This post is not meant to be a comprehensive guide to replacing the lower seat cover, but I thought the photos I took might be helpful to others.
In addition to standard hand tools, you’ll need a pair of hog ring pliers and ring pliers to complete this project. You’ll want pork rings with sharp ends, the ones I got were about 3/4″ long and worked perfectly.
The cover used was P/N
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64140AL09EVH |
Pillow cover |
I bought from one of the forum sellers for about $250.
The driver side leather/vinyl headliner on our 2016 Outback started to separate at about 80000 miles and after looking at many aftermarket options I decided to replace it with an OEM headliner. I know it will be made from the same thin vinyl, but it wasn’t worth the work and cost to replace with aftermarket covers on the seats and driver and passenger seat backs. If I really have to replace this every four years, then so be it.
First of all, raise the seat as high as it will go. This will allow you to remove the seat cover and wiring harness later.
The seats come from the outside like most any other car, there are two bolts in the front and two bolts in the back. You will want to slide the seat all the way to access the front bolts and then all the way to access the rear bolts. After removing the bolts, disconnect the battery as a protection while removing the seat.
There are four plugs that connect the seat to the vehicle. With the seat removed from the bar, you can flip the seat back to access the sockets underneath. After unplugging, remove the headrest to make removal from the vehicle easier.
I brought the seat into my living room to work on top of the carpet so as not to scratch the leather we were going to save.
There are various clips holding the cover, start removing them as needed. On the console side of the seat, you will need to slide the wire that goes to the seat belt out of the cover. It is cut below the seat.
If you forget to raise the seat before taking it out of the car (like I did), you will need to connect a battery to the red and black wires in the main harness to be able to raise the power seat. Alligator clip wires came in handy for this.
There are clips on the side that need to be removed, as well as clips that need to be removed from the plug at the bottom of the seat.
Before removing the cover and foam together, be sure to unplug the appropriate connectors. It will be clear which ones you need to unplug.
Next you will need to cut into the hog rings that hold the cover around the seat frame. One on each side accessed from the bottom:
The door side of the seat has a plastic cover with a screw that needs to be removed. The cover contains the electronic seat control buttons, which must also be removed.
To make it easier to disconnect the harness from the seat controls, I unscrewed this module from the plastic cover. The levers themselves come off and can be easily reattached later.
At this point you should be able to remove the seat foam and seat cover as one piece.
