Since everything else is getting changed why should I not do something to the seat. I pulled the cover and the seat foam off my magnum seat and found a solid seat pan to work from. I figured that I could take about 5" out of the pan to make it a nice snug fit.
I taped the lines I wanted to cut and used a few dremel cut-off wheels to get through the metal.
Here we have one short magnum seat pan. This will really clean up the rear end of the bike.
My friend and fellow Creature Brian welded the two pieces of the seat pan together. I was all ready to paint the thing black put some small pads on it and call it a day. Then I thought what would look really cool is a seat pan made out of Carbon Fiber. Since the bike's planed paint job is a matte/satin black this would be a subtle detail but would really make the thing look good. I figured it would be a good way to spend more money, learn a new skill, and remove around 2lbs from the bike. Granted I could just go on a diet and drop 15lbs but where is the fun in that?
In order to make the carbon seat pan there are a few steps
- Bondo and sand make the seat pan as smooth as possible. (see photo below)
- Lay-up fiberglass to make a mold of the seat.
- Bondo paint and sand the mold (every little defect left will show up in the final piece
- Find some Carbon fiber cloth (not that easy anymore since all the major airplane mfg's are using more and more of this stuff in there planes.
- Layup the carbon into the mold.
- End up with a featherlight strong as steel seat pan ready to have it's mounting hardware installed.
I will need to figure out a secure way to mount the seat to the frame. I think that I have decided on using 6 Dzus clips. Dzus clips are 1/4 turn fasteners that are normally used to hold motorcycle fairings on, they work great are are super easy when you want to get something on and off. This way I can pull the seat and then be able to pull the gas tank in a very short time.
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