Seat Concepts seat install Tenere 700

[Tazmool]

Hello everyone,
 

I just got a seat concepts cover installed on my original oem pan, the process was fairly straight forward and I figured I'd share my findings thus far.

 

When my T7 was still pre-ordered, I got a oem Low seat for it, which I used since day 1.  Its a good seat, but would like a bit more comfort.  The std oem seat that came with the bike was the perfect pan donor for the seat concepts upgrade (for some strange reason Yamaha Canada did not offer a low seat option, the oem low seat came direct from the UK, so I had two oem seats, one std one low)

 

The seat install was quite straight forward, and there are several youtube videos covering a seat-concepts seat re-upholstery install.

This is a pretty good one, and the seat is very similar to the Yamaha T7 Seat:

Only issue I ran into was my manual stapler did not want to drive the staples fully into the seat pan (maybe the yamaha oem seat pan is a denser plastic than the ones I've worked with before? the stapler worked ok on a Honda seat I modded in the past )
In general the manual stapler is not that great, its huge, hard to get the right angles & power needed, time for an upgrade.

 

The solution was to go on Amazon and order the cheapest (but still well rated) pneumatic stapler I could find. 
I got the SureBonder 9600B, which uses normal home depot Arrow T50 staples (make sure to use Stainless staples!)  these are also the same staples that my manual stapler uses, and I have a whole box of, which is good.  This stapler is $39.97cnd with free shipping.

 

Ofcourse, there is a "must have" mod to the stapler (which removes a button safety on the nose)  
I also removed the plastic nose cover, combined it makes this thing a narrow nose pro-commercial like upholstery stapler.  
You don't have to mod the stapler, but I opted to do so to make this cheapy stapler work better for getting into narrow places and odd angles.  If you do this mod, be careful as with no safety, every pull of the trigger will fire out a staple.

 

The stapler is a keeper, great tool. 

I turned down the compressor regulator to 60psi, it never misfired, ate up the cheapy Stainess T50 1/4" staples and made this re-upholstery job the easiest I've ever done.

 

Here is the OEM low seat, next to the Seat-Concepts recovered, comfort Low seat:

 

 

 

 

The seat-concepts seat is a tad lower than the oem low one, and a tad wider in the back.
Its -11C (12Fahrenheit) outside so I'm not going for a ride any time soon.  I will report on the differences in the seat when I start riding again in the spring.

 

Here are a few photos of the underside of the seats (oem & SC) 
The yamaha install/staples are very nice, but I think my install came out ok too:

 

 

 

So all in all, its a fairly easy install, I really don't think you need an upholstery shop to get this done. 
A pneumatic stapler is pretty cheap, and if you already have an air compressor (or can borrow one) its really a simple job.

 

As mentioned before, when I have some miles on the new seat, I will report!

Tazmool

[sracer]

In installed the same SC set up using a manual stapler and might buy one of these and go back and re-do it, not entirely satisfied with the end result but I'm a bit of a perfectionist. In any case, I like the seat a lot more now; ridden the bike about 2 hours comfortably and being slightly lower is good. 

[Tazmool]

Thanks for the insight sracer, I'm glad to hear the seat is an improvement over stock    (as that is the hope)

 

The pneumatic stapler is a HUGE improvement over a manual one.  On its lowest air setting it did a great job driving the staples all the way in.  The narrow long nose makes it very easy to position the staples wherever you like.  Highly recommended. 

 

In case you're wondering, 

The air requirements needed to power the stapler are very, very little.  I have a tiny portable compressor and it only turned on once during the whole job, and that includes me testing out the stapler with different air pressures, driving a bunch of staples into a piece of wood to test its strength etc (and since I've never used one before, I did a bunch of staple tests to see how it goes before going to town on the T7 seat)

 

Tazmool

[TimmyTheHog]

thanks for the write up

 

and i see you went to town with the staples WHICH looks a lot cleaner than the OEM...lol...

 

Thanks (also for the tools to buy that I never thought I wanted)

[Landshark]

Be sure to use stainless steel staples as the regular ones will rust away.  Look for T-50 stainless steel staples.  There just a few dollars more.  

[Pozik3085]

Do you happen to know what length staples you used? 

[Tazmool]

They are standard T50 staples (1/4")

 

Crown width: 0.47" ~12mm

Staple height: 0.25" ~6mm

 

They are a bit smaller than the oem Yamaha staples.

 

Tazmool

 

[advsquid]

Hey Tazmool, how did you end up liking the SC over the OEM low seat? Worth the extra money and work?

[Dakota]

FWIW I have the Comfort front and rear, and the front seat feels like i'm getting constantly pushed off the bike, and because of the height of the rear comfort seat, I can't scoot back any more. Installation was a pretty major pain in the ass as well.  I wanted so badly to like the seat, but it's been pretty disappointing and I had to use my stock seat to do this. . 

[advsquid]

Thanks for that, even more to consider then. Still haven't even made up my mind if I want to buy some lowering links or just do the seat. I can get the ball of my foot down on one side so I really don't think I need both lower suspension and lower seat. Don't wanna lose ground clearance, and I'm even less thrilled about changing my knee angle to the pegs...

Edited July 13, 2021 by advsquid

[Clax]

Has anyone compared the yamaha rally/ rally tall with the seat concepts rally /rally tall. or comfort tall?

 

The guy at seat concept told me I need the Comfort seat if I want to be comfortable, but from my experience the most important thing is the foam and how much of it there is.

 

comments?!

[Clax]

oh and i'm talking about the ONE piece seats!