Elite comfort seat motorcycle memory foam inserts & upholstery in Sussex, London and Kent

 

We specialize in upholstering and modifying motorcycle seats only. 

 

 SERVICES OFFERED:

Motorcycle seat recovering while you wait (please ring before setting out)

Seats recovered or re-upholstered while you wait in plain colours.

 Elite comfort memory foam seat inserts

We offer the Elite Comfort Motorcycle Seat to improve rider comfort.

We have moved on from gel seats, and are now using memory foam, as it gives superior results.

WE GUARANTEE THAT AN ELITE COMFORT MEMORY FOAM SEAT WILL BE MORE COMFORTABLE THAN A SIMILAR GELL SEAT

For Customer Feedback, click HERE

 

A special high-grade memory foam seat pad is inserted into the seat, and the seat is recovered.   This greatly improves rider or passenger comfort on long journeys, and is obviously especially welcome to those regular riders suffering from numb bum syndrome.  The results in our experience are more economical and more comfortable than gell seats and pads. We have tried gel, and have found that our special grade of memory foam gives better results.  It is more comfortable and it is also easier to re-contour the seat shape if that is required.

We can offer fast turnaround on mail order seat modifications, and, subject to appointment, can normally offer a while you wait service, please telephone for details.

 

DOES MEMORY FOAM WORK??

Don't be fooled by the higher prices charged by other seat companies. 

We take pride in offering a simple and effective solution to numb bum, and it is actually better and more effective than other products offered. It is certainly better than gel.  Memory foam can be used all over the whole seat, not just in one area, can be used to change the shape of the seat, and it doesn't degrade and leak over time, as does gell.

We guarantee a simple and effective solution to uncomfortable motorcycle seats.

For customer feedback click HERE

 

Fitting an Elite comfort memory foam insert into a motorbike dual seat

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Bespoke service, seats lowered, raised, re-contoured, etc. etc.

Every motorcycle seat is different, as are customers' requirements, so please contact us with your enquiry.  The memory foam insert can be incorporated within the original motorbike seat foam when that is thick enough (see photos above), which will preserve the original shape, style and contour of the seat.  The original cover can be re-used and visually the seat will look standard.  Alternatively the existing seat foam can be built up or lowered as required, or re-shaped completely, and a new cover fitted. 

Seats can be recontoured to the customer's requirements. If you can come in with your bike, we can reshape the seat to get your ideal riding position.  The seating area can be moved up or down, backwards or forwards, or the slope and shape changed to suit your riding position. Within the limits of the bike's design, we can normally achieve marked improvements in rider comfort.


Non-slip grippy vinyl seat material

Choice of two non slip "grabber" or "Gripper" materials is available for recovering whole seats, or incorporating panels into seat covers.  Helps stop the rider or pillion passenger sliding about on the seat.











Above is the normal non-slip "grabber" material, below is the finer textured non slip gripper material.

 We also have this grippy motorbike seat material in red and grey

Price Guide

Elite Comfort Seat Inserts

-- Fit insert and re-fit original seat cover, rider area £150, rider and passenger £225 (dual seat), rider and passenger £250 (two separate seats).

-- Fit insert and recover seat (includes new cover)
-- Rider or passenger insert, black £175 colours £185
-- Driver and passenger inserts, dual seat, black £250 colours £260
-- Driver and passenger inserts, two separate seats, black £300, colours £310

Seat Recovery in Plain Colours
-- Single seat black £50 colours £60
-- Dual seat black £60 colours £70

Postal Service
-- UK return service for a dual seat, normally by Hermes courier and with £100 cover, £10.

This includes insurance for loss up to £100, if you require more we can up the insurance, but there will be an additional charge to cover the extra charged by the courier (we will only charge the extra that the courier charges).  We will only be liable for the value of parcels lost in the post to a maximum of £100, unless the extra insurance is paid for.


QUOTATIONS
Every seat job is different, so please ring to discuss your requirements, we will not reply to email enquiries about seats, it is too time consuming and boring to send emails backwards and forwards.


A Few of Examples   (click on photos to enlarge)

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 Manufacturers' Comfort and Gell Seats

Most manufacturers offer gel or comfort seats as an extra for their motorcycles.  DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY!  These are normally very similar to the standard seats, with just a nicer cover, and are obviously not much of an improvement in comfort. Some customers even find them worse.  We get lots of these in, to actually make them comfortable.  The reason that they are normally no more comfortable than the original seats is fairly obvious in the photos below!  These show a dissection of a few manufacturers' comfort seats, showing what is actually in them.  It doesn't really matter which brand they come from, with very few exceptions there is either virtually nothing extra in these "comfort" seats in addition to the standard foam, or (rarely) a very small thin bit of gell.  When we modify these seats, we put in a broad area of memory foam that is not 8mm thick (like the gell in the ones below), and which covers the whole seating area, not a small part of it. 

(Click on photos to enlarge)

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These manufacturers' seats are not much of an improvement on standard at best, not only do they rely on gel which is pretty much ineffective anyway, but there is not much (if any) of that in the seats either.

 
We guarantee to make a more comfortable seat than any of the motorcycle manufacturers, for a lower price!

 

 Is memory foam better than gell?

Sussex Motorcycles offers a handmade, bespoke comfort motorcycle seat re-contour, reshaping, and upholstery service.  Our seat service will rival any UK comfort motorbike seat service for quality and comfort, whether memory foam or gell pads or Jell.  Do not be fooled by the vastly higher prices that some other upholstery companies charge.   We specialize in motorcycle seats, and only do motorcycle seats, and our value for money is unbeaten. 

In our experience memory foam offers significant improvements over gel or Jel,  in terms of comfort, appearance, and ease of coverage.  We have tried gell (jel), and with memory foam have achieved a better level of comfort. It is actually easier to sell gell seats, as "gell" is a buzz word, but we have been unable to get gel to actually give much improvement in rider comfort in practice.

Our special grade of memory foam is superior.  It does work and it does markedly improve comfort.  It is also much more flexible in how it can be incorporated into bespoke seats, and to produce the exact shapes and contours required by the customer.  In other words, as well as improving comfort levels, we can also use it to produce the various seat shape modifications required by customers' needs more easily than gell.  We can lower seats or raise seats as required, or move the seating area back or forwards or alter the angle, and get the seating position and angle how the rider wants it.  Higher or lower motorbike seats can easily be made by adding or removing foam.

We also offer simple seat re-upholstery or recovering with fast turnaround.  Our seats our handmade, we have fast turnover times and can modify seats while you wait, subject to pre booking.  Mail order return post to the UK, with express delivery is £10 UK wide.  We have a good range of vinyl seat materials in stock, including non-slip and textured materials. 

We service customers in person from the local markets of Sussex and Kent, as well as London, and welcome visits from customers for our express turnaround and a while you wait service for simpler jobs. 

Give us a ring and drop in and we will sort out your seat!

 

  

Sargent Seat Cut Up!

 

Sargent seats are now being actively sold in the UK.  Customers have brought quite a few of these in of varying ages, this is a review one of their newer seats that a customer brought in, wanting to have it made comfortable.  The photos below show what is inside the seat.

 

 

On Sargent’s UK website it says:

 “Sargent Seats

The renowned Sargent World Sport Performance Motorcycle Seats.

The most advanced seats ever developed. Features include the lightweight, precision-moulded base pan, improved long range comfort and ergonomics with under-the-seat storage and quick release options.

Comfort, Style and Quality - Nothing Beats Sargent Seats”

 

Well..., ???

The customer come in complaining that his Sargent seat on his BMW (it was an R1200RT or similar) was not comfortable.  We took it to bits and made it more comfortable, and the photos above show what was in the original seat.  His feedback on the seat after we had done it is:     “👍 seat's were a massive improvement thanks for your time and effort 👌”

The parts of the Sargent seat you can see on the outside are beautifully made, the base has a teeny tiny compartment built in with a little opening lid just like a lovely child’s toy, and the seat cover is excellent quality, so far so good.  However all the time and effort doesn't seem to have carried on into the foam and the riding comfort.

The seat foam is among the hardest we have ever felt, as hard as a board actually.  On opening up the seat we found why.  Various marketing articles on the web promote the hardness of Sargent seats, claiming harder is better after time on a long ride.  Well, we disagree with that, taking that to the extreme you would just sit on a board, and this seat is not just hard, it is really really hard.  Obviously, a bit like the Three Bears, there is too soft, there is too hard, and there is just right.

Occasionally when you cut open a seat, whether it is from one of the major manufacturers or an aftermarket seat, you find maybe one or two air bubbles where the foam has not poured properly during manufacture, or a small patch of bubbles due to a quality issue with the pouring of the foam.  Inside the surface of this Sargent seat,  the foam is full of random patches of air bubbles, we have never seen foam quite like it.

When foam is made, it is mixed up and poured or injected into a mould.  It then foams up like the expanding foam you buy in a can and sets to become the seat foam, the idea is to fill the mould with a foam of an even consistency, like in a sofa or a bed.  As visible in the photos, this process has not occurred in this seat, which is composed more of irregular patches of air bubbles and rubber than foam, particular in the interior of the foam.  The random patches of air bubbles do not look intentional and would normally be associated with a quality problem in the pouring of the foam.

The question is, while in every other seat this would be evidence of a poor pour (he he), has this been done somehow on purpose? ie. is this very clever Sargent "Atomic" foam made to increase rider comfort?  I don't see how having random patches of bubbles in a foam can contribute to rider comfort...normal foam is made of small bubbles evenly distributed throughout, it is full of air anyway, and if it is uneven like this then there may be a patch of bubbles in one part of the seat and not in others, so one part of the seat would be harder than the other, the foam will not be consistent.

Full of air bubbles as it is, it is still a fairly standard seat foam, and it is not what really makes this seat so uncomfortable.  For no apparent reason that we can see, Sargent have also then incorporated a piece of what I can only describe as packaging foam board into the top of the seat foam.  The blue foam with the bubbles in it in the photos is a fairly standard grade of seat foam, but the whole top of the seat is made of the foam board, with only 6 or 8mm of the normal foam on top.  Sargent have cast this foam board into the whole top of the seat.  It is about an inch thick, and is similar to that hard rigid foam that is used for packing heavy items in parcels.  If Is more or less rigid and really hard.  It is literally an inch thick board stuck in the seat, just below the surface of the foam.  Below that is the heater, and below that the normal foam resumes making up the rest of the seat.  The foam board is also almost flat, and goes almost to the edges of the seat, so the hard edges of it can be felt where the inside of the thighs go down the sides of the seat...this cuts into the riders inside thighs and is an added discomfort.

So what the rider is actually sitting on is a flat rigid board with 6 to 8 mm of seat foam on top of it.

We have cut most of the foam board out of the seat in the photos, but you can see the edges of it (it is a slightly lighter blue foam without bubbles in it) ringed in the second photo.

With a bit of experimentation we have found that if you heat the board up, it softens a bit.  Maybe you have to use this seat with the heater on all the time and then it will get a bit better?  a hard cold seat and a softer hot seat?

We have never seen foam like it, and the design of foam construction is also the strangest we have seen (why?).

Many years ago at the tender age of 16, I remember going with my mates on our mopeds to Redhill Motors, which I seem to remember was a Honda dealers in Lower Stone St, Maidstone.  This was just at the end of the days when motorcycles were used for transport, not so much as leisure, and everyone rode through the winter in their own cobbled together version of "bulky storm clothing".  Specialised motorbike clothing must have existed, but it was only for the well off, most of whom owned cars, and most riders had to suffer with the terrible stuff offered by the army surplus stores, if they could afford that.  Redhill Motors actually had a "Clothing Department" upstairs, and I was doing my first winter on a bike with two pairs of rugby socks for gloves.  It was quiet and the (actually very nice) salesman patiently got out all his gloves and let us try them on.  Most of these resembled road cones which had had someone stick various small bits of pipe onto one end,  and all of them were expensive and terribly uncomfortable.  We had only just learned to count up as high as the price tags on the gloves (when we bought our mopeds), and when it became obvious we weren't going to buy anything the salesman paused, looked at us, and then looked at the gloves spread out on the counter.   He then looked back at us and came up with the very honest assessment of the situation that I still remember now. " yes," he said, agreeing with us, "they are all made for aliens aren't they."

 Nice looking seat, but I personally wouldn’t want to sit on it

 

 

 

 

Click HERE for a brief guide to making a custom seat from scratch