The finished lowered seat with faux sheepskin cover š
Homemade - Me
Cost - $50 AUD
www.bunnings.com.au
I'm 5"5' and am vertically challenged. My inseam is 28" and while the CRF250 Rally has a modest seat height of 32.5 (895mm) plus a lot of sag at the factory setting, it doesn't give me lots of confidence at low speed. I don't want to sacrifice ride height and I don't mind sitting on a plank so I decided to lower the seat.
I did it myself. You can buy pre-lowered seats for $300 and my local shop offered to cut the seat down for $150. I used a bread knife and a powered Ozito stapler from Bunnings for $60.
I lowered the front of the seat by about 1.5 inches at the front and tapered it to the rear. It's the most I could get out of it without the plastic mould of the seat or staples digging into my butt. It came out well.
It's hard as a rock. I have the faux sheepskin cover that Callum, the original owner, stole off a postie bike. It makes a world of difference for highways. Interestingly, I don't care much about the seat being hard up-front. I only go there when stopping or hard cornering and I'm usually shifting weight anyway. I stand up and will plonk on the sheepskin on stretches.
The lower seat height gives a lot more confidence stopping. That's about it. I've been riding bike bikes most of my life and to be honest, it doesn't make a massive difference to how I ride. It does make the handlebars sit higher in relation to my body. This gives me slight upper back pain and I need some straight bars to make up the difference in seat height.
Installation
- Take the seat off the bike
- Remove the staples from the underside of the seat
- Remove the seat cover
- Put the seat without the cover back the bike
- Sit on the motorbike and mark where your butt and crotch will likely be
- Get off the bike and push down on the foam along the seat to get an idea of where the ribs/valleys of the plastic mould is and how much foam you're willing to sacrifice
- Use a marker to draw a curved line from front to back based on your above measurements (do the same for both sides)
- Cut away half the foam to the line using the bread knife
- Check how you went and if you'd like to keep going
- Remove more until you're happy but leave a little bit for finishing
- Finish with sandpaper. Note: you can leave more foam and taper the edges. A narrower seat will give you more length without sacrificing comfort
- Take the seat off the bike
- Put the cover back over the seat
- Optional: heat the plastic seat to help the staples go in
- Pull the cover tight and staple the ends first
- Staple the sides
- Done
