wordsmith Posted July 11, 2017 Share Posted July 11, 2017 FITTED NEW SEAT CONCEPTS TOURING SEAT I’m a bony, lean, and not-very-well-padded 83kg fully kitted. Over many years and on many bikes I’ve tried lots of things to improve OE seat comfort where necessary – full fitted sheepskin covers; sheepskin pads; Air Hawk; having OE seats re-made with minimal success at considerable cost; bought an early Tracer seat kit from Seat Concepts after they had a special deal on this Forum way back; finally a beautifully-made but very expensive custom-made Bagster two-piece item from France, on its own custom seat pan/ base. The Bagster seat was by far the best-performing of these choices on my last Tracer, while the early Seat Concepts kit offered some improvement over stock. The only bikes I have ever owned that had great ‘komfortsitzen’ seats were my late BMWs – R1200Rs and GSs. Sadly, they come attached to very expensive motorbikes! Quite recently Seat Concepts brought out their newer ‘Touring’ seat kit (confusingly named on their website as for the FJR). With a couple of longer ~4500km trips in mind, I decided to order one, having been moderately satisfied with the earlier ‘standard’ replacement kit on my first Tracer. Description of the new Touring seat is best left to the makers: “… Seat Concepts added foam to the front of the seat to be able to reduce the slope into the tank. With this change, they were able to keep the seating pocket thicker with foam for better comfort. They also widened and added some support around the edge of the seating area for greater comfort. At the front, we kept it narrow to minimize the thicker foam affecting the reach to the ground. With these changes and an improved foam density will help keep the seat from being an item to stop you from going on that ride or enjoying the bike”. My pix below clearly show the difference in shape and structure between the OE foam and the new Seat Concepts Touring version - OE is yellowish, new is white. The foams look a bit distorted in the side-by-side pic - I think that's a trick of the light or the camera angle! The new seat is appreciably thicker at the rear than the OE, and quite deeply ‘dished’ so that I’ll be sitting in it rather than on it. It’s also about ¾” wider where it counts. There’s also substantially more material in the Touring foam – OE weighed 330g, while the new seat foam weighed-in at 750g. I ordered it from the Australian distributors, AdventureMoto, who were pleasant people to deal with. Some delays caused me a bit of frustration, but unasked they offered to meet the mailing cost to me – only $10, but a nice gesture. All-up cost was AUD$275 delivered to me from Sydney. But onto specifics: learning from vduboy here that he’d found the re-covering job pretty straightforward (thanks, Nate!) I decided to DIY, hiring an electric upholstery stapler for $22 and buying a pack of staples for $4. Helpful instructions came with the kit, which consisted of the new cover plus new foam for the rider seat, and a new matching cover only for the pillion seat, plus a bit of plastic film 'water barrier' to cover the new foam, keeping it from absorbing water (strangely, the OE pillion seat foam was already covered in this way!). The instructions also advised to stick the foam to the seat pan, which I did with some aerosol contact adhesive, but again it seemed a bit odd that neither the OE rider's or pillion seat foam was stuck down. So with some help from Mrs wordsmith (who has lots of experience with dressmaking, understands pleats and tucks, and has suitable patience!) the job was quickly and satisfactorily done in about 1½ hours from start to finish. Because, I think, of the concave or dished nature of the seats there are a couple of gentle wrinkles on the upper surfaces, but they may disappear with use - if not, it's not a big deal! They could possibly have been stretched-out during installation, but the instructions do warn against fastening the covers too tightly. An important hint in the instructions recommended laying the covers out in the sun to warm and soften before installation. No problems here with that - plenty of sun! - but elsewhere maybe putting the covers into a warm (not hot!) oven, or borrowing wifey's hair-dryer would help, as when cold the material is pretty stiff and inflexible. Overall, it’s not a chore that anybody should be frightened of attempting, IMHO, as the staples can be easily removed and re-done as the job proceeds, and apart from the stapler the only other tools needed are a pair of thin-nosed pliers and a flat screwdriver to remove the scores of original staples, plus a 10mm socket to remove and refasten the seat-lock catch at the rear of the front seat. A ten seconds job, it needs removal to be able to fit the cover around that area. Proof of pudding. At 5’9½” or 177cm and with 32” inseam, I can flat-foot on the bike with the OE seat in its lower position if I move right forward. This is quite important to me as I dislike any need to tip-toe. Happily, in the garage the new seat seems only fractionally taller and I expect that on the road I’ll still be happy at rest. But of course the major difference sought is the most important of all – the new level of comfort. But this will have to wait until the weekend when I can get out on a longish ride over varying terrain to put the new seat through its paces. Stay tuned! 1 1 Riding a fully-farkled 2019 MT-09 Tracer 900 GT from my bayside home in South East Queensland, Australia. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supporting Member betoney Posted July 11, 2017 Supporting Member Share Posted July 11, 2017 Good job on the cover installation, looks good. I too just ordered their ST foam and cover. Looking forward to your riding impression on a day-long ride vs. their standard seat. Their website lists a 2-3 week backlog on orders. ***2015 Candy Red FJ-09*** Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zachd Posted July 11, 2017 Share Posted July 11, 2017 Holy shenanigans...seeing the picture from the rear of the foam pieces really shows the difference. I'm curious to hear how much improvement it is. Makes me wonder if I'd be treating myself too much with all that cushion!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
koth442 Posted July 11, 2017 Share Posted July 11, 2017 Subscribed. '15 FJ09 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wordsmith Posted July 12, 2017 Author Share Posted July 12, 2017 Subscribed. If that means what I think it means we will be interested in your comments once installed and tried-out on the road. Riding a fully-farkled 2019 MT-09 Tracer 900 GT from my bayside home in South East Queensland, Australia. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwicanuck Posted July 12, 2017 Share Posted July 12, 2017 Iam ready to click on buy now, need report on your thoughts 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patrickjs5 Posted July 12, 2017 Share Posted July 12, 2017 @wordsmith, thanks for the in depth review and great pics. I'm confused about which product you ended up with. It looks like this seat - the Sport-Tour version specific to the FJ-09. You mentioned that the seat you have is the FJR touring version - is it specified as such on the Seat Concepts site or the AdventureMoto distributor site? This is the best I can find for FJR tour version. ...Which may or may not fit on the FJ. Can you confirm which product you ordered? I too have nearly pulled the trigger on this add-on. At just $175 USD it's about half the cost of any other aftermarket seat option. Some seem like to like it, others not so much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supporting Member betoney Posted July 12, 2017 Supporting Member Share Posted July 12, 2017 @wordsmith , thanks for the in depth review and great pics. I'm confused about which product you ended up with. It looks like this seat - the Sport-Tour version specific to the FJ-09. You mentioned that the seat you have is the FJR touring version - is it specified as such on the Seat Concepts site or the AdventureMoto distributor site? This is the best I can find for FJR tour version. ...Which may or may not fit on the FJ. Can you confirm which product you ordered? Seat Concepts offers 2 different seat foams for the FJ, standard and Sport Touring. They recently reorganized their website listings, if you specifically search for Yamaha FJ-09, you will get the standard seat. If you just search Yamaha seats, you will find the sport touring version as well, but in the picture it says FJR. You want This One. ***2015 Candy Red FJ-09*** Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wordsmith Posted July 12, 2017 Author Share Posted July 12, 2017 @wordsmith , thanks for the in depth review and great pics. I'm confused about which product you ended up with. It looks like this seat - the Sport-Tour version specific to the FJ-09. You mentioned that the seat you have is the FJR touring version - is it specified as such on the Seat Concepts site or the AdventureMoto distributor site? This is the best I can find for FJR tour version. ...Which may or may not fit on the FJ. Can you confirm which product you ordered? Seat Concepts offers 2 different seat foams for the FJ, standard and Sport Touring. They recently reorganized their website listings, if you specifically search for Yamaha FJ-09, you will get the standard seat. If you just search Yamaha seats, you will find the sport touring version as well, but in the picture it says FJR. You want This One. You do indeed want This One as advised above - specifically SKU 42-1310-20-1000. Not being at all defensive but in the interest of truth, honesty, and the Australian way what I actually wrote was that it is labelled on the SC website as for the FJR. (The same pic also says FJ-09!!!). I wrote to Seat Concepts pointing out the misleading labelling, but it remains! I think AdvMoto has one left in stock, but their website is simply a clone of the SC site and pix and mis-descriptions! BTW - I'm about to post some 'first impressions'. Riding a fully-farkled 2019 MT-09 Tracer 900 GT from my bayside home in South East Queensland, Australia. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wordsmith Posted July 12, 2017 Author Share Posted July 12, 2017 First impressions... Being pretty impatient I took a brief ride out today to check first impressions of the newly-installed Seat Concepts Touring seat. It was a mere 40km and about as many minutes on some local outer suburban roads, but a poor choice of time of day for such a ride. School was just out so roads were pretty busy, and my feet were up and down like a bride’s nightie. In short - jury’s still out! But I can give a couple of observations. First – the new seat is taller than I’d first thought when swinging a leg over in the garage earlier. My creaky stiff 78y.o. knees and hips are not made for such stuff, so I think some calisthenics or yoga may be in order! And I’ll need to watch pannier-kicking when they are fitted. I guess the seat material may compress a little over time, but it's not a major concern to me - I've had taller GSs! Second – for the same reason I couldn’t comfortably flat-foot at rest unless I stood straight up in the seat and really stretched out. Otherwise it was both feet in tip-toe position, which I don’t care for much at all, but I'm sure I’ll get used to it. Again, the seat may compress a little with use. At first I thought there was little difference in the ‘feel’ of the new seat compared to the OE. The pressure points in my buttocks arising from the bony protrusions at the bottom of the hip structure felt exactly the same, and I was ready to start to feel a little disappointed. Then after a short time I moved around a little on the ‘gripper’ seat material and pushed myself back as far as I reasonably could, with just a finger's width between my lower back and the pillion seat's front rise. This immediately felt a lot better – the pressure points were minimised and I felt more relaxed as I headed for home. But truthfully, the short outing didn’t tell me much at all, as it normally takes about an hour on the OE seat for the discomfort to become apparent, then rapidly worsen from there. A very much longer outing of >400km over a greater range of road types is planned for this coming Saturday – only three more sleeps! On this ride I’ll do some quite long non-stop stretches on the bike, after which I’ll be able to give a more detailed objective appraisal of the seat. So far I’m reserving judgement. Stay tuned! Riding a fully-farkled 2019 MT-09 Tracer 900 GT from my bayside home in South East Queensland, Australia. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wordsmith Posted July 12, 2017 Author Share Posted July 12, 2017 I too have nearly pulled the trigger on this add-on. At just $175 USD it's about half the cost of any other aftermarket seat option. Some seem like to like it, others not so much. Not so much? It's the same with every seat - as I have said before - "one man's seat is another man's poison"! Riding a fully-farkled 2019 MT-09 Tracer 900 GT from my bayside home in South East Queensland, Australia. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwicanuck Posted July 13, 2017 Share Posted July 13, 2017 With that much form how can it be bad, maybe I am over wishing and hoping for too much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wordsmith Posted July 13, 2017 Author Share Posted July 13, 2017 With that much form how can it be bad, maybe I am over wishing and hoping for too much.I'll be putting-in a ~900km round trip next week (with a day off in-between out and back legs) so that will give me a good guide to the new seat's form - and foam! I'll post results and impressions on my return... Riding a fully-farkled 2019 MT-09 Tracer 900 GT from my bayside home in South East Queensland, Australia. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwicanuck Posted July 13, 2017 Share Posted July 13, 2017 With that much form how can it be bad, maybe I am over wishing and hoping for too much.I'll be putting-in a ~900km round trip next week (with a day off in-between out and back legs) so that will give me a good guide to the new seat's form - and foam! I'll post results and impressions on my return... I think we are all waiting to get your report before we click on the buy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wordsmith Posted July 13, 2017 Author Share Posted July 13, 2017 I'll be putting-in a ~900km round trip next week (with a day off in-between out and back legs) so that will give me a good guide to the new seat's form - and foam! I'll post results and impressions on my return... I think we are all waiting to get your report before we click on the buy. That gives me time to arrange a commision on sales from the manufacturer! (Only kiddin'). Riding a fully-farkled 2019 MT-09 Tracer 900 GT from my bayside home in South East Queensland, Australia. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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