The leather on my seats was cracking and worn out, so I ordered replacement covers from Lseat.com and installed them with the help of my Sweetie. The covers themselves were impressive quality — getting them stretched tight was the real challenge.
The situation#
The leather on my seats had been tearing for a while — ugly, but mostly cosmetic. I ordered replacement covers from Lseat.com early on, but the project stayed wrapped tightly in its industrial-looking shipping pillow. I wasn’t sure how much effort the install would actually take, and it was easy to keep pushing it down the list.
That changed one evening taking my Sweetie on a date. A ripped piece of leather on the back of the passenger seat was poking her in the back. Just like that, this went from “I’ll get to it eventually” to the number one priority.
What I did#
We set aside a weekend and were ready to dive into this project head first. We tackled the passenger seat first — we didn’t know how long the project might take, and I didn’t want to risk being without the car. Out came the seat, then we separated the seatback from the bottom cushion.
We used beefy metal cutters to clip out the old hog rings — and a word of advice: wear eye protection, because there will be flying shrapnel.
With the covers off and the foam fully exposed, it was the point of no return. The project is essentially four recovering jobs: seat bottom, seat back, and repeat for the passenger seat. The foam has embedded wires for the hog rings to crimp onto, so it’s a matter of getting the new cover lined up the best you can and clamping it down.
The hardest part of the whole exercise? Running out of strength in your hands from crimping so many rings.
Eventually, the time came to transplant the side airbag from the old cover to the new one. At first, it felt like we were handling a bomb — but it turned out to be no big deal.
What surprised me#
From the outside looking in, this project seemed like it would be very difficult. I was pleasantly surprised that it was actually straightforward. The leather was hard to stretch sometimes, but it was always clear how the cover was supposed to be aligned. Perhaps if this were custom upholstery it might have been way more difficult, but the Lseat kit was designed exactly for this model.
Result#
It took the whole day to do one seat. The next day we did the driver’s seat, and while the seats were out it was a good chance to deep clean the carpet and really bring the car back to newish looking. I was hoping the newly refreshed leather seats would bring back the “new car smell,” but that didn’t quite happen.
I was ecstatic about the outcome, though my Sweetie said “That was too much work, I’ll never do that again.” But sure enough, a few days later I ordered the rear seat covers anyway so it would all match perfectly. And Sweetie helped on those anyway ❤️
