A few days after I bought my bike last year I got a near-terminal case of the dumba$$ and rode it while wearing work boots with speed-lace hooks rather than eyelets. The result was predictable: While swinging my old, short right leg over the bike during dismount, I snagged the vinyl and put two (not just one) tears about the size and shape of a fingernail in the top of the previously flawless seat, just forward of the metal cowl.
I put Scotch transparent tape on the damage as as a temporary fix to keep water from soaking into the foam, then started looking for a way of buying either a cover or a replacement seat. Bob's wanted too many $$ for a cover, and the prices of both a BMW seat and its aftermarket look-alike were a shock. On the recommendation of my auto repair shop (one of the owner-partners rides an R90/6 and an R1100S), I contacted a local upholstery shop. The owner of said shop does a lot of work for customers of the Harvey Davis dealer a block away (Though he personally dislikes Harleys). For $100 he re-covered my seat with the slightly textured black vinyl that he uses on Harleys.
He did a really good job. The seat is a bit more firm than before, but comfortable. (I suspect he compressed the foam tighter than it had been.) I still play with the idea of a shorter seat because I don't want to replace perfectly good Koni shocks to gain a mere 1/2" of improvement at the possible risk of changing the bike's handling for the worse.
The story's moral (a word I *never* use except in this context
): It might be cost-effective to look for an upholstery shop in the neighborhood of a bike dealer.
