Hi im new to this forum and had a question about my mini.

I want to remove my seats from the car and take the cloth covers and wash them since they are dirty. Can you guys give me suggestions for pulling the covers of and/or the best method of washing them thanks

David

 

ditto. mine are filthy.

 

I just hope it wont be too difficult to take them off and if washing them with soap or detergent will have any affects on them (like shrinking).

 

get them dry cleaned. I have to sew my seat back together due to an airbag deployment. so I will be removing my coloth. installing a new airbag. The cloth is great because it still looks relitvly new after 200K miles and 10 years. all the leather I see is cracked and stretched looking.

 

Do you have to remove the cover to get them dry cleaned?

 

I just want to know how hard is it to pull the upholstery off the car (then putting them back onto the car) and if I wash them will there be effects to the upholstery.

 

I did this on an BMW 318ti and had great success. I disassembled the seats, undid all the hog rings holding the fabric on and threw them in the wash machine. Came out like new!

I needed a hog ring pliers and a bunch of new hog rings to get it all back together.

 

Make sure you are careful when removing the seats from the pads, in my leather MINI, the covers were "glued" to the pads. Had to replace the pads when replacing my leather covers.

 

You should consider first trying a rental steam carpet cleaner that has an upholstery attachment. It would be cheap and easy, and might work well enough before taking it up to the next level.

 

Check out how much new upholstery (not the whole seat) is at realoem.com (buy from ecstuning.com they are a sponsor - you can PM them for a quote). It might actually be affordable and you could get that new car smell as a bonus.

here a link for r53:

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts...01&hg=52&fg=10

 

well my seats are fairly good condition, they are just dirty that's all. If its to much of a hassle to pull them off myself (and then assemble them properly) ill just have them steam cleaned. By pulling them off I thought all be able to get all or most of the debris of the covers.

 

On the front seats, the seat bottom covers are held on with hog rings, but the back covers are glued to the foam. At least, that is the case for the vinyl upholstery; can't think that the cloth would be different. They are a lot of work to R&R; I'd explore the in-place cleaning options first. I've actually heard of people using a power washer on them (out of the car of course), but I can't offer any experience on that.

 

Well, if you're going to use a power washer, may as well take the opportunity to do more than just the seats...