By Jennifer McDonald
You get your car seat covers, you’re super excited. Now you finally get to get in there and get them on. The driver’s seat, easy peasy. The passenger’s seat, goes on like one, two, three! Now it’s time to install the rear car seat covers. What are all these zippers though? There are A LOT of straps! And now these extra cloth pieces … what are those for? Now it’s beginning to feel like a puzzle and you don’t know which end is up! Let us fill you in so we can make this a less confusing and more pleasant experience.
Get to know your seat cover.
On all our rear bench seats there are tags available that indicate which part this piece is for. The tags will either read “BOTTOM BENCH” or “BACK REST”. Use these tags to start. We usually suggest beginning with the bottom bench during installation. Once that is in place and secure, you can move onto the top. You will notice three zippers on each piece. This is to separate the sections of your rear seat. If your car has seats that fold down to access the trunk or middle cup holder or arm rest that folds down, it is considered a split bench. Any car that has split benches can be split in four different possibilities. A 40/60 split; 50/50 split; 60/40 split; or 40/20/40 split. Think of your rear seat as one whole and consider these descriptions as fractions of the seat to figure out which type you have.
Keep your head on.
Only metaphorically speaking though. You will have to take your headrests out to install the seat cover properly. Start by making sure your headrests are in fact removable. They are? Great. Go ahead and slide your hand to the bottom of the head rest. Pull the headrest in an upwards motion to the first position. After you’ve done this, locate the button on the headrest base. Finally, hold the button in with one hand and life the headrest out with the other. And BOOM, your headrests are removed. Now put those aside and move on.
Get all up in there.
Now you can get these babies onto your seats! Start with your bottom bench. There are many roads you can venture to make this happen. You can remove your seat completely with tools and patience. But it’s cool, you don’t have to. Some cars, like Camry’s, will let you just life up the seat and take it off. Putting it back is just as simple. In a few situations, you can just lift up the seat almost like lifting a lid. If you do not want to remove your bench seat, that’s perfectly fine as well! You can use the good ol’ tuck it in method. Gotta do what we gotta do, right? Once that is all settled, start your backrest. Same options apply with the backrest as the bottom bench. Whichever works best for you, do it! Should you choose not to remove your whole seat, there are still ways to make it fit and fit good! Lay the cover across the back for starters so you can see what you’re workin’ with. Now figure out how you want to split it if it’s a split bench and you’ll need to use that feature. Once you’ve figured that out, go ahead an unzip the seat covers in the appropriate spots. Now you can pull that part forward and get to covering them up. Use the straps and hooks to fit securely around the back. Push the seats back and tuck where necessary to keep in place. Repeat with other splits!
What are these cloth things?
When your seat cover is on it’s safe and snug. But what about when you need put down just one seat for the day? You have to unzip the piece and pull the seat down. When you’re down put the seat back up and rezip it. No, we don’t expect you to want to do that every single time you need to use that feature. That’s why you get those weird little cloth pieces with your order. Every rear seat cover comes with one set of Mesh Pieces. This set actually contains two separate pieces once you unzip the two. This allows for the cover of one split on the top and bottom or two splits on the top or bottom. It depends on what you need them for that will matter how you use them. After you unzip the seat, zip the Mesh Piece to the seat cover. Then, be sure to use the straps to secure it to the other straps that are holding your seat covers in place in the back. Now you don’t have to worry about unzipping it every time AND that dingy old seat you were covering won’t peak through at all!
Right at the finish line, and …!
All you have left are the finishing touches. Let’s not forget those headrests you took out. We’ll get those covered and back in place. You may have already done these in the front seat. If so, it’s basically the same process but with one, little thing. You have to make a few adjustments to your seat. Grab a scissors and follow these instructions! After you’ve put the headrest covers on the headrests, go to the back of your seat where you insert them. Feel around to find the holes under the seat cover where you need to make a slit. Once you’ve located it, make a small slit to reveal the piece to reattach the headrests. Do this for all them and then reattach the headrests. You also may notice that you’ll need to use this method for the seat belt buckles as well. The same instructions will apply here as well.
And you’re done! Now step back and look at what a beautiful job you’ve done! That’s right, take out the phone and take some pics, maybe a few selfies, that’s okay to show off. Post it, go crazy! FH Group loves to find those pop up on social media or anywhere else.
