FINALLY re-did the seat. I laid it down around a gravel filled turn mid-summer, so replacing the handlebars and some other things gave me motivation to tackle the seat as well.
Without a welder handy, I rode over to Matt's (Wahoo650) place where we used his nice little mig and wisdom that comes with age (ha). We cutoff all the old brackets and mounts for the old seat and welded crossbars on. See if you catch something odd in the first picture that's a hint of what's to come....
I bought a rear-hoop with the same diameter as my frame from ebay for cheaper than Dime City. Some guy makes them to order. We matched the angle of that with the angle of the $5 skateboard deck I bought from walmart.
I drilled holes through the board and crossbars and used 1/4" carriage bolts with JB Weld smeared on top of them so they won't spin. Wahoo and I fab'd up a quick and easy mount for the LED rear tail light. The rear-most crossbar is 3 inches long on each side because I hammered it down over the frame to hang down as new signal mounts. Done.
Then I took it to a shoe repair shop in Cleveland where I had it upholstered to look exactly like the seat off Dime City...but for much cheaper haha. Matt had some ~1/2" foam lying around and I used a single layer of that under the vinyl. It's not "comfortable", but it sure does look good haha.
And some pics of the finished product....
Let me know what you guys think! Here's a quick pics of the bike last October, totally stock. Just as a reference for where I started at.