Guts Racing RJ Wing Seat

What it is

• Complete seat from Guts Racing.
• "RJ Wings" pertrude from sides of the seat.

Guts Racing is one of the major players in moto seats and supports many factory efforts including Factory Husqvarna worldwide. A few years back, Rick Johnson and Blake Baggett worked together to develop this wider seat platform with Guts Racing with an aim to make gripping and controlling the bike with your legs easier. It has since been adopted by riders like Dean Wilson and is a staple in Guts’ lineup of seats.

The RJ Wing Seat comes as a complete seat including a Polisport seat base, foam, seat cover, and seat mounts. The foam can be interchanged upon ordering with standard foam, Phantom foam, and in different heights and a different firmness. Additionally, a seat bump can be added at the time of ordering. Retail price starts at $423.99 for the complete seat.

How it works

• Goes unnoticed until it's taken away.
• Makes gripping and controlling the bike with your legs easier.
• Tall seat foam option helped the Yamaha cockpit tremendously.

First, the fit and finish of the Guts seat upon receiving it of high quality. The Polisport seat base feels strong and is made well while not being super heavy. The seat foam and cover are already in place, stapled together by a professional and the seat mounts are bolted up. Installation was a breeze as you slipped the old seat off and this Guts seat right back on without a hassle. Everything lined up perfect as well with the mounts. 

The wing. It looks a little goofy at first and many that tested this were skeptical of how it’d work and feel under them, but most were a fan instantly. The seat almost goes unnoticed until you start thinking about it or until you take it away. It’s only then that you realize how much it is helping – which with a product like this, is probably best. If you find yourself constantly fighting it or thinking about it, that’s not a good thing. But if it works without you noticing, then it’s doing its job perfectly. We’ve had a taller rider who did not initially like the seat because of where his legs fit against the wings, but once he spent ~30 minutes on it, he grew accustomed to it and was able to reap the benefits on the wings. 

In addition to the wings, the taller foam height is a nice touch to the Yamaha specifically. It eliminates the dip in the seat and makes moving forward/backward easier. Additionally, it makes the transition from sitting to standing much easier. Even shorter riders (5’ 7” tall) felt the tall seat is a positive in every scenario except for extreme enduro, the ONLY time where touching the ground should be a priority. With the tall seat, the cockpit feels much more modern and in-line with the rest of the other OEM bikes. However, if you like your seat height where it’s at, Guts offers the regular height as well.

The gripper material on this seat cover offers a lot of grip but doesn’t chafe or irritate us in any way. We look at a seat cover as being a performance part as the more grip you have, the less effort and energy it takes to hold onto the bike and remain in place. This gripper material alone does a fine job of holding you in your place, but still allowing some movement to move around on the seat for cornering. We also have the ribs on this cover which help that much more to lock yourself in. With the ribs, it’s more difficult to move forward on the seat when coming into corners but we rarely are ever sitting during that period so it doesn’t affect us much there. 

We stuck with a medium firmness, which compares to stock, and have no regrets. It feels solid enough to not feel mushy and suck you down in the seat, but has enough cushion to not be comfortable. It’s a good blend of performance and comfort.

We have about 40 engine hours on this seat over the past four months and the seat is holding up well. Other seat covers we’ve had have faded color, shown serious signs of wear, and break down much quicker than this seat has. In past experience with Guts products, their seat covers are some of the longest lasting covers we’ve put to the test. They resist tearing and color fading better than most. 

Overall, this seat is a winner in our books. It offers us a better contact point to grip with our legs, thus freeing up our arms and upper body. If we were riding in twisty trees or terrain where standing isn’t as prevalent, the wide wings wouldn’t be as effective, though not to say that it hinders us there. But for most riding applications, this seat does help with gripping the bike and we expect it to be a staple on many of our future bikes.