• Enter the March CB750 Supply gift certificate giveaway! It's easy... Click here, post something, and you're entered into the drawing!

Texavina Solo Café Racer Seat Review

CocZamudio

CB750 Member
Messages
6
Reaction score
0
Points
1
Location
Boulder, Colorado USA
Recently, I purchased and installed a Honda CB750 CB750K 1979-1983 Low-Profile Solo Café Racer Seat, Model Z2021, from Texavina.com. These are some of my observations, experiences during installation, and a brief review of the seat itself.

Photos of my installation are viewable at Texavina Café Racer Seat Installation, http://www.cb750.com/album.php?albumid=290.

My 1981 Honda CB750K was characterized a “resto / mod” by the previous (second) owner and I agree with that description. He invested thousands of dollars over sixteen years of ownership in tasteful but mostly unseen performance upgrades such as Hagon shocks, Progressive fork springs, CB900 cams, a Vance & Hines 4-1 Exhaust System, EBC Pro-Lite drilled brake rotor, a Trail Tech Vapor Computer (speedometer and tachometer), and many other improvements. He also had the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) seat reshaped and recovered and fabricated a rear cowl with taillight and turn signals.

Interestingly, before many of these modifications were made, the CB750K was featured in the July, 2011 issue of Motorcycle Classics in an article about Honda master mechanic Dennis Zickrick.

Following in his footsteps, I cleaned up the wiring harness replacing several cheap “crush” automotive-type connectors with sealed OEM Japanese and NASA-style connectors, upgraded all the lighting to LEDs, and installed a Trail Tech Dashboard for the Vapor Computer with hard-wired tach and engine temperature sensors, repaired minor dings and some fatigue cracks in plastic panels, applied fresh paint, and more.

My wife lost interest in riding with me years ago after the sale of my dual-purpose Suzuki TS-400 which, to her, was “fun”. Highway riding on the back of my subsequent BMW R65 was “not fun”. Riding in the passenger position of the CB750, when I got it, also was not appealing to her. So off went the passenger foot pegs.

While looking for a café racer-style solo seat to match the general sport format of the Honda, I found many “universal” seats which required frame modifications. Texavina, somewhat recently, introduced bolt-on seats which are built on original Honda seat pans and require no permanent frame mods. Anticipating eventual sale of the CB750 to a new owner who might want to easily restore the seating to OEM two-up format, the idea of a simple seat switch was appealing.

The Texavina Low-Profile Solo Café Racer seat was ordered online (www.texavina.com) and notification of shipment was received within a few days. It took a couple of somewhat frustrating weeks for the seat to arrive in Colorado from Hue City, Vietnam. Well-packed in rigid Styrofoam and wrapped with what seemed like a mile of clear packaging tape, it arrived in perfect condition with mounting hardware (more on that later). On other occasions, I have received international shipments of cycling components that U.S. Customs had opened, inspected, and thrown back in the box without the original packing, damaging parts and finishes. This shipment, which apparently had not been opened, was perfect.

The OEM seat was removed, wrapped, and placed in a large storage bin from Home Depot along the the rear cowl, license plate bracket and the OEM rear foot pegs. On the new Texavina seat I installed the included brackets — in “Honda-speak”, PLATE, SEAT SETTING 77202-425-870 — which I quickly found out had to be installed with the curved edge of each bracket towards the rear of the seat. If the brackets are installed with the curved edge forward, the bolt holes will not match up with the threaded mounting points on the frame.

When I positioned the seat to tighten it in place with the mounting bolts, I discovered that the seat bracket holes lined up with the frame mounting points lengthwise but were too high to accommodate the bolts. This is where the “do as I say, not as I do” part of the installation comes in: Thinking the long threaded bracket mounting studs on the seat pan were interfering with the correct seat placement, I used my Makita Die Grinder, a kind of super-sized Dremel tool - and a Dremel abrasive cut-off wheel to trim the studs. This was a major mistake, I would learn later.

Replacing the seat on the CB750, I realized the holes still did not line up. Unpacking the OEM seat and comparing it to the Texavina seat, I saw that the OEM seat had two “RUBBER, AIR CLEANER HOUSING MOUNTING 17245-107-010” spacers and Two metal “COLLAR (6.2X12) 90501-425-000” adapters on each bracket, giving about one-quarter inch of additional height to each bracket. Realizing that I had cut the studs too short to install the OEM rubber spacers and adapters, I placed a couple of 1/4 x 20 flat washers on each stud. Now, the seat holes lined up easily. The downside is that I lost some of the vibration dampening the rubber spacers would have provided.

I should point out that there were no installation instructions included with the seat so I was not forewarned about the alignment problem. Indeed, proper installation of the OEM rubber spacers and adapters would entail drilling larger holes in the brackets to accommodate the spacers. By the way, the original Honda seat pan and parts should not be discarded; they have value as a used parts when sold on a website such as eBay.

With the seat finally installed and my new “universal” integrated LED tail light with brake light and license plate light mounted, the seat looks great and provides a comfortable ride. The sewing of the seat cover is excellent and the material appears to be very good. I didn’t measure the seat height of my OEM seat and compare it to the Texavina seat but it feels like the “low profile” design of the seat does reduce the seat height slightly. To be fair, it could be simply that the width of the OEM Honda seat pan is a major limiting factor in the apparent seat height for a somewhat vertically-challenged person such as myself at five feet, eight inches. Now, if I were to replace the rear shocks, I would probably order thirteen inch shocks instead of the original fourteen and one-quarter inch shocks.

I finished off my installation job with a quick light swipe of 303 Aerospace Protectant by Gold Eagle Co. on a cotton cloth on the vinyl surface. I’ve used 303 Aerospace Protectant to detail collector cars and cycles for years, ever since I spritzed Armor All protectant on the slightly-faded seat of the aforementioned Suzuki TS-400 and returned the next morning to find the Armor All had caused my vinyl seat to crack and curl badly, pulling away from the fabric base and ruining the seat cover. Additionally, in my experience, Armor All produces a shiny, slick, dangerously slippery surface whereas 303 Protectant gives a non-slippery matte OEM look to vinyl, plastic, and rubber.

Recently, I was looking at another vintage Japanese sport bike on Craigslist and I found myself wondering if Texavina makes a seat for that bike. I’d definitely buy another. As a side issue, I spent two and a half years in Vietnam as a U.S. Army soldier. I will take to the grave regrets about how our country left Vietnam and its people. If my purchase of the Texavina seat helped provide a few jobs and some additional take-home pay, I’m all for it. I was a motorcycle owner and rider when I went to Vietnam fifty years ago; I’m still riding. In some ways, it seems like history has come full circle.
 
Texavina seat photos

Please follow the link in the second paragraph to my photo album. Since this is my first post, I’m still figuring out things like embedding photos in posts.

Thanks for your interest; I hope this is helpful!


Thanks for the write up do you have any pics you can post?
 
Back
Top