3 minute read
THE laST WoRd
Getting to the “Bottom” of it!
Cindy Bennett, Member #4170
I know I will likely get very little sympathy from the touring bike crowd on 1600GTL’s and their ilk, even those 1200GS owners will look at me in bewilderment - but on a smaller or midsized dual sport adventure bike there is always a compromise. Often we are given a bum steer with a seat that is less than comfy on long trips. While I do admit that the seats on my 700GS’s and now Triumph Tiger are more comfortable than on a dirt bike, which is akin to sitting on a hard plank of wood without the splinters, it is far less salubrious than the big cousins in the touring bike sector.
So, what to do...with my first 700GS which was low suspension I brought the BMW Comfort seat which was adequate and this seat took me down Africa without a numb bum. Roll onto my 2nd 700GS (with regular height suspension) and I was needing the BMW low seat which was very firm and a ride any longer than an hour without a rest break was not a lot of fun. So I had the standard seat lowered and contoured by the talented John Moorehouse down in Wellington Point. He did a great job and the seat took me on many long trips in relative comfort.
Fast forward to 2019 and my most recent steed, the Triumph Tiger XRT - bought to take me to Uluru in cruise control comfort. But wait there is
that cursed seat issue and a further uncomfortable truth on a fully optioned Tiger being the heated seat wiring (you read correctly, a heated seat in SEQ...) seems to be positioned in a sensitive area of the nether region. I swapped over to the Triumph unheated low seat which Team Moto threw in to seal the deal on the sale but it was also lacking padding where it was sorely needed.
A call to John Moorehouse revealed sadly that he is no longer in the seat business, so after some research including asking riders (mainly of the female persuasion) how they customised their seats I was put onto MJM seats in Goulburn. Drat, that pesky Covid meant that a ride to Goulburn to meet with Mick in person was out of the question.
A call to him with instructions including having photos of me taken on the bike in the riding position had me mailing the rider and pillion seat down to Goulburn for Mick to work his magic. A call from Mick upon receiving the seat, it was decided upon some red piping to set off the grey of the seat which would coordinate nicely with the red colour of my Tiger, classy!
So two weeks later another call from Mick came through and I paid over the phone and a few short days later my very well packaged seats came in the mail.
While I have only tested the seat on day rides so far I am very impressed with the quality of the finish and the comfort level, going from a 4.5/10 to a 9.95 out of 10! I am holding the extra .05 back until a longer trek of at least a week or so riding big km’s every day is undertaken! A test has also been made of the pillion seat, putting it onto Duncan’s Tiger for a short local pillioning exercise. It came up trumps as well, with a big increase in comfort for the poorly tensed glute area while he filtered through traffic wildly.
