Part one of a two part tutorial on padding and covering your mutant buell seat.
When working on your Mutant Buell project (or any chopper build for that matter), you’ll find yourself constantly looking for ways to save money in one area, in order to be able to spend a little more in another. Padding and covering your own bike seat is a good way to save some coin. It cost me all of about $50.00 to pad and cover the seat on my Redneck Mutant build. Not bad considering the quotes I got ranged between $200.00 -$ 400.00.

My first task was to find some good material to pad the seat pan with. I needed something that not only felt good on the ass cheeks, but was going to be easy to work with and shape. As luck would have it, I found exactly what I was looking for at Walmart in the form of a foam rubber camping mat. It’s just a 1″ neoprene rubber mat used to lay your sleeping bag on . It turned out to be the perfect thickness and density for a motorcycle seat, and, at the fraction of the price of what they wanted for the same chunk of 1′ closed cell neoprene rubber at a supplier. Now on to the business of padding the seat pan.

Start off by cutting the 2 pieces of neoprene rubber that will make up the first course of padding on the seat.
Cut them out so that there is a good inch overhang around the edge of the seat pan.

Before we go any further, make sure your seat pan is clean and free of any grease and oil. Give it a light scuff with a brillo pad and wipe it off with some brake cleaner or acetone to get rid of any oil or grease.
Now grab a can of spray on rubber adhesive, and coat the surface of the seat pan, as well as the bottom
of the two pieces of padding you cut for the first tier of padding. After applying the glue, let it sit for a few minutes until the glue becomes tacky. Now lay down the bottom part on the pan so that the edge of the rubber pad butts up against the back section of pan that sits against the fender. Now lay the back section of padding down. Because the back section of the pan is curved to the contour of the fender, the back section of foam tends to lift up. To remedy this, I took a couple of short bungee cords and wrapped them tight around the the back part, and let it dry for an hour or so.

Next, I cut the two pieces of neoprene that will make up the next two layers of the seat padding. Again, be sure to cut them so there is 1″ of excess material over the edge of the seat pan. Grab your spray glue and coat the top of the first layer of padding you applied, and the bottom of the piece you’re about to lay on top of it. Once the glue becomes tacky, lay it down on first layer of foam, pressing it down firmly making sure that it’s laying on top nice a flat. Now do exactly the same with the third and final piece.
It’s really important that all the layers are glued down tight and you have a good bond between them. To ensure that happens, I wrapped 4 bungy cords nice and snug around the whole works and let it dry for a couple hours before continuing on with the next step.


Padding your Mutant Buell seat pan continued