I've started to work on one of my seat pans off the 500. It was plastic coated (anyone remember that process) back in the late 70s and has been used on the bike the last time it was roadworthy. Since then it's sat in a garage being pissed on by rats for 30 years. Strangely the plastic coating has protected the seat pan really well, it has however started to crack and lift in small areas so I've decided to remove the coating.
I'm not going to say this was easy, the seen part of the pan I used a scraper on after heating the plastic in order to soften it, this worked pretty well and large areas would come off in one go. The coating was about 2mm thick. It took about 2 hours to remove all the bottom of the pan, it's not in bad nick considering. However the upper surface next to the foam is another proposition, that didn't want to come off with the same method. In the end I decided to melt it off using a MAP gas blowtorch, this was messy, smelly and time consuming, it's about 80% done. However whilst doing this I have noticed that all the seat cover clips and various other little ones, like the handbook pocket, were in really poor condition. Most as really rusty and starting to crumble, they were probably in this condition when it was plastic coated.
So as any seat recoverer doesn't AFAIK use these clips are they worth keeping. They promote rust, catch your fingers and are pretty much useless. If I removed them I can grind the spot welds off and clean up around them, which is difficult if they stay in place.
So remove them or keep them?
I may have a word with Tony Archer who does my seat recovers for me and see if he's ever used them, I wonder how they get the new cover to attach to a steel pan, glue? Tony used staples when doing my 1300 seat but that's got a plastic pan.
I'll be sanding down the pan before having some welding done on it, one of the captive nuts for the hinge plate has stripped so I'll get a new one welded on, I've spotted a small crack just next to the reinforcing plate welded to the top of the pan where the hinge plate attaches, this seems to be a weak spot as I've spotted other pans with the same crack, it's right where the plate stops so clearly it's flexing too much and cracking the pan as a result. I may have that reinforced when it's being welded.
Any thoughts or recommendations?
