Right since I finished my bike I've had a lot of comments about slipping off the back of the seat, and yes I admit it is a little too step in angle and doesn't provide a lot of support. I am now completely used to it, but it's no good if someone else wants to ride it or as I'm now thinking about swapping the handle bars to Ape Hangers, so I'll need that support that I'm currently missing, so I've started to remount the seat.
As you can see from the current setup, it's very step with not a lot of surface to sit your rear on or hold you in place. It also doesn't look quite right as it's too close to the tank. Ideally I'd want it an equal distance from the tank and the rear fender to look spot on.
So first up I bent up a couple of pieces of 5mm thick flat bar, which was left over from making the rear fender struts. Same as before this was done by just clamping it in the vice, sliding a massive piece of steel pipe over it and using good old elbow grease. It took a lot of effort to get both pieces to match using such an inaccurate method, but I got there in the end.
I've now chopped the pieces down to a managable length, drilled a hole in the ends of the pieces and mounted them to the bike where my seat used to mount, then I can determine where the seat itself will actually go.
You can see here that I now have the final length sorted out, shaped the ends, and drilled the holes for the seat pan to mount through. Drilling the holes was a little tricky as they had to come down vertically through the piece, not perpendicular to the curved surface. I just started off drilling a very small hole, and then increased the size up 1mm at a time until I got all the way to 10mm.
To finish it off I made a brace to go between the two pieces to hold them parallel to each other. I welded all three pieces together and then grinded down all the welds so it's all now flush and just looks like one piece. I made sure to bevel all the edges to be welded together, so the welds would penetrate nice and deep, and once ground back flush would still be very strong. This bracket is now ready to be powder coated black.
You can see with this test fit the successful end result. The seat now looks almost level front to back with a great big area to sit on, and a better kick-up and the back to provide support. The seat is now an inch higher in back, an inch lower up front, and two inches further back. You can also see why I made a kick-up in the bracket: I knew once it sat level that the centre of the seat would hang as the lowest point, and I didn't want it to foul against the heads of the mounting bolts for the bracket as the underside of the seat is also covered in leather like the top. Obviously I'll need to make a new bracket to grab the front of the seat too, but I'll tackle that next weekend.
As you can see here the other goal I achieved was a better looking position of the seat. It now looks centred with an equal distance between the rear fender and the gas tank.
