Nothing like a good farkle, right?
Right before I left Germany, I saw an F650GS set up for fire department work. I promptly fell head-over-heels in love with the Einsatzfahrzeugzubehör, the emergency vehicle accessories. These consist of a front light bar and a solo seat with a luggage bin behind it. My days of two-up are over due to both of my pillions having grown to six feet tall-plus, so why pretend any more? This is a solo bike and I love it that way. More light is always better, too.
Last month, I scored the light bar (apparently the last extant one, too), and this month, I managed to score a solo seat from ebay.nl. Several trips to the local BMW dealer netted me the luggage bin and some of the other bits needed to install it. I’m still sorting out the lock cylinder and a few other mounting bits so I can complete the install of the luggage bin to the seat and the completed assembly to the bike.
The seat arrived with a weird padded roll on the back and some sort of mounting bracket that was unnecessary for my project. It came from a Police bike, so perhaps there was a special kind of box in the back?
I removed the roll and then the bracket.
Next, I test fit everything on the bike.
I particularly like the additional tie-down hoops on the sides of the bin. Those will come in handy. Of course, they will make it impossible to get into the bin when I’m using them, but whatever. The bin can become tool storage or home to things that are necessary for trips, but not needed at a moment’s notice.
The seat measures 800mm, twenty more than the 780mm seat that I normally use, and twenty less that the Dakar seat that is plush, but drives me crazy. If needed, I’ll cut this one down or perhaps even reupholster it to a new shape. Needless to say, I’m quite excited about bringing this all together.