QR50 - seat overhaul

I hadn't intended to do anything to the QR50 seat, but as the rebuild progressed the seat became the part that let it down - and it occurred to me that I had not recovered a seat for a long time. I had a bit of vinyl knocking around from the FH tool roll, so there was no excuse really...

Here's the seat after I finished scrubbing the red paint off it:

Here's a view of the underside:

The cover is stapled into the moulded seat base, and the staples come out quite easily. Here's the cover, made in 1988:

And that's it. The base and foam are useable, so we will make a new cover:

The seat has a couple of fabricated pieces that prevent the rider's legs pushing the plastic 'skirt' into contact with the exhaust. I made these from some 1.6 mm sheet and a few pieces of 5 mm rod from an old linen drier:

These bolt to the seat base.

To recover the foam, I started by warming the vinyl - actually I did the work at home with the central heating on. With a piece roughly cut to size, I started to fold the cover around the foam retaining it on the edges with bulldog clips:

The temporary bulldog clips help me understand where I was going to have to pull the cover into place, and once I was confident with this I could start stapling:

I stapled away from the centre gradually, making sure the cover was taught and sitting in the right place:

Once i was confident I had enough staples in place for the seat to be kid-proof, I trimmed away the excess cover material and assembled the skirt:

This is an older picture showing those protective pieces & how they protect the plastic from the exhaust: