Seat Design

With the bike stripped down and the engine out, and with nothing to do but wait for new parts, I decided to start customizing a little.  I searched the web for a bit for ideas, and found a bike similar to what I was hoping to build, posted on Pipe Burn.  I dropped this image into photoshop and edited up this:

Following this virtual modification, I went for the seat.  Removing the former cover and drawing the new shape on the old foam.  From this sketch, I cut the foam on a band saw, I shaped a rough version.

Using an angle grinder with one of the wheels with staggered sand paper, I shaped the corners and details I was looking for.

Finally, I cut the seat pan down to match the new shape of the seat.  This resulted in the pan not having any structural components anymore, so I ended up scrapping the part all together and just fabricating a new part from some 16 g sheet steel. This is the old pan after I cut it down:

For the new pan from scratch, I put mocked the shape up with some card board, then laid it flat on my steel.  I then cut this shape out with a bandsaw and made the contour bends on the edge of my bench with a few clamps holding the pan in place.  The pan was still a bit wobbly, so I took it over to the english wheel and with some channel rollers, put a nice channel through the flat parts of the pan, adding a lot of rigidity and strength.  I then lined the pan up to the bike and marked exactly where I would need to add tabs for clipping/screwing it down to the frame.  Since I planned on mounting my taillight to the seat, I welded a tab at the back.  Lastly a line of holes drilled around the outside perimeter for some rivits to hold down the vinyl finished off the build.  

A shot of the seat pan being fitted: