Quote:
Originally Posted by Nemesis
Wow! Me like.
Please give me the details (leather material, how-to, etc.). Post up a DIY plz.
|
It's pretty simple. I've redone several seats, but used marine grade vinyl instead of leather, it's cheaper and a little easier to take care of.
All you need is:
Hand held staple gun (
Like this one)
Some short 1/4" staples (
Like these
1yd of Marine grade vinyl (
Like this)
a Flat Blade screwdriver
a pair of needle nose pliers
A pair of scissors
Then you remove your seats, and use the screwdriver and needlenose pliers to remove the stock covers. Slide the screwdriver under the factory staples and twist it, that'll "tent" the staple, use the needlenose pliers to pull it out.
Once you get the covers off, lay the seat upside down on top of your vinyl. You'll want the finished side of the material facing down. Now draw an outline of your seat on the vinyl. Use your scissors and follow the outline, but leave about 2-3 inches of material outside of your pattern. You'll get the shape, but want it bigger than the seat.
Now, load the staples into your gun and start at either the front or rear of the seat. Place a few (3-4 staples) there and then pull the material tight at the other end of the seat and staple those in. Slowly work your way around the seat in symmetric fashion, i.e. don't go all the way around one way or the other, work back a few inches on each side at a time. Be sure to pull the material tight before stapling it, remember it's got some stretch to it and you don't want to look loose on the seat. If you mess it up, just pull the staples and try it again. Once you've got it all stapled down, trim your excess material and you're good to go. Also, some of the staples won't go all the way in, just take a hammer and tap them into place when your finished.
It takes some patience, but it's not hard. The rear is harder than the front on the New Gens because of it's shape, but some stretching and bunching (folding the material over itself on the bottom of the seat) will get you a fairly good fit with very minimal wrinkles at the edges.
I'm actually trying to get someone to teach me and my wife to sew, as I think it'd be neat to be able to make "custom" seat covers for friends and stuff. My wife has a machine that let's me do some basic embroidery, nothing too fancy, simply because I don't really know how to use it yet.
Anyways, this is what the end result should look like.
Also, the yard of material will be enough to do several bikes as you'll have 36" X 54" swath of material, I think I did my dirtbike seat, my wife's ninjette and my friend used some to redo the seat on his FJR all on one yard, I had to buy some more to do my bike, but I've still got about half of that left over. Even if you didn't have the stapler, you could buy everything you needed and do it for less than $35-40.
