Broken seat

Went to take my seat off my 2023 Sport and one of the fasteners just started spinning instead of un-screwing fully. After a while the allen screw came out and I got the seat off and saw what the problem was. In the picture you can see that one of the the top fixings of the seat that holds the metal clip is fractured and the nearest one is broken completely off , the top bar is only about two millimetres in diameter so when the screw is tightened there is a lot of strain on it and eventually it will give way and the metal clip will try to rotate instead of being held firm , once it starts to rotate it's just pot luck if it catches again allowing you to withdraw the screw and get the seat off.
I can't remember if my first Sport was the same set up but I never had any problem in the eight years of ownership. It looks like a very bad design and weak to boot with the absolute minimum of strength in the bracket , maybe It's my fault for over tightening the seat but the problem is if you just tighten the thing hand tight ,when you sit on the seat and it gets squashed slightly you have taken some tension out of the screw and the chances are it won't still be there when you get home. On the other hand if you Loctite the thing there is a chance that the bracket wont take the torque reaction and break anyway. Personally I think it's a very poor design and wouldn't take much to rectify but that's just my opinion and could be I'm just a ham-fisted dinosaur biker and the only person in Britain to have this problem.

It been a common fail concern for many years. I raised a design quality investigation in 2019 with two design engineers that are still with Norton today...

Nice custom fix.

peebee said:

Went to take my seat off my 2023 Sport and one of the fasteners just started spinning instead of un-screwing fully. After a while the allen screw came out and I got the seat off and saw what the problem was. In the picture you can see that one of the the top fixings of the seat that holds the metal clip is fractured and the nearest one is broken completely off , the top bar is only about two millimetres in diameter so when the screw is tightened there is a lot of strain on it and eventually it will give way and the metal clip will try to rotate instead of being held firm , once it starts to rotate it's just pot luck if it catches again allowing you to withdraw the screw and get the seat off.
I can't remember if my first Sport was the same set up but I never had any problem in the eight years of ownership. It looks like a very bad design and weak to boot with the absolute minimum of strength in the bracket , maybe It's my fault for over tightening the seat but the problem is if you just tighten the thing hand tight ,when you sit on the seat and it gets squashed slightly you have taken some tension out of the screw and the chances are it won't still be there when you get home. On the other hand if you Loctite the thing there is a chance that the bracket wont take the torque reaction and break anyway. Personally I think it's a very poor design and wouldn't take much to rectify but that's just my opinion and could be I'm just a ham-fisted dinosaur biker and the only person in Britain to have this problem.

Click to expand...

That's a neat fix. perhaps your old bike had the earlier fixing arrangement pictured here...

I filled the plastic triangle things with chemical metal then put the seat in position, drilled through the frame fixing hole to get the position then epoxied some knurled threaded inserts in. Upgraded from cr*p design to 'bodge'. When I have wet Sunday I'll cut the excrescences off, make an aluminium fitting with holes that line up with the screws and attach it to the underside of the seat plastic frame.

I mean - even my little 1992 zxr400 has a proper seat release..........