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Unread 10-25-2008, 10:11 PM
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Here is the finished product... now follow along and improve your lifestyle!



How many times do you curse your bike out when you have to remove the seat! If you have the stock Allen bolts under your seat then you are suffering. When I needed to get under my seat to the battery I was usually in a hurry and I just got the job of removing the whacky allan bolts done as fast as I could. I always knew there had to be a better way. I mean, come on, what a crap design!! You have to pull the seat pad back really hard just to get the allan wrench in the head of the bolt and you had to keep holding it with all your might while you unscrewed it. Wow how fun.

Well I was fed up with the process and I couldn't take it anymore. I know that AF1 sells these by the pair for like $14? Something like that. Well I would have just bought them probably but I wanted to fix the problem NOW. I also wanted them for the fuel tank too but then that's like $$$ for just a few bolts. Plus I wanted more slack up front on the fuel tank bolts so that it wasn't holding it too tight as to flex the plastic tank and cause it to crack (long story).

SO I drove right to OSH hardware and gathered my ingredients for my own quick release system!! Have a look at the bag of goodies I bought for like $8 bucks or some low amount that I can't remember cause it was so cheap.

If you have eagle eyes you will notice the 1/16 black vinyl covered cable! When I have some free time I'll be using this to make some cable retainers so that when you take the clips out from under the seat the wire will let the pins dangle free to the side so they won't get lost. Pretty trick eh? I would surely employ this mod if I had to pay 60 cents A WHACK for the pins (damn you OSH!) but I went to the hobby store and got them 6 for $1, SCORE!!


And a closeup in case you want to run to OSH and pick up your own hardware like me. B)
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Unread 10-25-2008, 10:25 PM
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Now let's get moving along. Basically we want to make some posts for the seat so fit over. These will be metric bolts but with the heads cut off of them. Then the holes in the seat that you would normally bolt down with the Allan bolts will fall on top of the posts and be secured down with some clips which will fit through a hole drilled in the posts.

So I put the bolts in the vice and chopped off the heads with a dremel tool fitted with a slim cutting wheel. Then I threw the bolts in the vice on my vertical mill and drilled a hole in each one. Of course I used some new bits and I indexed the posts with a sharp punch so the drill bit would drill right down the middle through it.



I'm sure anyone could do this with some patience and a corded drill. But the vice is certainly a key tool. You can find em pretty cheap at Harbor Freight. Go tool shopping and buy a good one. You'll use it for the rest of your shadetree mechanic life.

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Unread 10-25-2008, 10:31 PM
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Ok now the nasty part is done. So then I took the posts to the disc sander and smoother over the tops of them where the Allan heads were cut off. Then I put the posts down through the mounting holes to where I guess would be a good depth. Then I put on some locking nuts from the bottom to tighten them up so they would stay right where I wanted them. To hold the posts from turning I put a nail through the hole that I drilled to hold them in place with some pliers.



Now we have out posts secured and ready to put the base of the seat right on top of them. But first I wanted to prep the seat holes to make sure everything would fall smoothly into place. The factory washers for the Allan bolts that protect the plastic are actually nice pieces of hardware that I want to retain. The holes had become kinda messed up from use and to make sure that the washers would fit how they should I used a little reemer tool to make the holes round again and take the sharp edges down so that the washers would fit in the holes easier. This gives a little slack around the washer so that things won't fit so damn tight when you are trying to fit the seat on. It speeds up the process of removing and replacing the seat back down.

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Unread 10-25-2008, 10:38 PM
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With both posts in the holes nice and tight with the locknuts I was ready to try things out. The seat fit so nice right down on top of the posts I just went for a ride and didn't worry about putting any pins in them for a few days! Of course the seat didn't go anywhere, even when I pulled a couple hard wheelies, one of which hit me in the face (OK in the helmet and not really my face) with my windshield it came up so hard.

One of the reasons I didn't put the pins in is that they were .60 cents a pop from OSH!! That's insane! If you go to a hobby store you can get 6 or 10 for $1 / a dollar. Later in the week I went by the Man Toy Store and bought a pile of straight and bent body clips for off-road RC trucks. These are awesome and the bent ones allow you to grab them much easier.

Here you can see bent ones as well as the flat regular ones.


And for your viewing pleasure one more shot of the finished project. Now I can take off my seat in 10 seconds without one word of curse!!


THIS IS A REQUIRED MOD THAT I HIGHLY RECOMMEND. BEST BANG FOR THE BUCK!!
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