The last couple of days I've been working on my motorcycle seat. It's a fairly common practice to put a lower seat on these WR450s because they're so tall. I was going to buy a lower seat for it but that didn't work out so I decided to modify the seat myself. It looks simple enough, you take off the seat cover, cut an inch off the top of the foam, and staple the cover back on. What could possibly go wrong ? Well I'll tell you. The first thing that went wrong is I decided that I wanted an all black seat cover instead of the blue and black one that came with it, because someday I would like to change all the blue and white plastic parts for black ones so I would have a black motorcycle instead of a blue-and-white motorcycle. But I found out that putting a rectangular piece of vinyl over the foam is a lot harder than putting the fitted seat cover back on that I took off. The next problem was my staple gun. My old staple gun didn't have the power to push a staple through the plastic seat base. So I went to Home Depot and bought a heavy-duty staple gun that with some effort will put Staples into the hard plastic seat base most of the time. I also found out I didn't have a good way of cutting the foam. I've cut foam before using a electric carving knife or just a long serrated knife blade but I no longer have any of those things having gotten rid of them before I sold my house. So the only thing I had handy was a hacksaw blade and even though it made an ugly cut it still worked. I also didn't have any sandpaper to sand the foam smooth after I cut it so I bought some while it was at Home Depot, all the while thinking of the boxes of sandpaper I threw away before I sold my house. After I bought the things I needed the actual job wasn't all that bad except making the vinyl fit the seat and look halfway decent. I've never upholstered anything in my life, so taking that into consideration the finished seat didn't look all that bad, it's not perfect but its not embarrassing either. But looks aren't everything so it will be interesting to see if I leave a trail of staples as I ride down the road. |