Seat Concepts Comfort Sport-Touring Foam, Cover DIY Kit Review

My trip into adventure bike comfort land on the Ultimate Motorcycling Yamaha Ténéré 700 Project Bike has been a yearlong quest. It started 10 minutes after picking it up in Los Angeles. I nearly panicked when I realized I had 1100 more miles of stock seat torture to endure to get home.My first Seat Concepts seat was the One Piece Comfort. My rear end was no longer being subject to the Yamaha accessory Rally seat or the stock split seat. When I got the One Piece Comfort seat, I was doing plenty of technical, slow-speed riding on the Ultimate Motorcycling Yamaha Ténéré 700 Project Bike. It was perfect for standing and sitting off-road, and for getting to and from remote riding areas.

With apologies to the purists, I have mounted highway pegs on the T7’s engine guards. I sat on various thickness books to find a comfortable position with my legs on the highway pegs for hours at a time. The Seat Concepts Comfort Tall split seat height suited my on-road touring posture. The Seat Concepts Comfort Tall rider seat was great for long days in the saddle.However, with my 30-inch inseam, there was an issue—I am not tall enough to avoid tip-overs on the uneven off-road terrain I ended up on due to spontaneous changes in my itinerary. So, the search for my perfect seat continued when I returned from my last road trip.Returning to the Seat Concepts website, I took a closer look at the Comfort Sport-Touring model. It has a 13-inch-wide seating area—a substantial six inches wider than the stock split rider/pillion seat and the Rally seat.

The Comfort Sport-Touring do-it-yourself upholstery kit took me 45 minutes, start to finish, though this was my second time doing a Seat Concepts DIY re-cover.Here’s the process:

• Use a small, flat-blade screwdriver to pop out the existing staples.

• Take off the existing foam and cover.

• Dry fit the new foam, plastic water barrier, and seat cover.

• Spray on a multipurpose adhesive to the seat pan to adhere the foam to the pan. This kit is tacked together at the rear dip in the foam in this model, about where your tailbone lands.

• Stretch the cover over the foam and start stapling. Your job is to staple the cover onto the back side of the seat pan while holding the seat material in position.

There is a technique to it, and Seat Concepts has an instructional video on its website. The way the cover is designed, it is easy to see how it should lay properly.If that all sounds like more than you want to tackle, Seat Concepts will only charge you $25 labor on top of the $275 DIY kit MSRP to install your new Comfort Sport-Touring foam and cover. You will have to send them your bare pan, of course.Each split seat combination has a pillion foam and cover to match. I never ride with a passenger on the Ténéré 700, so I haven’t felt the need to do pillion recover.Riding with the 13-inch-wide Seat Concepts Comfort Sport-Touring seat upgrade on the Ultimate Motorcycling Yamaha Ténéré 700 Project Bike has been a true long-distance riding relief. The extra width at the back end of the single rider seat is heaven for my delicate backside. It feels like my butt is in the perfect seat for my size. It is a more relaxed riding position, as I feel like I am sitting “in” rather than “on” the bike.When I put my boots up on my highway pegs, I am slightly rocked back on my tailbone, a position that works for me on endurance rides. The Comfort Sport-Touring seat has enough padding to support the tailbone-specific pressure. The rear of the seat has a slight rise, which, along with the slight bucket shape and the nonslip cover, keeps me from moving around during hard acceleration and hard braking.Earlier, I passed on the Seat Concepts Comfort Sport-Touring model—I thought it would be too wide, so I didn’t evaluate it past that initial thought. The nose of the Sport-Touring model is the same width and height as the stock split front seat—simply shifting myself forward when stopped provides the foot touch that I like to have on uneven terrain.In my standing position, my thighs are in the narrow nose section, so the only time I use the spectacular 13-inch width is when I am seated. The way Seat Concepts designed the foam and cover, it is about as close as an adventure seat can get to a touring bike seat feel, ergo the name—Comfort Sport-Touring.Fortunately for the adventure riding community, Seat Concepts has comfort seat upgrades for just about every adventure bike made. For the Ténéré 700, Seat Concepts has full-length comfort, full-length rally-style, and split seats. Each seat is configurable with multiple versions, foam thicknesses, and seat-cover materials to select from, depending on your riding style and how delicate your derriere is.Seat Concepts has dealers on every continent except Antarctica. When placing an order directly with Seat Concepts, they customize the foam density to your height, weight, age, riding style, and firmness preference. I requested the softer foam and, just like the Three Bears story, the Seat Concepts Comfort Sport-Touring seat for the Ultimate Motorcycling Yamaha Ténéré 700 Project Bike is just the right fit for me.

Seat Concepts Comfort Sport-Touring Foam and Cover DIY Kit Review Photo Gallery