Gen V Seat Cover Removal and Replacement Seat Disassembly

[Thawk97]

Intro & Tools

I wanted to swap the seat covers on my Viper and couldn't find a lot of info as to how the seats are built and how they come apart. So, here’s some detail for the next person. It’s a pretty simple task though if your seats are anything like mine, there are 2 bolts on each seat that are nearly impossible to get loose without breaking – I busted 3/4 of mine and had to drill them out and get new ones.

My seats are leather, but manual adjustment.
Below I’ll give a description of the whole step, and then after put in a series of pictures to show what I’m talking about so a few things might get repeated.

Recommended Tools:
- Plastic Trim removal tools
- Torx set (T-40, and T-20)
- Allen set (5 mm allen socket preferred)
- 10 & 15mm socket
- Couple of towels to protect the car


STEP 1: Remove the seats

Since you’re dealing with airbag related sensors, I always like to disconnect the battery before removing the seats (remember though, that means you can’t open the doors normally so open them first) - 10mm in the trunk

Viper seats (like most) are held in with 2 bolts in the front and two behind the seat - 15mm. Additionally there is a connector under each seat you’ll need to disconnect – even on the manual seats. This is the seat position sensor as well as the airbag sensor for the passenger seat. Quick note – if you have electric seats, I believe you’ll want to raise them to the highest seat position possible before removing as that becomes important later. If you have manual seats, it’s less critical to do now because you can still adjust them when they’re out of the car, but it may also make it easier to get the bolts out of the front.

Remove the 2 bolts from the front and the 2 nuts from behind the seat, reach under and disconnect the sensor plug. Then, if your seat is manual, slide the seat to its most rearward position before lifting it out – this will help make the base as short as possible to fit out the door without bumping anything. Before removing I recommend putting a towel over both your center console and the door sill to help protect it.

Lift the seat slightly and tilt the top of the seat in toward the center of the car. Lift further and keep tilting until you can remove the seat, base first, out the door.

[Thawk97]

STEP 2: Separate the seat halves

Once the seat is out, the first thing you need to do is separate it bottom from back. This is the easiest part. On each side there is a plastic trim piece with 3 small torx screws - T-20 - Green Circles. Once that plastic has been removed, there are 3 allen bolts (5mm) on each side holding the seat back to the bottom - Red Circles. Remove these and lift the back away.

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[Thawk97]

STEP 3: The Seat Back
Begin by removing the seat belt harness trim piece. This is held in by three tabs (left, center, right). Simply pull firmly straight away from the seat. Once that’s free, you’ll see the leather underneath is held in by 8 U-shaped tabs – 4 across the top of the opening and 4 across the bottom. The leather is just hooked into these tabs. Gently push the leather/foam straight back until it clears the tab and you can let that relax and move to the next tab.

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At this point you’re free to start removing the seat cover. This is where the trim tools will come in handy. Use a 2 prong puller to slowly free each of the plastic push fasteners on the side toward the bottom (these are just Christmas trees, but they do break easy, so go slow).

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Then, move to the channels.

The cover is held in place primarily by having its rubber edge press fit into a channel that runs around the outer edge of the shell. Use a straight shaped panel tool to dislodge the rubber from its channel working your way around. I did the bottom first, and then started at the bottom of each side and worked up toward the top of the seat. It will likely be easiest to leave the very top of the seat until very last (after you’ve separated the leather from the face of the seat). As you work, you’ll notice a few metal clips have been attached at strategic points on the rubber edge – these are the places where it’s most secure and depending on if your new covers have them, you may need to transfer them over to use on the new seat cover.

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Once you’ve freed all the edges except the top, flip the seatback over and begin to carefully remove the leather from the seat face. The back of the leather is held to the face of the seat with Velcro and it holds pretty strong in places - If you go too quickly, you can accidentally tear the Velcro away from the seat foam instead of separating the Velcro from itself – (ask me how I know) PROCEED CAREFULLY. If you do accidentally tear the Velcro away from the foam, I had success re-gluing it by using 3M Super 77 spray adhesive and a hair dryer to re-glue. Start from the bottom and gently pull the leather away from the seat working your way toward the top.

There are more pics in the next post to show what's behind the leather and how the velcro is laid out.

Once you’ve removed the leather all the way up the face, you can fold it over and easily pry out that last bit of rubber edge from the channel along the top of the seat. You’re done with removal for the back.

[Thawk97]

Here some additional pics of what things look like behind the leather.

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The black lines are all velcro lines

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The metal clips you'll see on a few of the rubber pieces:

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[Thawk97]

STEP 4: The Seat Bottom

THIS is where things might get difficult. If you haven’t already, adjust your seat base to the highest possible position – this is necessary to get at the allen bolts in a minute. First though, you need to remove the Torx bolt holding the front of the seat bucket to the frame (T-40). This bolt on my seats was nearly impossible to remove. It’s covered in blue locktight and wouldn’t budge for me. Out of the 4 total, I was able to just barely get one out while mostly wrecking the head, I completely stripped another using a breaker bar, and snapped the bolt head off the other two with an impact gun after the breaker bar was starting to strip them. The good news is that they’re not terrible to drill out if you have to, but just be aware it might be in your future. If you do mess them up, just get the head off and don’t worry about drilling until the seat is totally removed – it’ll make things easier. Note for those having to buy replacements – if you can save enough of the original threads, the bolt size is an M8 x 1.25 that is 30mm long.

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Whenever you finally get those torx bolts out (or the head snapped off), you should be able to angle the seat up to get at the 4 allen bolts on the bottom of the bucket. Before removing them, there are a few wires that are attached to the seat bucket as well as a clear hose on the passenger side for the airbag sensor. I found it easiest to remove the wires from the seat bucket on the driver’s side (just 2 tiny wire holding Christmas trees that pry out pretty easily). On the passenger side though – I didn’t want to mess with the airbag sensor so I found it easier to unplug the wires and keep everything attached to the bucket (unplugging the wires and cutting one or two zip ties on the seat adjustment frame so that the whole wiring harness on the bucket side remains attached to the bucket). Make special note of how the wires and the air tube are routed - you don't want to pinch any of that stuff by the various seat adjustments if you route it in the wrong spot when you're putting things back together.


Once the wires have been dealt with, you can then remove the 4 allen bolts on the bottom, and the bucket will lift right out of the adjustment frame.

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Here is a reference pic of the passenger side - you can see the clear hose for the weight sensor goes underneath that cross bar - if you route it over the top when you re-assemble, it will get pinched in the lower seat positions.

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Once the bottom is out, it’s the same procedure for removing the leather as you used on the seat back. Start with a two prong panel puller on the two plastic push tabs. Then use a straight tool to pry the rubber edge out of the channel along the rear of the seat. Then do the sides up to the front of the seat. Before flipping it over to start removing the leather, you’ll notice the two seat belt pass through holes for a harness – they each have two pieces of fabric attached to the leather that are velcro’d to the bottom of the foam cushion. Carefully detach the Velcro and push them in a bit so they don’t re-attach themselves. Then flip it over and separate the Velcro on the top of the seat - being careful to not rip the velcro away from the foam. Once the leather is separated, you can fold it over the front to more easily finish the rubber in the channel along the front of the seat.

Here is the velcro on the bottom of the seat cushion for the harness belt pass through:

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And what the pan looks like once you have leather removed and pulled the foam out - at this stage, if you need to drill out the remainer of that torx bolt, you can. For me, I only had to drill about half of it before the bit grabbed and was able to spin the rest of the surviving bolt all the way out of the hole (there is no bottom/back to the bolt hole, so it can just spin all the way through and drops into the seat bucket). This saved around half the threads from being damaged at all in the bolt hole which meant I could clean up the damaged ones and still had plenty of solid bite for a new bolt with the same threads (M8 x 1.25 x 30mm).

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[Thawk97]

STEP 5 – New leather and reassembly

If you’ve gotten this far, you’re probably able to just do everything in reverse order and there’s not much else I can say. A few quick notes:

1) As I mentioned before, you may need to transfer the metal clips from your old rubber edge from each cover on to the new ones. If you do, they pry off pretty easily and try to match the location on the new seat cover.

2) Install the leather in the exact opposite order you removed it – start at the top of the seatback and work your way down and start at the front of the seat bottom and work your way back. All you have to do is firmly press the rubber into the channel as you go.

3) As you’re working your way down the seat, try to pull and smooth the leather on the front just a bit – if it grabs the Velcro too soon or too late you can introduce some waves/wrinkles you don’t want so you might flip over extra time or two just to make sure things are staying smooth. Don’t worry too much about the smaller Velcro strips until you’re done with everything - just focus on the main large center velcro for keeping things smooth. Once everything is done, then you can press the smaller velcro areas into their seams.

4) As we all know - the leather on these seat (especially the bottoms) tends to stretch somewhat which makes it impossible to get perfectly smooth if you're replacing with a used seat cover that had already been stretched somewhat (like I was). It doesn't bother me too much but others might have been even more particular than me about trying to stretch and adjust to minimize that as much as possible. Don't judge me too harshly for having a few waves left over.


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[Thawk97]

STEP 6 - Drive it Like You Stole It

[98intrigue]

Excellent write up! This is the first time I've heard/seen someone tackling this on a Gen V, so I'm sure it will be helpful for others who want to give it a go.

[camarochevy1970]

those wrinkles will go away, however if you have access to a steamer, you can hit them and they will be gone right away

[BSLSK]

Thank you for the detailed step-by-step. This is very impressive.

[parabs]

Great write-up! I haven’t seen the demonic red seats from a non-Laguna car previously either.

[Special Ed]

those wrinkles will go away, however if you have access to a steamer, you can hit them and they will be gone right away

Those wrinkles were the old seats. So the wrinkles are gone.

[Bryan Savage]

Great write up!!

So you removed red and installed tan? It's hard to tell.

[Thawk97]

No - removed tan to install the Demonic Red. The red covers were used and had more wear on them than I expected (and more than my tan seats) - the bolsters in particular were really dirty and stiff. I cleaned them up a bunch and am happy, but they had been stretched out a little more than my originals. I'm also not a pro installler - I could have putzed more to probably get a few of those waves out a little better, but it didn't bother me enough to go back. I just like the red color way more.

[ViperTony]

Excellent write up! I thank you not only for the write up but showing me how to remove the seat back....it saved me HOURS of time and frustration to be able to install subs without removing the seat. (I have a seat lowering kit, anti-sub bar and harness installed which makes access to the seat mounting bolts impossible). https://driveviper.com/forums/threads/1152-Teamtech-6-point-Harness-Installed!?p=411665&viewfull=1#post411665

Thanks!