Pain In The Arse....

Last week I bought two one foot square by half inch thick pieces of high-density closed cell foam from Sargent's Seats in Jacksonville, FL for ten dollars each. I used a staple puller to remove the front half of the staples and exposed the rider's section of the seat . I cut the new foam to fill the dip in that area, raising the position about an inch. The original seat cover had enough extra material to be pulled back in place.

The looks are a little lumpy and certainly not completely professional, but, oh, what an improvement! I was able to ride most of the next day in relative comfort, where before it would have been two hours at most and then off.

The added height makes for a less cramped position and the ability to slide back to mid-seat is a nice addition as well.

On Wednesday I took the bike to Mellilimoto in Gainesville for service and showed Seb what I had done. He noticed the box in the bottom of the seat pan for the tool kit and said it would be easy to cut that section out and rivet in a piece of stainless over the cut-out, eliminating the horrible ridge we all hate. I plan on doing that this week.

Once complete, I'll take the thing back to Sargent's and have them replace all the foam to the new shape, saving the original cover and hopefully solving the problem. This should cost less than two hundred dollars.

Pray for me...
Cliff

No, Sarah. Cutting out the recess in the bottom of the pan where the tool kit was held in place with a rubber cord eliminates the place where the tool kit was held. There is still a small box under the seat to store the kit, so no real loss.

However...

Ladyeclectic,

Sargent's started R&D yesterday with an Icon on hand and should have production ready within a month or so. There will be a new pan and a couple of seat options available.

I've used their seats before and can vouch for the quality and comfort of their products.

With this in mind, I've decided to wait and not cut my pan after all. For roughly $100 more ($300), I can have the real deal.

Cliff

This is my first post in the seat controversy. I've got about 1400 miles on my Icon now, and am very familiar with the shortcomings of the seat. Fortunately, the vast majority of my riding is 10 to 20 miles at a time. On the occasion that I've stretched that out, however, I've been good for just about an hour before the seat is intolerable.

Got a call on Saturday from a friend organizing a Sunday ride. He and his son have Gold Wings, I'm on the Icon, and another friend is on an Aprilia. This Sunday ride was going to be LONG, he was planning on about 300 miles from the DC area out to West Virginia and back, in a big loop. I knew I would never survive. So I went out to his house to work out a quick solution, and the attached picture illustrates what we did.

It's a stupid looking solution, but it was quick and successful. We pulled a Mad Dog seat pad off of one of his dirt bikes and buckled it over the Icon seat, and then zip tied a beaded seat cushion on top of it. You know, one of those wooden beaded things like in taxi. I rode on the combo all day Sunday and it was MUCH better than the stock seat. I lasted 4 hours in reasonable comfort before having to take a good long break.

I think the reason it helped so much is because the extra width spread the contact points over a much larger area, and when I moved around a bit and beads changed contact points.

I took it all off after the ride, but now I have a better feel (so to speak) for what the solution needs to do.

Our ride turned out to be a touch over 200 miles. The Aprilia and I topped off our tanks a few times during the ride and the Gold Wings just kept on going. And we had a real blast crossing the mountains!