Who has ever built their own seat before? Certainly not this guy 🙂 This was one of the known issues when getting the ski, as it is very apparent in every photo the seat was beyond repair. It had duct tape holding part of it together, and as you can see below, the original foam couldn’t even be re-used as it had massive cracks and was full of mold.
So, I had to come up with a way to replace the seat. One might think you could hop on the trusty Amazon and just search for 2000 SeaDoo XP Seat and find the whole seat assembly, but you would be wrong. This is a 2000 SeaDoo, apparently too old for parts to be common. Literally the only option I had here was to buy a used one off eBay, which would still have to be recovered, and pay $150 shipping due to the weight & size, making that seat replacement alone cost more than the whole $300 initial investment (no thanks!). So, I decided to make my own with a little inspiration from YouTube. I ordered a giant piece of 4” thick foam, spray adhesive and a polisher with sanding pad to help shape the foam into a close resemblance of the original shape. This is a nearly 20 year old jet ski, I wasn’t too concerned with getting the exact dimensions right :). Here is the progress of shaping the new seat, which was a VERY messy part of this project!
I wound up finding a nice seat cover on Amazon for $100 from Blacktip Jetsports, which match the original color scheme of the ski. With the help of an air compressor and nail gun, this part of the project started to take shape. I think the finished product turned out better than I had hoped, not being a professional upholsterer 🙂
Project DIY seat – DONE!
…next stop, paint 🙂
Stay tuned, more to come…
