Ok so I am soooo sick and tire of the faded yellow seat on the back of my 02 F4i. I have looked into buying a black one, but it seems to me it would be a lot cheaper to re-cover it. My question to you all is, before I go tearing the old covering off, are there any surprises i should know if. I mean, is there a lot of stitching involved or anything? Is it 1 piece or 2?

 

NM People, i did it. Took about an hour I'm at work, so i was getting paid the whole time and the material was free

Anyway, turned out OK. It was a pain in the ***, that's for sure-trying to get rid of all the creases. The orginal cover was a little to worn to use as a pattern, so i just did without. I'll post some pics when i get a chance, ya'll gonna love it!

 

The trick to this is to get nice fabric but not too thick...too thick and itswont stretch
over the foam without kinking. The next suggestion is to practice on the rear seat first.
The rear seat is easier cause you just stretch it over the original foam & staple or contact
cement the edges. I used solvent base contact cement (for formica) and it workedgreat.
The front seat is similar but the edges are "soft" so you have to finesse it a little bit.
My seat looks stock but has a black leather look...much better than the bean bag material.

 

I took mine to the local car seat cover joint and they did it for me in about an hour and charged me $35 bucks. I just couldn't get past the mismatch in color. It looks great now.

 

Ok so i took some updated pics wit my cell phone, looks pretty good I must say!

 

I dont work in any shop, but would like to get both the effects that you have: the black covering and the black vinyl (or whatever material) around the headlamps. Which material do I buy and what tools do I need?

 

Well the seat was covered with a lightweight (4oz maybe) leather, not sure where you can buyit but maybe a craft store...As was said earlier, the thinner the better...

For the seat all i used was a air-powered staple gun. I took the original cover off, stapled one stide, and worked from there. i had a friend help me tack it down while I streteched the leather. Not much to it, but it can get time consuming. Also, in a few areas you may need to make a slit in the leather under the seat to make folding easier around corners. So it's basicly staple, stretch, staple, repeat..lol.

As for the Vinyl, what i got was sold at my local Central Maine Powersports in the dirt-bike decal section. Kinda like a "make your own decal" type of thing. Like 2' x 1' sheets or something, varity of colors.

Only suggestion would be a blow-dryer to soften the vinyl, other than that its pretty self explanatory. BlueFox has a good writeup about it in the How To section.

 

Thanks...

 

looking good, i was gonna suggest luimoto seat covers, but those are kinda expensive, but look awesome, but you did a good job, +1 on doing it at work, makes me laugh

 

Haha thanks man. I'll proly be looking into a good seat for the rider(me) before I do so for the passenger....lol