Tweet
I'm getting ready to go for a nice afternoon ride -- finally!
The stock handle bars were bent so I put on a set of new-in-the-bag XS650B handlebars I picked up last year from GarthXS. I like the feel sitting in the garage but I haven't been able to ride anywhere since I put them on and it's been a slow and frustrating wait to go try them out.
The 'new' seat cover I got from B and H Specialties http://www.motorcycleseatcovers.com down in Texas had a few holes in it and was starting to crack along the stitching like a weird "tear along dotted line" pop-out so I ordered a new one. It's not here yet; no delivery date so I patched the old cover to have something to sit on. I cut up the torn seat cover from my wrecked XJ11 to make patches and flipped the patches so they were fabric-to-fabric with black Shoo Goo as an adhesive. I clamped the cover and patches between a couple of wood blocks in a bench vice to stick the patches in place, then trimmed off the extra 'Goo that oozed out. It actually worked very well and it doesn't look like it was patched so I'm sure it'll hold together until the new cover gets here.
The seat pan was rusted and the plastic edge protector was cut through and broken in quite a few places so I spent over a week stripping and painting the pan. I bought a little more than six feet of the thinnest vacuum line I could find and slit it down the middle with a razor blade to make a new pan edge protector. I still have all of my fingers and no stitches or band-aids so I used some 3M black trim adhesive to glue the vacuum line to the pan edge, then covered the entire edge with a single layer of that fiber-type strapping tape to make it slippery enough that the seat cover wouldn't pull the rubber off the pan edge when I stretched it over the hooks.
The seat pan paint's not as pretty as I would have liked to make it but it's sat long enough to cure and not stick to the seat foam when it gets hot, it's black again and it's not rusty!
.
The stock handle bars were bent so I put on a set of new-in-the-bag XS650B handlebars I picked up last year from GarthXS. I like the feel sitting in the garage but I haven't been able to ride anywhere since I put them on and it's been a slow and frustrating wait to go try them out.
The 'new' seat cover I got from B and H Specialties http://www.motorcycleseatcovers.com down in Texas had a few holes in it and was starting to crack along the stitching like a weird "tear along dotted line" pop-out so I ordered a new one. It's not here yet; no delivery date so I patched the old cover to have something to sit on. I cut up the torn seat cover from my wrecked XJ11 to make patches and flipped the patches so they were fabric-to-fabric with black Shoo Goo as an adhesive. I clamped the cover and patches between a couple of wood blocks in a bench vice to stick the patches in place, then trimmed off the extra 'Goo that oozed out. It actually worked very well and it doesn't look like it was patched so I'm sure it'll hold together until the new cover gets here.
The seat pan was rusted and the plastic edge protector was cut through and broken in quite a few places so I spent over a week stripping and painting the pan. I bought a little more than six feet of the thinnest vacuum line I could find and slit it down the middle with a razor blade to make a new pan edge protector. I still have all of my fingers and no stitches or band-aids so I used some 3M black trim adhesive to glue the vacuum line to the pan edge, then covered the entire edge with a single layer of that fiber-type strapping tape to make it slippery enough that the seat cover wouldn't pull the rubber off the pan edge when I stretched it over the hooks.
The seat pan paint's not as pretty as I would have liked to make it but it's sat long enough to cure and not stick to the seat foam when it gets hot, it's black again and it's not rusty!
.
.
Comment