Some of you wanted more info on the seat project.
I combined an Indian made seat and springs off my other RE. This seat came with the bike when I bought it. There are many of this seat and spring set up on eBay. You might say why not just use it as it is? I wanted to add a bit more cushion to it. I also wanted it to look like a Lycett seat from the 40s/50s. The Lycett seat cover I already had in my stock of spare parts. You can get these seat covers off eBay as well or any good seller of vintage British bike parts.
I removed leather cover off it. I also had to shorten to nose of the seat as well. This was to allow the Lycett seat cover to fit. It was also to allow the springs to line up and be straight up and down.
I added piece of seat gel I got off eBay to give me that added cushioning.
Next I bought some small angle brackets to use to hold the seat cover in place. Small self tapping screws used on the seat base. Yes they are small enough to hold the bracket and yet not long enough to stick into me. The hex bolt fits down into the spring. One on each side of the seat. this is instead of bolting the springs at the top to the seat. Mainly because its a right pain getting a nut on the seat bolt and even worse to try to tighten those nuts up.
I made a u bracket to mount the seat to the rear tank mount. This bracket mounts to the remaining front mounting bolt under the seat. remember I cut the nose of the seat down. The tank is originally mounted with 6mm bolt and nut. I did not think this was strong enough. There is a tube in the tank mount and 2 plastic bushes. These bushes are 8mm inside diameter. I removed that tube. Then drilled the two mounting brackets to 8mm. Then used a 8mm bolt which allows the seat to pivot.
The springs are mounted via bar end mirror end caps that fit into the bottom of the spring that has a loop. This is all mounted to 8mm threaded bar. This bar runs through the original seat mounting bracket holes at the rear.
I did over 200 kms yesterday on this seat set up and it was comfy for me. The springs did not bottom out. The extra gel also added to the comfort.
The only down side, and this is my own doing, is that this seat set up is higher than the stack seat. At a stop and both feet down with my cobbled together seat is that i am on tippy toes. No real problem as the bike is light and you can just slide a bit to one side and get one foot foully down on the ground.
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