Improving a Himalayan Seat
I love my Himalayan, but the seat is not its best feature. It’s hard, strangely narrow and angles forwards. Not only giving you a numb and then increasingly painful rear end after a time riding, but also squishing your gentleman’s equipment against the fuel tank.
My first attempt to fix this was the buy the genuine Royal Enfield “Touring seat” for £70.80. It’s an easy swap – just remove the old and slip in the new. But, amazingly, I couldn’t tell the difference! It felt exactly the same. It wasn’t made the same; it was open underneath and there was a different mesh where it was solid in the other, but it was just as hard and uncomfortable.
I tried with various seat-toppers. That helped a bit, as did a Sheepskin, but I needed 2 or 3 before I could ride more than an hour without a break, which left me teetering on layers of unconnected foam like the Princess and the Pea.
I also tried using my bicycling underwear. That was surprisingly good. Then I heard about Moto Skiveez – basically the same thing but with pads specifically for adventure riding. I bought some of those. Those were a little bit better and well made, but absolutely NOT worth the £62.50 I paid for them! They are good pants, but not ten times better than basic cycling padded pants, which is what they cost. I consider Moto Skiveez to be 10% good product, 90% marketing.
So, figuring I might as well hack the original seat around a bit. If I messed things up, I still had the Touring seat.
Preparation
- I bought a 2cm thick gel pad off Amazon for £25, watched some Youtube videos, and got to work.
The Original Seat before being operated upon
The cover comes off easily, revealing the naked seat underneath
No going back now
The gel pad is sat underneath this (not visible), then this rubber honeycomb on top. Honestly – I’m not sure this was a great idea, maybe the pad was better closed to the bum?
Then this soft cushion bed-topper type matirial over it all, to soften it a bit further and also widen it a bit at the front, to stop the thighs hitting the bike frame
It was really hard to get the staples back into the plastic, even using a pretty strong staple gun
The finished article. Not as pretty as the original, but is it better to sit on?
Conclusion – was it worth it?
Yeeeess…? Probably? Maybe?
The seat is more comfortable. I’ll ride a good couple of hours (I’m a heavy bloke with a skinny bum so I’ll take extra padding every time). I did still wear a sheepskin over the saddle.
What would I do differently? I’m not sure the gel pad made much difference – maybe I buried it too low so its shaping qualities were lost. So perhaps if you do the same, consider your needs a little better than I did.
- Update 2025: 2 years on
Whilst my modification was better than the original, it still wasn’t ideal. I stripped everything back one rainy day and set-to again, focusing on much more foam. More! More! I’d bought a waterproof seat cover for something else, and once I’d added a big square of foam (from a car seat booster cushion), the original cover would no longer fit - but the extra one did. So now I finally have a comfortable seat that I can ride for 3-4 hours without feeling uncomfortable. It doesn’t look good, but I’d need professional help and a new properly fitted cover to achieve that. Upholstery is hard!