Finally doing my seats!!

[ALR1955]

I finally got tired of looking at the seams and fabric on the seats in my 2005 Sportster 4TEC SCIC just rot away for NO apparent reason other than normal use. I pulled the seats out - all four so I can make them all match - and I'm going to recover them using better materials and hopefully use as close to the original pattern as possible. What I've found after disassembly of the first seat is that I'm going to modify the seams just a little bit on the (4) backs of the seats and modify only two of the seams on the (4) bottoms. The cushion material is in great shape and I'm going to reuse it as it is.

I can see that the reason for the seams pulled apart on my seats is because there is too much of an airgap between the cushion fabric and the cushion itself. Every time you sit in the seat you are just pulling too much on those seams. I am going to:

1. use a better grade of marine vinyl - pretty close to original colors - NO silver though. It's not a good color for fabric that is going to be in the sun. Went with dark grey; very light grey and yellow

2. use a better grade of plastic barrier between the fabric and the cushion material for moisture proofing
use fabric glue to secure the fabric to the cushion itself to eliminate the air gap

3. eliminate the "screen" pieces on the upper and lower cushions for a little better design and easier to cover and fill the gaps with foam filler pieces

4. put additional drain holes in the base of the seats for better drainage

5. put drain holes in the hull area where the seats mount to eliminate the standing water below the seats

I will post pictures of the process as I go along. We do repairs on upholstery and do canvas work in our shop and hope to offer the recovering of these type of seats as one of our services.

Wish me luck :hurray:

Archie

 

[robin savell lloyd]

Sounds like a plan coming together. Good luck on the project. :cheers:

 

[ALR1955]

Started doing some sewing of the modified pattern pieces on the seats These are NOT the easiest things to recover!! I'm working on keeping the seams inline with the cushion lines and with so many turns and angles I understand why the guys online are shying away from doing the newer Sportster seats. They are not like the older models at all!!

 

[ALR1955]

Started sewing the finish material for the seats yesterday. After a couple of changes to the pattern that I made for the modifications, the seats are coming together pretty nice. I should have some pictures this week.

 

[Dr Honda]

Recovering the seats is a pain in the butt. I did mine last spring.

Just an FYI... If you are useing regular marine vinyl... you may have a hard time stretching it over all the contours of the SeaDoo seats. Normally you need "4-way stretch" vinyl to make it happen... but it sounds like you already have your fabric.

You are right about getting rid of the silver. that color doesn't seem to stand up to the sun well. I changed my colors to white and light gray. They stay nice and cool in the sun.

Good luck

 

[ALR1955]

I finally finished the seats and a few other projects. I put the pictures inthe "Modify" threads under "I feel like I have a new Sportster". Let me know what you think.

Thanks