Removing the front seat covers

[CJ]

I removed the drivers side seat cover today, stuck it in the washing machine then stuck it back on the seat. It was a lot messier than it sounded:

1. Firstly, remove the seat from the car by undoing the four bolts that hold the unit to the chassis. On the drivers side, there is a cable that needs disconnecting, this links up to the seat belt indicator on the dash.

2. At the rear of the seat, there are 4 or 5 wire clamps that need to be removed, you'll need a snips or a pair of pliers for this job. After this, remove the 2 wire clamps from the underside of the seat in the same fashion.

3. Unzip the upright section of the cover, you should then be able to peel it back. You will need to remove a bolt from the inside lower seat section in order to remove this section of the cover. There are 4 wire clamps holding the cover to the seat in the centre section, remove these.

4. To remove the lower seat cover, there are 4 long plastic pieces thet clamp underneath the seat, unhinge them. This can be messy, you may need a screwdriver to lever them off. There are another 4 wire clamps holding the inside of the cover to the seat, remove these with your pliers or snips.

5. At this stage, both sections of the cover should be off, before you put them in the washing machine (30/40 deg wash), remove all 6 lenghts of wire. I tumbled dried the seats afterwards to speed things up.

6. Refit in reverse, you should use medium sized (6") cable ties to secure the wire on the inside of the covers to the seat, pull them tight and snip off the excess. You'll need 15-20 in all.

7. Be patient! Removing the cover took me an hour, refitting took 45mins.

Ciaran

[soc]

Did it make a big difference? Is it worth the effort or do you think it would be better to just hire an industrial carpet/seat cleaner/shampoo hoover thingy?

[CJ]

Did it make a big difference? Is it worth the effort or do you think it would be better to just hire an industrial carpet/seat cleaner/shampoo hoover thingy?

If you're seats are filthy, its worth doing, if not, then just get a good quality upholstrey cleaner. My seat wasn't very dirty, but it was something I'd wanted to do for a while anyway. The underside of the seat cover has a thin foam lining, when wet, its possible that some of this will come up thru the top cover if enough suction is applied. For that reason, I wouldn't recommend using an industrial carpet cleaner.

Ciaran