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After putting a lot of miles on 5 different off-the-shelf Corbin seats,I finally took the time to have Corbin do a custom seat for me during ride in appointment at their facility in Hollister, CA. I had assumed the degree of customization available from such a high-volume manufacturer would be minimal. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of time Corbin was willing to spend to substantially modify one of their stock seats to better suit me.
I loaned Corbin my new F650GS twin to serve as a mule for the seat they are now building for the F650/800GSs. Here is the end product photographed on my bike:
http://www.corbin.com/bmw/bmwf8gs.shtml
One of the images on the right side of this page fades between a profile of the standard BMW seat, the low BMW seat, and the Corbin seat. The Corbin seat eliminates the uncomfortable forward tilt of the standard BMW seat and allows the rider to set back farther than the BMW low seat.
The Corbin is also about 2" wider than the stock seats and provides much better support.
After putting a few miles on the stock Corbin seat, it was obviously a big improvement over the BMW seats (which isn't saying much), but I wanted something a bit wider and set back a bit farther. Here is a picture of the end product compared the standard height and low versions of the BMW seats.
It's about an inch and a half wider the stock Corbin seat and set back about another inch. Corbin also customized the heating system, putting a two-stage heating element under only the rider portion of the saddle, saving the watts wasted on the pillion portion. The whole process took about 7 hours.
As expected, the wider seat makes it harder to flat foot the bike. That's not an issue for me on the F650, but the 2" tall F800GS would be a problem.
Here is a picture of the seat installed on the bike along with the other mods I have done so far:
Now knowing what Corbin is capable of doing during a ride-in, I plan to have the pillion backrest on by GL1800 seat modified to provide better back support for my wife when she rides with me on the Wing. Living within a few hours of Hollister is a good thing.
Tom Austin
El Dorado Hills, California
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