Solo seat alternatives

I have had the same problem three years ago - this original replicated Policia Solo seat from Italy w/ the seat pan made of plastics was dissatisfying, not stiff enough. The old one w/ the steel pan was stronger but ditto not rigid enough.

After a long research (also on Harley related sites ; - ) I found a real stiff solo seat on a Ural related site: http://www.russenteile.net/

Sellers description:

Supersaddle, designed in Germany especially for Dnepr bikes zinc- and powder coated, strong metal seat with waterproof seat cover, made of strong, waterproof motorcycle seat vinyl (Spare covers available)! This seat is larger and a lot more comfortable than the original russian rubber(pain)saddle. Tested by more than three hundred iron butt's of the german and american Russian bike-community!!

The Seller also ships to USA and sells on ebay USA.

This is a real buttometer seat - stiff and rigid.

The background: if you're driving a rig, it is very important to feel what's going on.

If you hit the road on a motorcycle with a sidecar a little fast, there is one important point: In left turns the rear tire starts to slip first and if you keep pushing, the rear tire comes up in the air. Then the sidecar turns over its own wheel and tries to bore the nose into the ground...

To prevent this, it is really important that you feel that point in your butt ; - )

To mount this saddle it needs a double U-shaped bracket to be welded and then mounted on the frame (there was a 8 mm inner diameter hole in the frame, behind the tank, which I used for mounting) and the springs from an original solo seat.

Or the nice looking hairpin springs from the friendly Harley supplier.

One more benefit is, that you have a length adjustment in a wide range (up to 60 mm, in 4 positions).

I'm very satisfied with this solution and rode even longer trips without any problems. i.e. our last holidays 2000 km in three weeks. Well, we are no iron butts and prefer smaller roads and try to avoid the Autobahn, therefore our daily trips are around 200 km / 300 km only.

A bit of a long explanation - but I hope this helps.

Ciao, Uwe

I figured someone else would have chimed in with other alternatives by now, but since nobody has I will.

One of my repeat customers is quite a large gent and the stock dual-seat just wasn't comfortable for him. At Mike Tiberio's recommendation, he bought a reproduction Harley vintage police solo seat off of eBay for around USD $125.00 and had a friend make a bracket to mount it waaay back.

The bike is here for some repairs and upgrades and in order to ride the thing, I had to move the seat forward to a normal position. The bolt spacing is very close to spacing of the two tabs where the dual-seat mounts. A simple bracket at the front and you'd be good to go.

I can't say how comfortable it is on the long-haul, but on just a short, cold test ride it felt pretty nice.

Here's some pics of the seat on the bike: