Saddle

 The saddle is inserted into the frame with a conventional clamp at the top of the seat tube. This bolt also attaches the fuel tank... although in my case this turned out to be badly perforated.

a 2 layer structure with a foam saddle built up on a metal pan which is itself sprung to a supporting tray that is welded to the seat post. The seat post is secured in the frame seat tube by a conventional clamp. Remove the bolt and pull out the seat, shown her inverted with the bolt laid beside it.

Looking at the seat pan I cou.;ld already see that it was rusted and cracked.

I removed the lower seat tray by unscrewing the two 10mm nuts at the front to release the mounting plate and rubber cushions.

The rear of the seat is mounted with 2 springs each sandwiched between spring seat discs and retained by 10mm bolts threaded into a weld nut on the upper side of the seat plates. Here the heads of these bolts are visible, released these to allow the lower seat tray to be lifted off the pan.

Lifting off the lower tray, the springs remain attached to the seat pan, here looking down on those springs,  the spring seat is visible, this can be slipped or unscrewed from the spring revealing the weld nut on the lower seat

Unscrewing the spring seat reveals the weld nut on the lower seat inside the spring. Note that the 10mm bolt is on the top of the seat pan beneath the seat foam. 

At the front of the seat, an additional cush rubber is revealed under the cup washers. This can be levered u and removed. Its in bad condition but its not worth renewing unless I can fix the seat. 

levering up the inner cush rubber plate.

This reveals the 2 mounting studs 



Meanwhile at the rear the springs remain in place the lower spring seats can be unscrewed from their springs. Looking down inside the springs the weld nuts of the upper spring seats are visible, but the fastening nuts are on the other side beneath the seat foam. Consequently both the seat cover and foam need to be removed before those nuts can be undone. 

unscrewing the lower spring seat from its spring.

To remove the seat cover lever up the retaining dragons teeth and carefully slip the cover off them... need to be careful as the cover will tear.

Here the cover is progressively loosened.



Until it can be removed leaving the foam stuck to the seat pan

The springs are still attached to the pan because the heads of their mounting bolts are under the foam on top of the seat pan. You can ease the foam up to gain access to the 2 10mm bolts

Looking inside the springs the upper spring seat weld nut is visible, the 10mm bolt being on the other side under the foam. The next step was to remove the foam...

... and as the foam came away it became clear that the foam was the only thing holding the seat pan together!

As the foam was removed the seat pan separated into its component fragments. Spring seats, bolts, springs and pan fragments visible here.

The pan fragments were cleaned with a wire brush to remove remaining stuck foam and glue, and then soaked in citric acid to de-rust. I should be able to see if a repair is possible once the rust is removed. I certainly hope so as decent replacement seats are very expansive.

I cut a piece of steel, bent it to the colours and welded it over the underside of the saddle.

Yes my welding is awful... BUT... I started with 3 pieces of metal and ended up with one so that's a success of sorts. I'll need to drill holes for the spring seat bolts and the saddle is now about 0.5 cms wider than before  so the cover might be a little awkward to fit but at least I've converted something usable into something with a fighting chance.

I stuck viny patches on the inside of the saddle cover to bridge the most obvious holes and drilled through the newly welded cover to make holes for the spring seat bolts. Sprayed the seat pan with black Hammerite before reassembly.