After a small black bear perforated the passenger seat on my LT and getting an extremely generous insurance settlement from Progressive, I decided to pull the trigger on an RDL seat even though I may have my LT only a couple more years.
I placed my order in October, if memory serves, and received a 12-18-18 build date. I shipped my seat out a week or so prior to that and received it back around January 15th so roughly a month door to door. The order process was fairly straightforward and conducted entirely by email. The seat was packed very well on the return shipment even including wooden pieces stuck in the ears on the passenger seat so that they could not get broken off during shipment.
The workmanship looks good roughly comparable to the OEM seat. I did not get the seat installed until this past week. The installation was easy and there were no clearance or other issues. The only minor issues noticed thus far are that the driver’s seat back is easy to install, but can be hard to remove, and the Sunbrella fabric really captures lint. My seat has white flecks all over it that are hard to brush off. I am hoping a shot from a hose will clean it up. Some silicone spray helped quite a bit on the backrest bracket removal. The adjustment knob prevents the driver seat from being raised so either the knob has to be removed each time or the backrest has to be removed to raise the seat. With the silicone, it appears removing the backrest will be the path of least resistance, but it would be nice to not have this interference.
I have yet to take a test ride as the weather here has been crappy the last few days, but I hope to get out next week to road test all of my maintenance work and begin to break in the seat. The seat feels pretty good from a static check. It does effectively raise the seat height as Russell said to expect. Where I could easily flat foot before, I am not on my tip toes. I suspect this is due largely to the addition width of the seat as Russell says, and not to any real height difference. I suspect this will get a little better after some break-in and as I get better at sliding forward as I stop. Also, my static test was with jeans on and I think they stick more to the Sunbrella than will other materials. I expect that my synthetic riding pants may slide better on the seat and let me reach the ground a little better.
I will add an update after I get a few road miles on it and get it through the 1,000 mile or so break-in period that Russell says to expect. And then another update after I return from Alaska and have 10K or so miles on it.
I placed my order in October, if memory serves, and received a 12-18-18 build date. I shipped my seat out a week or so prior to that and received it back around January 15th so roughly a month door to door. The order process was fairly straightforward and conducted entirely by email. The seat was packed very well on the return shipment even including wooden pieces stuck in the ears on the passenger seat so that they could not get broken off during shipment.
The workmanship looks good roughly comparable to the OEM seat. I did not get the seat installed until this past week. The installation was easy and there were no clearance or other issues. The only minor issues noticed thus far are that the driver’s seat back is easy to install, but can be hard to remove, and the Sunbrella fabric really captures lint. My seat has white flecks all over it that are hard to brush off. I am hoping a shot from a hose will clean it up. Some silicone spray helped quite a bit on the backrest bracket removal. The adjustment knob prevents the driver seat from being raised so either the knob has to be removed each time or the backrest has to be removed to raise the seat. With the silicone, it appears removing the backrest will be the path of least resistance, but it would be nice to not have this interference.
I have yet to take a test ride as the weather here has been crappy the last few days, but I hope to get out next week to road test all of my maintenance work and begin to break in the seat. The seat feels pretty good from a static check. It does effectively raise the seat height as Russell said to expect. Where I could easily flat foot before, I am not on my tip toes. I suspect this is due largely to the addition width of the seat as Russell says, and not to any real height difference. I suspect this will get a little better after some break-in and as I get better at sliding forward as I stop. Also, my static test was with jeans on and I think they stick more to the Sunbrella than will other materials. I expect that my synthetic riding pants may slide better on the seat and let me reach the ground a little better.
I will add an update after I get a few road miles on it and get it through the 1,000 mile or so break-in period that Russell says to expect. And then another update after I return from Alaska and have 10K or so miles on it.