More ergonomic mods, getting my butt up and back.

In my ever present quest to turn my little Ninja street bike from daily streeter to liter bike beater on the track I've been concentrating on fitting me to the bike. I've had two other projects to improve the ergonomics of this pint sized powerhouse. I have moved the pegs and have lowered the handle bars. Now it was time to tackle the seat itself. Follow along as I try my hand at figuring out how to get more leg room on the Ninja.

Here is a profile shot of the Ninja in my shop. The issue I have is the extra depth dished seat. You can see it in this picture the vertical distance between the top of the tank and the top of the seat. I didn't measure it, but it is between 4 and 6 inches. This helps to drop your body down and lets beginner riders be able to put their feet flat on the ground. Since I'm 6'1" or so, this dish drops my butt too low and puts my knees into a deep bend. When I hit the track I have to stretch my hips out beforehand or risk getting cramps thanks to the tight leg bends. It also prevents me from getting my butt back so I can open up my posture and get my whole body off the seat when deep into the corners. It will also help with getting my upper body down low over the tank in the straights.

I went to my local Joanne's Fabrics and found this "high density foam". Normally used for outdoor chairs or for redoing the seats of your dining room chair. I used quotes for the high density part as this stuff is super soft. With the one foam pad I should be able to get enough foam to reshape my OEM Ninja 250 seat enough to get me out of the seat pocket and open up my leg triangle a bit.

In a perfect world, I'd raise the seat about as high as the uncompressed height of the foam pad. I would taper the pad to meet the rear of the rider's area where it transitions into the pillion pad area. With this in mind I set about to figuring a way of getting this height from the super soft foam. The foam as it is compresses down to nothing if used as a single layer. A few layers will be needed to get the compressed height to the final height I need. I cut the foam block into thirds. It was not as easy as I thought to get a nice, smooth cuts and they came out looking pretty bad.

Here you can see my ragged cuts. I stacked the foam several ways to get and idea of the number of layers needed to get my butt up and back to my liking. My initial thoughts up until this point were to cut the foam to the right size and shape for the height I need, then pull off the stock seat vinyl, glue on the new layers and reapply the vinyl. My stock seat is in really good condition and I don't want to ruin it. I did look on eBay and surprisingly enough, most of the seats found there are in good condition. I decided on just making a pad that I can use to do some testing and perfect the height and shape I to get the ergonomic room I need for a better fit of me to the bike.

Here is the lump of junk that I ended up with. For as bad as it looks, it works to get me in the right position. This is what it is like just after I get off it, fully compressed. It expands itself after a couple of minutes after I move my chunky butt off it. This extra height allows me to have a more open leg triangle, but at the same time lowers my upper body down over the front. No matter what I do, I don't fit this bike. While this modification helps to open up my legs, the extra low upper body position exasterbates the narrow clip-ons. The narrow clip-ons are partly responsible for crowding me when I'm on the bike making it hard for me to feel the front end grip and hang properly off the bike. I will look into getting longer aluminum tubes to replace my clip on bars or maybe I'll mount up some low profile dirt bike bars to the triple tree much like my FZ1's handle bars.

Well friends, I hope you had a good Thanksgiving for my American audience. For my foreign friends, I hope you have had a good Thursday and Friday. I will be at the track this weekend with my buddy. I can't wait to get back to the track especially since I won't be lonely in my paddock. The weather looks to be awesome and the Ninja is ready to go. See you next time!

Blue