Building a custom cafe seat

Hey everyone
I want to build a café seat for my KZ550 but I don't want to chop up the frame. I also do not want to shave any foam off of the original seat. The frame below the seat angles up towards the back of the bike. Does anyone have some advice on how to build a custom seat that will make the whole seat appear flat?

if you dont shave the foam off your existing seat (assuming its the LTD seat in your avatar) it will probably look huge and out of proportion with the rest of the bike. You could just buy a beat up seat pan play around foam and upholstery options without sacrificing your existing seat. just my .02

you are not going to be able to build a flat seat on top of a stepped frame and have it look right.

thats my .02 fwiw,
leon

Heres hoe you do it.

This is an involved process but its very rewarding at the end and a simple cafe seat would be an excellent first project.

First start by carfully wraping the frame tubes that you want your seat to attach to with saran wrap trying to avoid any wrinkles.

Then tape paper just below the horizontal tangent line between those frame tubes to create a "pan" area.

Then create a similar "pan" type surface a couple inches around the outside of the designated frame tubes, again with just tape and paper.

Then get a piece of 1/2" XPS foam board and cut it to slightly oversize of the entire "pan" area. It should just lay on the top of the designated frame tubes. Make it stable by blocking in small XPS blocks to give it 3 points of contact to the frame.

Tape plastic from the underside edge of the "pan" area to the top surface of your XPS. You should now have a "bubble" that encapsulates your frame tubes that you want the seat to mount to, the inside surface of the "pan" area, as well as the underside and edge of the XPS.

The only thing left to do is fill the air space in the "bubbble" with expanding foam and let it set up for 2 DAYS! at least! The foam will take a long time to properly cure in the air starved environment. Once it is all dry, it should POP off the frame rails and leave you with a perfectly formed seat attachment area on the underside and a funky lookin blob for carving on the top surface.

It carves wonderfully with a sharp knife, wire wheel on a grinder, or a hot wire cutter. Cut it to the shape you want/like, then fiberglass it and throw some upholstery over it!

Be sure to plan how you would like the upholstery to attach.

No eBay APP ID and/or Cert ID defined in Kunena configurationThanks for the replies everyone. I've decided to buy a used KZ550 seat that somebody already messed with so I don't ruin a good original part. I found an 82 550 Spectre seat somebody's selling on ebay for cheap. Is the seat pan on the spectre compatible with the original setup on my 81 500C LTD?

SevKZ9 wrote: Heres hoe you do it.

This is an involved process but its very rewarding at the end and a simple cafe seat would be an excellent first project.

First start by carfully wraping the frame tubes that you want your seat to attach to with saran wrap trying to avoid any wrinkles.

Then tape paper just below the horizontal tangent line between those frame tubes to create a "pan" area.

Then create a similar "pan" type surface a couple inches around the outside of the designated frame tubes, again with just tape and paper.

Then get a piece of 1/2" XPS foam board and cut it to slightly oversize of the entire "pan" area. It should just lay on the top of the designated frame tubes. Make it stable by blocking in small XPS blocks to give it 3 points of contact to the frame.

Tape plastic from the underside edge of the "pan" area to the top surface of your XPS. You should now have a "bubble" that encapsulates your frame tubes that you want the seat to mount to, the inside surface of the "pan" area, as well as the underside and edge of the XPS.

The only thing left to do is fill the air space in the "bubbble" with expanding foam and let it set up for 2 DAYS! at least! The foam will take a long time to properly cure in the air starved environment. Once it is all dry, it should POP off the frame rails and leave you with a perfectly formed seat attachment area on the underside and a funky lookin blob for carving on the top surface.

It carves wonderfully with a sharp knife, wire wheel on a grinder, or a hot wire cutter. Cut it to the shape you want/like, then fiberglass it and throw some upholstery over it!

Be sure to plan how you would like the upholstery to attach.

Any pics of what you mean. I got lost after the 3rd line. :silly:

No eBay APP ID and/or Cert ID defined in Kunena configuration

nickleo373 wrote: Thanks for the replies everyone. I've decided to buy a used KZ550 seat that somebody already messed with so I don't ruin a good original part. I found an 82 550 Spectre seat somebody's selling on ebay for cheap. Is the seat pan on the spectre compatible with the original setup on my 81 500C LTD?

can you pop your seat off real quick and compare the pans?

It looks like the latches and everything are in the same places but I'm unsure if the width and the height of the two seats are the same

ask the seller for dimensions. or for $36 you could find out :laugh:

I thought that might happen, I wrote with the knowledge I learned from my endeavor so my pics don't follow exactly but here are some. I started by laying out the flat surfaces and building up the back portion from a flat base. Then you can see the plastic wrapped underneath the whole mess... Then came the expanding foam, like I said, I learned from this experience, it got messy... But then you can see how well it formed to the frame rails and most of the underside work was done with that knife in the pic... Then I cut everything that didnt look like what I wanted and fiberglassed it, put lights in it hid the electronics on the underside and have a crappy fizz can paint job haha!

SevKZ9 wrote: I thought that might happen, I wrote with the knowledge I learned from my endeavor so my pics don't follow exactly but here are some. I started by laying out the flat surfaces and building up the back portion from a flat base. Then you can see the plastic wrapped underneath the whole mess... Then came the expanding foam, like I said, I learned from this experience, it got messy... But then you can see how well it formed to the frame rails and most of the underside work was done with that knife in the pic... Then I cut everything that didnt look like what I wanted and fiberglassed it, put lights in it hid the electronics on the underside and have a crappy fizz can paint job haha!

that is hands down the strangest tail i have ever seen on a bike.

you gotta have a better side shot than that dontcha !

as crazy as it is i think it is cool that you went all the way with it.

is that a passenger seating area in the back?

leon