The Norton Production Racer seat pan arrived from AirTech Streamlining a couple weeks ago, and I’m super disappointed in the quality. I still think the shape of this design is perfect for the bike, and I am confident I can make it work, but it will take extra work. After $170 (incl. shipping) and nearly 7 weeks of waiting, I can’t say I’m thrilled.

When it first arrived, I set it on the bike and found that the proportions are just excellent — exactly what I hoped it would be. Unfortunately, my initial excitement turned to disappointment when I realized that the seat is nowhere near symmetrical.

Looking down the centerline of the bike, it’s about as straight as a one-legged drunk with no cane. I must say I’m surprised, as the Reed Titan seat I’d previously gotten from Airtech was perfect. This one is also much thinner, with numerous imperfections and very skimpy gelcoat. They must’ve had the new kid do this one.

I realized it was trimmed rather haphazardly right off the bat, but even taking that into account, I was still struggling to figure out what parts of it were wonky. In order to measure points accurately, I first created a full-size symmetrical template and mounted it on foam-core board.

There’s a slight ridge down the center of the tail, so I highlighted that with black marker for my datum line. You can see along the rear edge how poor the cut line is, and how badly the front of the seat corkscrews. [The black marker along the back edge was traced from a template I created using the left side.]

FUUUUUUDGE.
The front is not only not level, but it skews to one side.

This is going to take some real wrangling to make work.

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