I rode up to Mean City today for my 1 pm appointment to have the Double Decker Memory Foam mod done to the Wide Glide seat I've got on my Super Glide Custom. It was about a 90 mile trip one way, and while I think the WG seat is the most comfortable stock Harley seat I've ever ridden on, my butt was S-O-R-E by the time I got there.

Once Allen was done with my seat, I could tell an immediate difference just sitting on it in driveway. Since my butt was already sore from the ride up, I wasn't expecting to be able to fully evaluate the mod on the ride home, but it was clear this was a big improvement. From prior long rides I know that once butt burn would set in, it would only get worse the longer I was in the saddle. That wasn't the case on the ride home. I was still sore from the ride up, but I didn't get any sorer on the ride home. The seat was very plush and comfy.

Allen is a true craftsman and it was a pleasure watching him do his stuff to my seat. He was kind enough to let me photograph the whole process, and he said it was okay for me to post the pics here.

For those of you contemplating a Mean City seat mod, this will show you what Allen does to transform a seat.
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Here's my bike, sans seat, parked in front of the Mean City building:


Steve, removing the cover:



The seat, denuded and ready for a foam-ectomy:


Like a skilled plastic surgeon, Allen starts off by marking the OEM foam where he's going to cut:


My seat goes "under the knife," which is really a foam saw:




Allen fits the first piece of high density memory foam. This is for lumbar support:


Here Allen is fitting the double layers of memory foam to the seat:


Next, he shapes the foam with the saw:





After trimming with the saw, Allen further shapes the foam using hi-speed buffers. That is in a sealed room, so I could not photograph that step. Here is what the memory foam inserts look like after trimming and shaping:


Here Allen is cutting the foam so that the cover tang can be inserted and secured to the seat pan when he reattaches the cover:


Next, Allen covers the seat with thin "smoothing foam" and attaches it to the seat pan with staples:




And just as with the OEM seat, Allen covers the foam with a thin layer of plastic sheeting to prevent the foam from getting water soaked if the bike is in the rain, or during washing:


Next, the OEM cover gets reattached:







And finally, Allen uses a heat gun to smooth out the two creases that were already in my seat:


Ant that's it. A big thanks to Allen, Steve, and Brent for a job well-done.

 

Thanks...great pictures!

 

Nice... How long was the whole process??

 

I was there about 2 hours.

 

awesome write up...looks like a real artist....I have a used sundowner for my lowrider that I bought off a guy - can't wait to try it out - my buddy has a regular sundowner for his lowrider so we will be able to compare - when the snow leaves me up here in Sask I will also report, but just sitting on it looking out the window at the snow feels great!
Thanks Gary for the write up and to M.C.C. for letting the pics be shared!

 

Thanks for posting these Gary. To give a little explanation to what we did if you look at the line running across the seat with the X on the end of that is where Gary's tail bone was hitting the seat. He stated he wanted to move back but not down so knowing the double decker is 3"s thick that is what I removed from the sitting area plus I removed extra from the back of the seat to move him back. He didn't need the seat narrowed any so I didn't mess with the sides any.

In the picture showing the piece that was cut out and the memory foam shaped, you can clearly see a difference in the old shape and the new shape. Then when I am covering the seat with the smoothing foam, this is a 1/2" thick foam that smoothes out any imperfections that I couldn't get out when doing the final smoothening of the memory foam put it. I do all the smoothening by hand and while I try my best to get it as smooth as possible it's tough sometimes so I add this foam and it will hide any little imperfections and the cover will look like it did when was new and put on. On a side note which I told Gary also. I hear a lot of guys talking about getting a gel pad and memory foam put in their seats. As you can see how thick the memory foam we use is compared to the 1/2" foam that the seat was wrapped in, well what I use to wrap the seat is the same thickness of their memory foam. So they put a gel pan in and wrap it with 1/2" memory foam which isn't doing anything but smoothening the seat and has no comfort advantages and is only a selling point. Anything under 1 ½”s of memory foam isn’t going to do much of anything. 2”s in the main sitting area is the recommended minimum and it needs to be a memory foam that is designed to be sat on and not from a mattress pad, that stuff isn’t designed for direct pressure such as in seating applications but it is designed to disperse your weight over a large area.

Again Gary, thanks for posting these for a little glimpse to what we do.

 

Allen:
Which seat mod out of the menu is this one? I want to lower mine and round passenger cushion to look like badlander seat, is the later possible?

 

fantastic...

 

Thinning the passenger section down to be like a badlander isn't do-able, a little slimmer may be but nothing like a badlander.

 

Allen, you might want to ask one of the moderators to make this a sticky post so it will stay at the top for people to see.