I just did this to have my seat re-upholstered, I collected random posts to inform me before my attempt. My car has Sensatec (Vinyl), electric adjustable, heated seats (SA494). Not sport seats, no lumbar. Things may be different on different configurations.
Taking the seat out is the easiest way, you'll need the room and it really isn't that hard:
- Roll the seat all the way back and remove the two T-50 bolts attaching the seat rails to the body in the front
- Roll the seat all the way forward and remove the two T-50 bolts in the rear.
- I put the seat all the way back as recommended in the attached instructions. Not sure if this is necessary
- Now, disconnect the battery negative terminal. This is important to avoid an airbag warning (from my reading, didn't want to risk it to verify).
- Disconnect the wiring harness from the bottom of the seat. Mine was yellow, and had to pull the black connector toward the center console to release it.
- Now follow the attached instructions to remove the seat belt.
- After removing the seat belt, I recommend removing the seat from the car. Then proceed with removing the rest of the seat trim in the attachment. It's on there quite well and requires some serious force to remove it.
- Remove the black plastic trim "carrier" by unscrewing the T-30 (or T-35?) bolt. It slides outward once the bolt is removed.
- Remove the side trim piece with a T-20? bolt
- Remove/free any electrical lines going into the seat bottom. I had one for the heated seat element.
- The next part took me a moment to figure out and I undid some of the stitching by accident:
- The black plastic/rubber around the perimeter is stitched to the vinyl on the front. It's basically held onto the seat carrier by being stretched across the lip of the seat carrier. Simply use a trim tool (or gently use a flat head screw driver) to push it off of the lip from underneath the seat. Once it starts to come off, fingers can handle most of the removal. Don't forget the sides and the rear.
- Then use a trim tool to remove the extra vinyl pieces from the nail/trim that attach them to the carrier. I broke both of mine (oops).
