The piece of foam you can see in the header image is how I managed to ride 3,000 miles in ten days on my Yamaha Tracer 9GT. With it placed across the seat, where the seat and the tank meet, it transformed the ride.
The seat on the Tracer 9 divides opinion. For me, both the standard and comfort seats are flawed. Unfortunately, it isn’t something you can fix with a Comfort Air Seat, and whereas having the seat rebuilt to change the profile does help, the scale of the change, if you really want to fix the problem, would be dramatic.
The Corbin seat for the Tracer 9GT replaces both factory seats with a single unit. Corbin’s reputation suggests it is worth every penny, but I’ll need a lot of pennies to go that route.
I’ve tried most solutions, but ultimately my chunk of foam is – so far – the only thing that has solved the problem completely. Having covered 9,000 miles on the Tracer and tried no end of solutions … well, here is the story.
The Problem
Some say it is the seat’s profile, while others say it’s the footrest position. Some swear by the comfort seat, while others swear at it. Gel pads, memory foam, and even swapping the rubber bungs under the seat around have all been suggested.
Ultimately, my efforts to make the Tracer 9GT a comfortable place to sit have failed due to the seat’s design and how it connects to the tank.
Rather than being upswept, the seat pushes against a rubber bung in the low position or against the plastic trim if you prefer the high seating position.
Compare the Tracer 9 seat to the seat on the Ducati V2, which isn’t known for being overly comfortable, and you can see the problem. The front of the Ducati seat sweeps up, creating a cup or scoop in which to sit. The benefit of the scoop is that it supports your body weight across a wider area. Horse saddles worked this out years ago.
Without this – as with the Tracer 9 – most of your body weight is across your lower back, and you are pulling backwards to stop yourself from falling forwards.
Ducati really bought into this design concept, as did the designers of the Suzuki V-Strom 1050XT, Honda’s NT1100 and even those working on the Ténéré 700. They all have seats that curve upwards at the front.
The plastic trim on the tank into which the Tracer’s seat fits gives the illusion of a scooped and upswept seat, but it isn’t an area that helps to support you when riding.
And to save you Googling all the bikes we have mentioned, there is a gallery below.
Numerous motorcycles don’t have a scooped, cup-like profile on the seat. Yamaha’s R1, the Honda Fireblade, Suzuki GSX-R and BMW 1000RR, which is logical when you consider the riding position
The blending of a sports bike style seat with a seating position more aligned with an adventure bike is the cause of the problem.
Raise the Foot Pegs
You can have the footpegs on the Tracer 9GT in two different positions – Low and High. The difference between the mounting points is 15mm, and my ego will assume that the adjustment is for ergonomics rather than ground clearance.
No matter how ambitious I am in the corners, I am yet to grind the footpegs. Scraping my toes sliders is as close as I’ve come.
With the footpegs mounted higher, you might imagine that you would be pitched further forward in a sports bike like position. But, alas, this isn’t so. Instead, all that happens is your knees are more bent.
If you wish to change how you interact with the seat, you need to push the bars forward, so the contact patch between your backside and the seat changes. The screen limits the adjustment range on the bars, but let’s be honest, if you wanted to crouch over the tank of a Yamaha, you would have bought an R1.
Having tried the high and low footpeg positions, my cheap chunk of foam remained the best solution for a comfortable riding position.
Reprofiling the Seat
Having invested in Yamaha’s Comfort Seat for the Tracer 9GT – which is more comfortable than the standard seat but suffers from the same fundamental problem – I decided to have my standard seat reprofiled by Core Motorcycle Seats.
Having described my problem to Core, they did a cracking job of reprofiling the standard seat and whereas I could feel the improvement as soon as I sat down, the fundamental problem is still there.
Reprofiling the seat sufficiently to remove the problem would require removing a significant amount of the padding from the seat and is perhaps why Yamaha hasn’t done it, and Corbin Seats switched to a one-piece unit.
Switching my reprofiled seat to the high position helped a little more. However, the fundamental problem of a sports bike seat on a bike with an upright riding position still exists.
To resolve my issues with the Tracer 9, I may have to ask Core to hollow out the seat, but before I do that, I’ve ordered the Seat Slope kit from JK3D.US
Yamaha Tracer 9GT Seat Slope Kit
As the Seat Slope Kit has been available for the Tracer 900 for some time, why didn’t I try the Tracer 9GT version before all the other things?
Essentially, I got the wrong idea of what the Slope Seat Kit did, so I chased after other solutions.
The Seat Slope Kit raises the front seat bracket. As this bracket has two bolts that connect with the tank, I incorrectly assumed that the rear of the tank would be raised by 8mm, which would put all of the panel lines on the Tracer 9 out.
Whereas the Seat Slope Kit does raise the tank, the amount is reduced by a pair of offset grommets.
The bracket into which the seat connects is raised by 8mm, but the rear of the tank is raised by less than half that.
If you are wondering about fitting the Seat Slope Kit, SquireSCA on Youtube has a great video showing how simple the kit is to install.
I have to wait for my Tracer 9 Seat Slope Kit – which I paid for with my own cash money – to arrive, and in the meanwhile, I’ll keep using my chunk of foam.
Between the Slope Seat Kit, Yamaha’s Comfort Seat and the reprofiling that Core Motorcycle Seats have done on my standard seat, I am determined to make the Tracer 9GT comfortable. The Corbin seat looks to be the one-stop easy answer, yet that is a lot of money to invest without a road test.
Corbin Seats have a rock-solid reputation, but I never was much of a gambler.
Perhaps I should start selling chunks of foam in fancy wrappers – Nah, it will never catch on.
