So I wasn't happy with any of the cafe tails I saw online, the shapes are all too round and I just felt it wouldn't mesh well with the awesome 80s angles of the K75. I ended up running across a video from DCC that showed how to shape your own tail and lay it using fiberglass. With some time on my hands and my want to get messy...away I went. Step-by-steps for the next person who wants a custom tail, glass in their hands and a healthy coating of dust for their lungs.
1/ Went to a local craft store and purchased:
Styrofoam board
Florist foam
Home Depot provided:
Loctite adhesive (buy the spray and not actual glue, I found out the hard way)
Bondo fiberglass resin
Fiberglass cloth
Cheapo paintbrushes
Latex gloves
2/ Lay the styrofoam on your frame and start gluing the florist block on top of the board to start to build up your tail. Allow the block to dry for one day. Use a sharpie to trace out the frame in the board and use a file to carve out a channel for the tail section to rest in.
3/ Use a serrated bread knife to begin to shape your seat and tail section. (It is always better to make more cuts and slowly shave down as you can't add foam back.) Once you're happy with the general shape of your seat, STOP. Do the rest by hand.
4/ Yes, by hand. Instead of using sandpaper, I did the entire project with righty. The florist block is super fragile and I found by using my hand over sandpaper, I could get a better feel for what I was shaving away and more easily achieve the lines I was looking for. By this time your workspace is going to be covered in a fine green dust like you just vaporized Oscar the Grouch. Wear a mask! Eye protection isn't a bad idea either, but it's been a few days since doing this and I've still got green fibers settling down on my floor and table.
5/ Give the seat a good brushing and shake off to get all the shaving off. Take painters tape (or I've heard aluminum duct tape works well) and cover the entire seat pan with it, making sure to cover below as well.
6/ Congrats! Step back and admire your new Grover-esque seat pan. I probably should have stopped here as it still looked good, but foam has the structural integrity of...well foam, so the next steps are necessary.
7/ Cover the tape in some kind of wax to act as a release agent for the fiberglass.
8/ Wait until your girlfriend goes to work/shopping/ect.
9/ Prop up the seat pan on a box, to allow all the sides to be open below. Put down bags or a tarp. Cut strips of fiberglass cloth (smaller the better) and prepare yourself.
10/ Mix the fiberglass resin and pour it all over the seat, brushing it over all surfaces. Start laying down fiberglass cloth and dab on more and more resin over the cloth until you have a giant, gelatinous mess. You have about 10 minutes to finish this step so you need to move quickly. Don't think, just make sure you've got complete coverage.
11/ Step away, let the mold rest for 24 hours and tend to your wounds. Fiberglass is nasty nasty stuff. Not only was it all over my dining table, but all over the floors and for the next day I was finding glass splinters in my fingers.
12/ Light sanding of the fiberglass mold and repeat step 10. Another layer of fiberglass resin aided with fiberglass cloth strips. Dab down and wait another day.
13/ I put on one more layer of just fiberglass resin for good measure. No idea if this was a good/bad idea, but it just seemed smart.
14/ Took the mold to the parking garage and used a Dremel to cut the bottom edge of mold away. At this time, I pried the foam from the mold with all my might. Dig/pick/scrape/pry it out of there. It's not easy, but can't imagine what it would have been like without the wax.
15/ So the fiberglass itself isn't strong enough to bear my whole weight. Unfortunately this means finding a way to mount the tail section. We have a few cheapo chairs we picked up for a party when we didn't have enough seating. $5 at Salvation Army, seemed like they were good donors. Took the particleboard seatpan from one of the chairs and ripped off the fabric and and foam. Used a cardboard cutout as a stencil for the particleboard, which was cutdown and sanded to size.
16/ Hit up my friends at the local Home Depot for 4 rubber stoppers, some bolts, washers and nuts. Drilled a hole through each rubber stopper. Two stoppers in the rear went through the crossbar, attaching them to the frame. The two stoppers for the front are loose at this point.
17/ Drilled holes through the particleboard seat pan and the fiberglass mold. Kinda messed up with placement, but 2nd time was a charm. The front bumpers don't really mount to anything yet. They are going to sit to the left/right of the plastic box above the ECU unit.
18/ Next, just start screwing stuff in. The screws do come up through the fiberglass seat. The rear screws are flush after the nuts screw on, but the front are a different story. At this point, we might as well call the seat the "Lineage Eraser". I used a Dremel to cut down the front screws so that no excess is sticking up past the nuts.
19/ Used the extra chair fabric and foam to make a ghetto foam cushion. Cut down the white faux-leather and wrapped it around the foam, which was stapled to a chair pan mold. Super clunky and awkward, but at least it give my butt a little cushion and lets me ride again.
I fully plan on getting this redone in a year or so. My mold is uneven, lumpy, ill-proportioned, not-painted. But I love it. It's mine and it looks better than what I had before (in my eyes). I'll end up fixing some cracks with more resin and painting it black (for now) before taking next steps. I also need to securely mount the front of the seat. The entire process was messy, frustrating and really rewarding that this is a one-of-a-kind seat and was all my own doing. Pictures to follow.
