Elite Motorcycle Seats
Blacklands Farm Wheatsheaf Road Henfield West Sussex BN5 9AT
Blacklands Farm Wheatsheaf Road Henfield West Sussex BN5 9AT
Comfortable Memory Foam Motorbike Seats
01273 494736
Please ring before coming
Based near Henfield in Sussex, we specialise in making motorcycle seats comfortable, and also making custom motorcycle seats.
Making Standard Motorcycle Seats Comfortable
We can doctor the foam of most standard motorcycle seats, and replace the original cover if it is in good condition, producing a much more comfortable seat that is visually similar to the standard seat.
Customising Motorcycle Seats
We can also change the shape of standard seats, raise, lower, or alter the slope, and make custom covers, to achieve a comfortable seat, most things are possible.
"While you Wait" and Express Mail Order Service
We offer a mail order service, and a “while you wait” service near Henfield in West Sussex. Please ring a day or two before coming.
Express Turnaround Time for the Mail Order Service
We offer a fast lead time on mail order; if you post us your seat and get it to us in the first half of the week, ie Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, we would aim to get it back in the post the same week. If you require an even quicker service, we may be able to help, please give us a ring to discuss...
Most general questions are answered below, please scroll down to the relevant section:
Why use memory foam?
Does memory foam remain effective for a long time?
Will memory foam make a lot of difference to the comfort of the motorcycle seat?
Can the motorbike seat be lowered at the same time as fitting the memory foam?
Can the height of a motorcycle seat be raised, and by how much?
Can the angle of the seat be altered, as the current seat is making the rider slide forward towards the tank?
Can we stop the pillion passenger sliding forward?
Can the seat be made wider?
can the seat be made narrower
Can we make custom seat covers?
is it best to come in with the bike, or send the seat in the post?
Can we do heated seats.
Why we do not generally reply to emails
Price Guide
Guarantee
Photos of examples of custom seats.
— Why use memory foam?
Memory foam is more effective than gel or jel in making a motorcycle seat comfortable. We would normally incorporate up to 50mm thickness of memory foam in a seat, ie. all over the seat, as opposed to gel, which is normally just a thin 8 to 10mm pad put into a small area of the seat. We can also sculpt the foam to different shapes, to cater for the specific requirements of the rider.
We guarantee that our memory foam seats are more comfortable than the standard OEM seats, manufacturer’s “comfort” seats, and aftermarket gel seats.
Below is a typical example of a gel pad in a seat, it is a thin pad in a limited part of the seat. Apart from having magical properties it is fairly apparent that this will have a limited effect, if any, on the comfort of this seat...
— Does memory foam remain effective for a long time?
Yes. Memory foam is primarily degraded by sunlight, so if it is incorporated into the inside of a seat, it lasts many years as it is not in the sun. It doesn’t really wear out or degrade in normal use.
— Will memory foam make a lot of difference to the comfort of the motorcycle seat?
Yes. We can normally make large improvements in the comfort of a standard motorcycle seat, it is a worthwhile improvement which we guarantee.
— Can the motorcycle seat be lowered at the same time as fitting the memory foam?
This is the moon on a stick question… if there is enough foam in the original seat, then yes. We can sometimes work miracles, so give us a ring to discuss what can be done...
— Can the height of a motorcycle seat be raised, and by how much?
We can raise motorbike seats by any amount, the highest we have gone so far is 8 inches (200mm) for a tall customer. However, if the seat is raised more than a certain amount, the original cover will not fit back on. In this case, the seat can then be recovered, or material sewn onto the original cover to make it fit.
— Can the angle of the seat be altered, as the current seat is making the rider slide forward towards the tank?
Yes, the whole shape of the seat can be altered, including the angle. Certain bikes such as the Yamaha Tracer 9 GT have sloping seats which cause many riders to slide forwards. The seats are also very uncomfortable. We can solve both problems by altering the angle of the seat, and making it comfortable at the same time.
-- Can we stop the pillion passenger sliding forward?
Yes, in three ways. When you sit on memory foam, you sink into it somewhat as it adapts to your shape. This automatically tends to locate the person in place, and stop them sliding forward. Secondly a non-slip cover can be used. Lastly we can alter the seat slope, levelling it out to prevent sliding forard, see photographs of the Triumph Tiger passenger seat at the bottom of the page, which has all three methods used.
— Can the seat be made wider?
Yes. We can normally build the foam out an inch or so (25mm) wider than the standard base, maybe more, but wider than that starts getting impractical and to look strange. We often do this to some off-road style seats, which can be very hard and very narrow (not a good combination!).
— can the seat be made narrower?
Sometimes. The limit being the base of the seat.
— Can we make custom seat covers?
Yes we do make custom covers, some photos are below, but we do make everything by hand, which is very time consuming, so this is reflected in the cost. There are often very good ready made custom covers available on the internet which are far cheaper than we can make them for, which we can fit if required.
— is it best to come in with the bike, or send the seat in the post?
This depends on what is needed. Many bikes just have uncomfortable seats, we have done lots of them before and nothing particularly special is required, so it is just as easy to post the seat as to come in with the bike. However if the rider has a specific problem, maybe with the angle, shape or height of the seat and wants it altered, sometimes it is better to come in. We can alter the seat, offer up foam to get the correct shape/height for them, etc etc, and the customer can then test ride the seat before we finish it, if necessary we can further alter it to make sure it is what is required.
— Can we do heated seats.
Normally.
The heater in a seat is a snake of resistance wire stuck onto a backing sheet. This heater is normally just fixed onto the top of the seat foam under the cover. From about 5 years ago (2020 ish) some (mainly BMW) heaters have been moved down into the middle of the seat foam, so there are two layers of foam with the heater sandwiched in between. Then, from maybe 2023, a few seats (mainly Triumph) have the heater actually cast into the seat foam itself, maybe 10mm below the top.
For all seats except the last type, we can easily remove the heater, and put it back into the modified seat. However, as the memory foam adapts itself to the rider when you sit on it, sticking the heater with the backing sheet (which can be quite inflexible) on top of the memory foam interferes with this process and therefore can reduce the comfort of the finished seat.
So for heated seats we offer the customer three options:
Option 1. We remove the heater, and make a comfy seat without it. With this option, the customer obviously can get a second seat if they want, and we can do that one, so they have the original seat with the heater in it when they sell the bike.
Option 2. We put the heater back on top of the memory foam. There is some extra work involved with this which is quite fiddly, so we would charge an extra £25, and we cannot guarantee the comfort of the seat afterwards as the heater may interfere with it.
Option 3. (Most people go for option 3) we put the heater back in underneath the memory foam, similar to the two layer BMW seats. This means the seat will take longer to warm up, but it will work. However, we don’t know if the heaters that originally went into the middle of the seats are the same as the ones which we take off the top, I imagine so, but I don’t know. So if the seat catches fire on the motorway, and the bike explodes in a ball of fire, it is agreed by the customer that we are not liable. We have done dozens of seats like that now, with no reports of explosions, so I think it must be working... (unless we have killed off all those customers?).
If the seat has the heater cast into the foam, then that is a problem. We have managed to cut them out, but the cut has to be made very carefully a safe distance below the heater, one small cut into the wire and it won’t work, so you end up with a slice of foam about and inch (25mm) thick, with the heater cast in it. This then has got to be incorporated back into the comfort seat, which is not always possible, and is always very awkward, and time consuming.
We generally will not reply to email inquiries
— We generally will not reply to customers’ emails, we are very busy anyway and don’t have time to send lots of emails backwards and forwards, neither do we want to spend half our lives writing emails. There is quite a bit of information to exchange in discussing a customer's requirements for a seat modification, so please give us a ring, a brief conversation on the ‘phone is normally quicker and easier than emails..
Price guide:
-- Fit memory foam and re-fit the original seat cover, rider area £150, rider and passenger £225 (dual seat), rider and passenger £250 (two separate seats).
If a plain recover is required, that is normally £25 extra.
If some basic sewing is required to make the cover fit, that is normally £25 extra.
More elaborate sewing, decorative sewing, patterning is extra again, depending on what is required.
-- Seat Recovery in Plain Colours -- Single seat black £50 colours £60 -- Dual seat black £60 colours £70
-- Return Postal Service -- To post back a seat to the UK for a single seat, normally with Royal Mail £10. For a dual seat, normally by Hermes courier £12, both include £100 insurance cover.
This includes insurance for loss up to £100, if the customer requires more we can up the insurance, but there will be an additional charge to cover the extra charged by the courier (we will only charge the extra that the courier charges). We will only be liable for the value of parcels lost in the post to a maximum of £100, unless the extra insurance is paid for.
Guarantee
We guarantee that the memory foam seat will be a large improvement in comfort, and will be more comfortable than the OEM seat, the OEM “Comfort Seat”, and a gel seat.
If customers are not satisfied, we can return the seat to standard and refund in full.
The seats are also guaranteed against faulty workmanship and materials for a year, fair wear and tear excepted.
Some examples of standard motorcycle seats modified to make them comfortable.
Most of the seats we do are made comfortable while still looking standard. There is no point in putting up photos of these seats, as they look just like the standard seats. Below are a few that we have done which look slightly different from standard...
Yamaha MT-09 memory foam comfort seat
Yamaha Tracer 900 memory foam comfort seats
Triumph Tiger comfort seats, passenger seat angled to reduce sliding forwards
Honda comfort seats, lots of memory foam for the pillion
Honda memory foam comfort seats
Kawasaki Vulcan comfort seat, as much memory foam as possible with the standard cover
Kawasaki ER-5 memory foam comfort seat with plain non-slip cover
Triumph Tiger comfort seats, pillion levelled and non-slip to stop the passenger sliding forward
Some examples of various custom seats we have made
Classic Cafe Racer type seat
comfort seat with custom cover
memory foam seats with custom covers, Suzuki Bandit
MV Agusta Brutale memory foam pillion seat
Custom two tone seat non slip
Non-slip trail bike seat with memory foam
non-slip seat cover
fluted style cafe racer seat
Harley Davidson custom seat with non slip cover
Harley Davidson memory foam seat, non-slip cover
custom Harley Davidson seat
memory foam passenger seat
memory foam seat with red stitching
Passenger seat with memory foam
MV Agusta custom seats