getting my cx seat recovered

[beef]

well this was my seat as I got the bike



and it got worse over the last few weeks.





so I decided to get it sorted. I went and saw mat at Caulfield leather in Hyde and he said that the best bet was to get a cover for it and he would fit it. so a while back I got a replacement cover off ebay for £13 delivered, but with the issues with the overheating the new cover has sat in its box in the garage waiting for the fate of the bike to be decided. Now the bike has been sorted out and is running well and I have the day off work I decided that I would get the seat sorted.

first things first. take the seat off the bike.





this is the underside of the seat. it is in good condition and all the rust is surface rust and will be getting rubbed down and repainted this weekend

first step was to bend these little tabs back and free the old seat cover ready for removal



remove the locking washer that holds the trim on and the carefully remove the trim, making sure not to bend it



then we hit a snag.



there are one of these on each side holding the strap in place.






I had already soaked them over night trying to free them up to make it possible to get them out but when being un screwed it became obvious that one of them was chewed up on the end and was not going to unscrew, so mat ended up drilling out one of the screws.
got one out in one piece so at least I know what I need to replace it with if I decide to do it..

so with the old cover removed we could see the foam for the first time.





and it was in really good shape and needed nothing doing to it.

then it was time for mat to do his magic.
he put the new cover over the seat, moved it around a little until he was happy with the location of the panels and the tacked the rear of the seat in place



you can see mat using a heat gun to make the cover more workable and to also remove some of the creases that the cover had from being packaged.



this is the rear of the seat tacked in place while mat then worked on fitting the front of the seat, and then he tacked that in place. once he was happy with the front to back positioning and look of the seat he then worked from the widest part of the seat and repeated the heating and tacking process until he was happy.

then he went round and secured all the tacks down fully and then trimmed the excess material with a scalpel



then refitted the trim and secured it in place with the washers.



and the a wipe down and it was done.





am really happy with the end result and for £35 all in I think I got a good deal.

many thanks to mat for doing it and for letting me hang around taking pics and asking questions while he did it.

[drewpy]

cool, a win all round.

[Sacha]

Wow! That looks sharp. Great deal.

[beef]

am properly chuffed with it. makes the bike look less scruffy and a lot more cared for. the bike is, it has had water pump mechanical seal, head gasket, spark plugs, filters, oils, coolant, front brake master cylinder, new brake fluid, fork seals and brake pads in last three months.

it is my every day ride. so needs to be road worthy and in good condition.

am now looking at getting the paint work tidied up.

[drewpy]

I used to have a CX, loved the V twin,loads of torque too.

it was well looked after till some idiot turned in front of me

[GazzyG]

Nice work, looks a lot better.

I used to have a plastic maggot too! Mine was an absolute shed that had been abused its whole life, lol.

Only thing I liked about it was the noise. Oh - and the engine looked pretty beefy too.

[up.yours]

hats off to you beef, great photography , great post..