I had an old seat with stuffed foam and I decided to have a go at renewing the foam and recovering it. Trying to buy decent foam proved to be a little bit of a mission. Clarke rubber has three grades of foam none suitable for my seat. After asking around I found Dyman foam and they have 24 grades.  I had tried them a quite few years but the person who served me at the time wasn't very helpful so I gave up. 

I decided to try them again and found a very helpful sales assistant. Selecting foam seems to be a bit of a black art, and I had gone in with a couple of foam grade numbers I gleaned from their site.  Both of which were way too soft and the assistant suggested a starting point of the light green foam $14.00 for a piece large enough to cover the riders seat. It can take a couple of days for them to cut it out and phone you. I  shaped it and covered with a piece of covering foam and an old piece of vinyl it was pretty close but bottomed out on bumps. 

I went back and explained my findings and she suggested going up two grades to 35-230 orange foam $14.00. This proved to be spot on for me.  So I shaped with an electric carving knife then an angle grinder with a flap wheel and finally a small cheese grater and sanding disc by hand. So MIck and Paul turned up today to cover it, after viewing a YouTube video on how to do it we started. After a bit if fiddling and pulling and stretching Mick managed to sort it out. Initially it was clamped and then stapled before using the OEM plastic strips and riveting it. I am extremely happy with the way it turned out and would like to thank Mick and Paul for their assistance. At some stages it took all three of us to get the vinyl to cooperate.
Regards Martin.


Regards Martin.

Congrats on the win

I once recovered a Vespa seat with vinyl and was strongly / correctly advised to leave the black vinyl out in the hot sun to allow it to go all soft and elastic before then securing it to the foam covered seat. Very happy with result.

Yours "looks like a bought one"

Well done

GF

I did heat it initially with a hot air gun and then a couple of times during the process. The hardest part was the nose. Paul had disappeared home by then. Mick and I had to keep reworking the nose and it slowly worked it's way into shape with an application of a small amount of spray glue and heat. Patience is the key to a good result. 

All up the whole cost was pretty good the marine vinyl was $17.00 on special from Spotlight with enough to do two seats. The foam was $14.00 from Dyman so $31.00 staples glue and rivets (Aldi Kits) I already had in stock. However I had to do the foam twice so you can add another $14.00 for a grand total of $45.00. I hopefully have another seat on the way so if it needs recovering I have the vinyl in stock.
Regards Martin.

A good job by all involved.

    nice job
hope it was marine grade stuff  (additional uv protection ) im told

Charlie it is supposedly marine grade, time will tell. How's the foot and Gertie progressing?
Regards Martin.

There is a leather repair shop around the corner from me  which does seat, racing leathers, jackets, boot  and luggage. When my  tank bag broke on the way back from the Kane toad last year i drop it off to him to fix it. 

The amount of seat and the conditions that some were is because of the  use of non UV material used was shocking 

Looking forward to seeing it in a fortnight time

MartinW wrote:Charlie it is supposedly marine grade, time will tell. How's the foot and Gertie progressing?
Regards Martin.

slowly martin

over did it a couple of weeks ago , so took it easy last week ...totally ...feeling the benefits this week though
just back from one of our  local  Monday group rides , about 320 k  circle down to Uralla and back via some off the highway roads so basically running ok

haven't touched Gerty yet ...but the main fairing is delaminating where fixes have been performed before , so opting to a second base main fairing to rebuild and hopefully get cosmetically better

will be installing crash bars soon enough just so I can manage to right the old girl singlehandedly , with some mods of corse . a bit like the fehlberg   crash bars with horizontal protection above and below the crank cover  and some extra mounting bits back to the rear engine - gearbox frame mount points ...or so the plan is ...

Glad to hear that you are mending, and I'm sure you'll get Gertie back to health as well.
Regards Martin.

Great work Martin!  Thanks for the tips on the type of foam to use

You might have to experiment with the foam but what I used can be used as a starting point. I rode the bike with the old vinyl thrown over the foam until I was happy with it. I then did the vinyl. 

At the moment I'm playing with covering the 22 Lt OEM top box back rest with matching vinyl. I'm on my third attempt it looks to be doable but it is a pain trying to get all the wrinkles out on the edges. First attempt was aligning the stretch horizontally second attempt was aligning vertically. Due to the bit around the seat lock I'm going back to horizontally. I'll post piccies if and when I finish it. 

When doing the seat vinyl the direction of most stretch needs to go across the seat. There are two a helpful YouTube video done by The Goat Garage on an early Brick seat.
Regards Martin.