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Attaching upholstery to seat pan

15K views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  spacmanspif300 
#1 ·
I'm in the process. Got the pan almost finished. Steel. Sits on rubber bumpers on the frame rails, has two small bolts holding it down in the front, and will have some velcro sitched into the seam in a few places to wrap the frame rail and assist in holding the seat in place.

I have used the original foam from the stock seat, cut down roughly already, which I will glue directly to the steel pan and finally trim down to exact size.

I have a bunch of scrap black leather in pieces big enough to make a seat cover, and experience sewing.

Where I get fuzzy is how to hold the leather cover in place. I have considered:
1. aluminum or stainless pop rivets,
2. the little plastic push-through car panel jobbers,
3. similar steel push-through things used to hold the stock vinyl in place, or
4. just glueing it. I used gorilla glue to reattach part of a seat cover before.

The stock pan used the push-through doohickies mentioned above and 'teeth' cut out of the pan itself. I don't want to cut dozens of these teeth by hand. I'm also not crazy about having metal show on the outside edge of the seat cover...which includes riveting.

Help.
 
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#3 ·
Glue it with quality contact cement. Plus you catch a buzz!
None of that spray shit. Needs to be the brush on, stinky type.
Two coats on the material side. First is meant as a primer.

NE
 
#4 ·
Thanks guys. That sounds like a plan. And since you've been so helpful, I offer the gift of photos of my progress so far on a new seat for the XS650...

This is a chopped up stock seat pan. Sort of a mock up/test run for the custom pan I'd be making:


The university's maintenance recycling dumpster always has sheet metal in it. I made a cardboard cutout first, then went to work on this guy:


Angle grinder and drill. I also used a file a little.


Reused the rubber bumpers from the stock pan, and put two M8 screws in the front to hold it in place:



The rear was wobbly, so I decided to add a few more bumpers, had to make a couple of small mounting brackets:



It's looking good. I just need to strip the paint, glue the foam, trim the foam, make the cover, and glue that. Be done by morning. Not really.
 
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