As previously reported I had my first ride out on my Fireblade but there was one small problem :-0 I was on tiptoes on a flat surface and when pulling up at some traffic lights my foot was flailing around trying to find the ground before me and my new bike fell over in a rather undiginfied heap 
This photo illustrates how much of my foot touched the floor with the bike as standard
On my ride home I was wondering how I could lower the ride height, but without physically lowering the whole machine, as I knew that growing longer legs overnight wasn’t really an option 
but I still needed to get my bum closer to the floor..
And then I had a brainwave 
In the garage we had a spare seat from another Blade which wasn’t needed anymore, so as soon as I was home I was set up on my dining room table with the sharpest knives from my kitchen and the spare seat. I was going to reshape the seat and carve some of the height out of it.
I very quickly removed the cover from the seat and soon had the sections of foam I needed to remove marked out
Sections of foam to be removed marked up
I then started carefully carving the foam away in strips
Shaving off the slices
This is the seat with most of the surplus foam shaved off..
Basics almost done
Now it’s time to tidy things up a little.. So with VERY careful knife cuts I trimmed and neatened the foam so that it was as smooth as possible. This was the end result
All neatened up
The finished foam
This photo shows the seat as it was on the bike
This photo shows the stock seat height
and this one shows the seat once I had carved some of the foam out..
The new seat height
The next thing to do was to receover the seat so I don’t get a soggy bottom if it rains
I tried fitting the original seat cover but it was designed to go on a flat seat and I couldn’t get it to fit properly round the new curves so a trip to my local haberdashery shop was called for. 70cm of vinyl fabric (£7.00) later and after digging my staple gun out of the shed I was ready to go
Fitting the vinyl was a bit of a barsteward as it’s quite stiff to begin with but as you start working it, it starts to soften up and give a little. I also fitted it on the bias so that would also help the fabric stretch into the curves better. A short time (and quite a bit of swearing) later I was done and the newly covered seat was ready to be fitted to my bike
And this is what it looks like
My newly reshaped and recovered seat on my bike
The end result… This is how much of my foot I can get on the floor now
The end result
Once I was sat on my bike on Sunday it felt soooo much better and I’m sure it will make all the difference to my confidance riding the Blade. I’m pretty much flat footed on the left side and even though it was a bit of a hassle doing it, it was well worth it to me
I’m not kidding when I say that pretty much anyone could do this to a bike seat, you just have to be careful and take your time ESPECIALLY when cutting into the foam. If you don’t want to mess up the seat on your bike you could always buy a second one cheaply from somewhere like ebay and then modify it. It’s definately going to be cheaper and easier than physically lowering a bike.
If anyone reading this needs any further advice, just drop me a message and I’ll do my best to help
Posted by Raven 
