Seat Pan Resto

[mwaller]

Ok, here is the seat pan. Wondering if it's too far gone to try and repair, and if not what is the best way to repair. All area's that will have to hold a load are good, it's just the thin walls that are rusted out. The cushion appears to be good. What do you guys think? Repair pan and re cover, or just buy a new one?

[Mutineer]

Wow, that one's as bad as I've ever seen, can't see how you can patch that one up without entirely reforming the pan sides, and then welding to such a thin skanky base would be real tough. Mine ('70 CT70) was cracked in all the same places as most but the edges with the hold down tangs were all intact and strong. We welded some small .030 thickness sheet metal patches on the top side of the cracks to strengthen the pan, sand blasted, self etching primed it and then a couple coats of gloss black, good as new. Sand blasting your pan would probably wipe out 25% of the material before you got to some steel to weld to and the remaining metal wouldn't have much strength left. Unless you're 75 lbs, I doubt if it would last very long and then you're back to eBay looking for a replacement.

[racerx]

Can't tell from the photos just how localized the rust really is. If it's just a few spots on the siderails, then a successful repair could be done. On the other hand, if the rust thinning is uniformly distributed, then the pan's a goner. I'd replace the seat outright. Even in a best-case situation, the amount of skilled labor required to return that pan to as-new function & appearance would be over-the-top.

[Grant's trail]

Can you weld? Iv'e fixed a few but not as bad as that. Its saveable but if you paid someone to do it a heli arc shop gets 75 to 100 bucks to fire up a tig welder for min. time and that seat pan is going to take someone a couple if hours to fix plus some materals. you could weld it with a tourch but would'nt turn out as nice, IMO, but if your just going to just have fun with the bike patch it together till you find a better one. Grant