Re-upholstering seats (RX8 – 09 Seat Covers)

Well I was going to make this elaborate video of the steps I did to remove hog rings, etc to redo the upholstery in the car. But I couldn’t juggle a video camera and do anything at the same time.
It’s not that hard at all, it just takes time and it’s a pain.

Points that I have noted if/when I ever decide to do this again.

1. The hog rings that are used on the stock seats are made of copper (a much softer alternative to steel), the hog rings I bought were made of steel (and they are much stronger), BUT you don’t need stronger so don’t use steel. If you use steel like I did, it takes a lot of work to snip them off if you miss your mark. Not fun.

2. Something I learned on the fly…. when you are closing up the hog ring, you should NOT put all your strength into closing it…. the hog ring should only form a circle, not a ring around itself. If it’s too tight the fabric can’t  move and you get wrinkles.

Example below:

3. Make sure you buy spring loaded hog ring pliers… it’s worth it.

4. Disconnect your battery (I did and I recommend you do too if you are messing with any airbag). Others may say you don’t need to, and that’s cool. I’m more cautious, I even opened up my doors when connecting the battery – just in case. Call me paranoid but I’d rather look silly then have broken windows.

5. We pulled out the airbag “container” when I was working on the passenger seat, then I realized that I didn’t need to in order to get the cover on – I just put it the cover over the airbag (probably not the best way to do it), But the way I figure, if that airbag has to deploy, the fabric on that seat cover is not going to stop it. Just know that you can remove the airbag container and cut a slit in the fabric so that you can slid the unit back in on top of the cover (the way it is on the 04-07). I posted that somewhere else.

6. Stop and think about how you are going to get each seam. Start from the inner areas first and work your way out.

7. You could instead of snipping the hog ring, use needle-nose pliers to twist the hog rings out. We did that for the back seats, only because the copper hog rings are soft, but still gets tiring – takes a little effort either way.

To remove the seats:

Back seats are easy, just lift the front of seats up and pull out. The backrests have two bolts each at the bottom.

There are a total of four 10mm bolts under each front seat bottom. Be sure to snip the band ties holding the yellow connector (airbag) in place and disconnect the connector – to disconnect, push in on middle of the connector and you’ll see a lever pop up, lift that lever all the way and it’ll separate for you.

To remove the triangle in the headrest, just pull the two sides straight out away from each other. I thought the hex was real… it’s not. They are just clipped together. Be firm but keep them parallel so you don’t break the clips.

There are two 12mm bolts on each side of the backrests:

Find the stock hog ring (make sure you don’t snip off the bar attached to the seat)

As you go along, just pull on the seat cover to expose the seat foam wire and hog ring that you need to cut.

Load a hog ring onto your hog-ring pliers and put into position – try to stretch out the foam while you’re doing this so that you avoid catching a lot of foam in the attachment. I put it in sideways (along the cut out foam) and then turned once I was in close to the wire.

Line it up so that the ring will go into the hole in the listing strip and around the listing strip bar AND around the seat foam wire.

Push down so you don’t miss the seat foam wire and SQUEEZE!

If you work your way from the inner to the outer, you’ll be fine.

As a side note, the 09 seat covers do fit but the curved seams do not line up exactly. I ended up cutting off the listing strip bar on the big curve and didn’t use any hog rings in those areas. Luckily it still looks fine. My crazy arrows point to those areas….

And another side note. The 09 covers fit a bit snug at the headrest – this is because the 09 seat foams have a cutout along the seam at the top. The 04-07′s don’t. Because of this, the triangle in the headrest sits higher and the fabric on the top of the triangle doesn’t tuck in and stay there. I used some 3m tape under the top of the triangle which gave it some “stick” and cushion, enough to keep it there. I contemplated sewing it down, but it wasn’t necessary.

Put everything back the way you found it. Another side note: When you putting in the front seats, it’s easiest if you do the backrests first, then the seats bottoms. For the backrests hand tighten the bolts closest to the center console first (the front-most one can be a bitch as there is not much room to get your hand in there), then do the door side bolts. Since the drivers side bottom is adjustable, make sure that the movable brackets are in the correct position and start with the two bolts in the rear, after those are hand tight, do the front two bolts. Then tighten everything up.