on the stock bike, which is pretty low already.

Also, the lack of padding made my eyeballs buzz like my mirrors (at least it seemed that way, but maybe that was related to the startling, gut-wrenching grinding noise that pulsed through the bike when I'd hit a major bump and the rear wheel would rub the license plate bolts).

A lot of these problems will be solved once I build a pad for the seat...but I have to say that I'm feeling pretty discouraged with the whole project. Too bad the seat makes the bike look so darned hot!