I think this is one of the best looking aftermarket seat set ups currently available for the Triumph Street Twin. Down & Out Motorcycles are well known for their recent custom Triumphs, and this kit gives you the look WITHOUT having to cut the frame and weld a loop in. It’s pretty easy to fit at home and is completely reversible. Of course the guys and Down & Out will happily do the work for you if you wish.
Hi tony here beautiful 9 cave and today i’m going to be fitting a short seat and rack system from down-and-out cafe racers to a triumph street twin now thanks to the aftermarket parts manufacturers there’s lots of bits coming through for the street to it now i don’t know at cafe racers i’ve created one of the short single seats for the street twin which doesn’t
Require the rear frame to be cut and have a loop board it in it’s got a small rack that sits on the back to go along with this seat conversion i’m going to be using indicators mounts and a rear light from motown customs just to finish the job off nicely these are available from a down-and-out cafe racers as part of the entire kit ok so let’s have a look at the
Constituent parts of the kit here is the short seat i opted for black vinyl diamond stitched really beautiful piece of work there you go it’s got a little down-and-out logo on the back and it’s really nicely finished underneath as well you’ve got the tab to go on the tank and the fixing bolts at the back here but that is the seat now to bring the short seat to the
Same length as the standard seat without having to cut the rear frame rails there’s this nifty little rack section that goes on the back this can come in various different finishes i’ve opted to go for all black now one of the nice options that you have with the motown indicators they come with orange lenses and in the box they also supply a set of clear lenses
The in doubt has come with an orange bulb in so if you want to switch over to the clear lens just the case of popping that in putting the rubber seal back on and screwing it back on and job is done so there’s a comparison between the clear and the amber lens personally i prefer the clear one so that’s what i’m going to run with on the bike now for mounting the rear
Indicators there’s several options you can use i’ve opted for what i think is probably going to be one of the simplest and the neatest and that eye is the moto kustoms rear shock mount so it’s just a small bracket like this it will mount on the shock and then the indicator mounts through their bolts on wiring feeds up under the seat so a very neat and simple way of
Doing that and then to finish off you’ve got the shorty mud guard which comes pre-drilled with all the holes again available in various finishes i paid a bit extra to have this one powder coated satin black you also get this section here which is the mount so this needs to bolt on to mount on to the rear of the stock frame you also have a number plate holder which
Goes on the back underneath here and a nice box of all the various fasteners when the important things in this kit are these spacers which will sit on here to enable that to mount nicely in the back but we’ll cover that when we when we get to the fitting from motown this is the bait style taillight really nice this they do this in a couple of finishes you can get
It with a chrome rim or completely in chrome i’ve gone for the complete black and it is an led light so this is really nice and bright now to save some time in a video i’m not going to go through the process of taking the stock rear mudguard off i’ve done that before one of my previous ones so i’ll put a link in the end credits for you to go and have a look and
See how to take that off if you’ve not seen that we’ll just dive straight in one of the drawbacks of this seat is that you lose the latch on the back here and actually to fit the seat on it sits flush on this rear mount so this latch part has to come off now this is not really a problem you can keep the cable in place that’s that’s not an issue so removing this
Is fairly straightforward there’s a slot in the arm here for the cable to run out of you might need to just open it up a little bit mine was closed down let’s then just the case of compressing it slightly as if you were unlocking it pulling that cable out and through do not lose that spring that’s quite important so i’d stick a bit of tape or something over the
End of that cable or take the spring off completely and then it’s just the case of popping that off of there so that that can stay in place and then it’s to t30 torx heads that you can unscrew and then once those are out it’s just the case of lifting this away i’m just going to put those two screws in there put that in a bag wrap it up put it there somewhere nice
And safe but just to be safe and sure i’m just going to wrap a little bit of tape around it to make sure that doesn’t go anywhere and then we’re ready to go and then obviously when you change this back there’s captive nuts in here just the case of screwing that back in so before i’ll get on with the rest of the seat i thought i might as well put the rear indicator
Mounts on now in the previous video you’d have seen i will to use the mote own shocked dress-up kit so it is just the case of taking that six mil bolt out of there i’m just going to pop the shock off and then you can just mount the indicator bracket behind vult everything back on i’ve not voted i’ve really tight until i get to the point where i want to adjust where
The sit you still see the thread from the indicator come through here but i’m just going to put a little bit of shrink wraps leaving on it to cover that over and run the wiring up one of the things you did have to do the pegs on the frame for the shot on a street twin are slightly wider than the old bonneville so these you do need to open that hole up a little bit
Bare soft aluminium so just get a round file when you can round that through until you can slide that over i spent to the guys at motown’s i suspect they’ll be bringing a set of these out specifically for the street to it as well but i’ve got some of the old stock so now that arms on it is just a case of feeding the wire through the plenty of wire and then you’ve
Got to put the washer and the nut back over the cables and then you’ve got the ability to obviously to run that cabling up on the inside here sort that out a later stage and then you can adjust these to wherever you need to and then tighten everything up as you say you can still see this little bit here i’m just going to put some heat shrink over that just to cover
That up to make that look a little bit neater okay so we’re almost really putting mudguard on but in the kit from down and out you’ll get these top hats and these are to replace the stock top hats that are at the front of the mat they’re just slightly shorter the standard ones mean that the mudguard won’t sit flush with the rubber mount underneath so you just need
To swap those over okay to start with i’ve mounted this bracket which you saw earlier on it’s the short bolts just to tighten that on and then this section here will line up with the two stock bolts in the chassis now for mount these you’re going to need the two allen head bolts which are third these 30 mil long ones with a washer and a nut now it’s just a case of
Feeding the bolt down through that mounting hole finding the hole underneath there it is a fiddly job it’s difficult to get fingers up there and if i had a pound for every time i dropped a washer then i would have paid for this kit already just need to personally get the two nuts under they can leave that tight loose for the for the moment because there’s a bit
Of a procedure to put this all together as you can see the cable that goes to the seat release i’ve just looped it around and tucked it back down inside here so that kind of keeps that out of the way i’ve got my indicators lined up and put a little bit of heat shrink on there just to cover the the silver thread of the bolt they look i think pretty damn good now
The tricky part about this is that these two bolt here with the spaces that sit underneath they go on once the seat and the wrapper on so the next thing for me to do would be to fit the real lights and the number plate mount on here then we can sort out the wiring and then finally we can get the seat and the rack all bolted up and done and dusted okay next job’s
Really simple here is the bait light you’ve got two small little 8 mil nuts and bolts on the bottom i’ll just take the nuts and the washer off and then that simply pushes through the pre-drilled holes that are underneath so once that’s in place the next part is the number plate mount against pre-drilled you can just line up the holes push those through need to be
A bit of an octopus trip to get all these on but let’s just nip one of these nuts on the bottom okay they’re nice and simple again you can leave that loose until you get to the point that you’re going to do the rest of the bits and pieces and obviously this part where the plate mounts you can bend that however you want to it comes relatively flat and sticks out
So i’ll just put mine down a little bit so now the rear light is on we’ve got the indicators in we’ve got everything we need to be able to wire this up now we’ve seen it sort of wiring out first because the last job is to put the seat and the rack on i suppose you could put the rack on the back and adjust the seat but i’ve tried doing that and the last bolts are
Quite difficult to do so this makes it easier for you to see as well now the wiring is a bit that’s always the tricky part once you’ve disconnected the stock loom you can leave it attached to the stock fender stroke mudguard but then that gives you that creates a problem as to how to wire this up obviously if you want to revert back to stock you don’t want to cut
Up your original loom and i’ve found a solution to that i’ve managed to source the same plug which is the stock plug for the triumph loom i bought a supply of these so i’m going to i’m going to knock a few of these up and i’ll make these available for people to buy it won’t look like this and look a little bit neater this was just a test one that i did anyway what
This doesn’t over you to do then is to just push this into the stock harness it’s just the case of following the colors to connect them up and i will label them up now i don’t run with a real number plate light it’s not a an mot requirement here in the uk and but i have wired the loom to be able to accept that so it’s a fully functioning loom obviously as i say this
One is a little bit messy the new ones will be much much neater than this but i’m just going to make sure check everything is working on here and then we can go ahead and eat up the wiring and put the rest of the seat back on and we’re good to go so let’s give this a check read the ignition on what we’re going to tell right that’s good we’ve got a brake light that
Works that’s fantastic we have a write indicator and we have a left indicator okay so there you go not the neatest job in the world but i’m doing it for speed just so that i can get this done now with regards to sitting the rat on the back of the seat there are two bolts here that you can do i tried to put this bit on first then the seat getting this line up proved
To be a bit of a nightmare so maybe it seems easier to be able to do that then it’s a case of putting the hook under the standard tank mount pushing that forward and then it’s a case you’ve got to then just knock it into place to see to line these holes up at the top here okay so these four balls here go into the captive nuts in the frame and then that leaves you
With these two which go through to the lower mud guard and that’s where the spacers come into play now the last part is to bolt through from the top to hold the mud guard up in place this is where you need the longer bolts that have got a collar on them and you’ve got these small aluminium spacers now they’re shaped the flat side of the spacer goes at the top and
Then the angled part will sit naturally on the slope of the mud guard and then there’s a little nut that goes on under eat that so it’s just the case of bolt and washer turn a push the bolt down through the spacer sits between the rack and mudguard and then you can put the nut on the bottom just do that loosely initially do the other side and you’ll find that the
Slope of the spacer will sort of fall into place with a little bit of moving around i’ll get the other one down tighten it up and then we can take a look at the bike with this setup in completion so they get not too difficult a job a little bit fiddly here and there but it’s all not and bolt stuff the beauty of that is you can return the bike back to its top form
Very quickly and easily there’s been no cutting or welding on the bike whatsoever i think the c conversion makes a huge difference to the aesthetics of the bike it seems to shorten the bike and make it look a little bit more stumpy and a little bit more purposeful the quality of the items are really good there are two minor problems that this conversion throws up
The first one is that you lose the ability to unclip the seat with the key it has to be unbolted so that’s a little bit of a minor inconvenience if you’re used to using the space under the seat or if you just want to access the battery or the usb pull that can be a problem the second problem is the wiring itself so if you want to keep the stock wiring with your
Rear mudguard and unplug that and just put that to one side you’ve then got the issue with the wiring and i suspect most people won’t want to cut up their original loom as you saw from the video i made up a small loom to replace that rear section it was untidy but it was one i did on the quick just to get the video done i’m going to start to produce some better
Versions of those and i have the verse first version here again it’s the standard triumph plug you also then got the various lights setting out so you’ve got the left and right indicators the tail light and the brake light and real light already wired up and so i’ll make some of these available if you’re interested in one of these contact me either put a note in
The comment section down below or contact me on facebook this is needed in the original version and it’s going to save you cutting up the original loom when you want to fit either dis conversion or to be fair any other kind of rear tail tidy setup that you fantasy putting on the bike itself okay so as usual there’ll be links in the end credits for you to go away
Click on that will take you through to the down-and-out cafe racers website i’ll put a link on there to the motown site there will be a link to a video that shows you how to take the original rear mudguard off if you haven’t had a look at that already and until next time take care ride safe and i’ll see you soon bye
Transcribed from video
Down & Out Motorcycles – Short Seat & Rack Conversion (Street Twin) By Man Cave Moto