A couple of quick updates.
First, seat warmers! Well, first AND second … I’ll explain as you keep reading.
I bought a set of seat warmers off Amazon a few weeks ago. While the weather was still warm, I figured I’d put them in. I chose to remove the seats to make it easier. The first step is to pull back the upholstery. The back is fairly easy, once you get this full length slip separated from the back of the seat. This was a little tricky, but using some trim tools, I was able to get it loose and pull the upholstery up.
As you can see, each side and the middle, is a strip of velcro to which the upholstery attaches. You’ll notice that there are a couple small slits in the heat pad to allow the velcro to attach. It’s important, DON’T CUT THROUGH THE CARBON FIBER MESH. You’ll ruin it. That’s why this is the second update. Whoops. I had cut through so much of the mesh, that it hardly generated any heat. Oddly, I convinced the seller to send me out a whole new set of pads since there was nothing in the instruction that indicated just how much of the mesh can be cut. Disaster averted.
The seat is a little more complicated. As I pulled back the upholstery, it exposed these plastic rods in the fabric attached to pieces in the foam with metal rings.
I cut these with some decent wire cutters. Then used some pliers to pull the pieces out of the foam. It’s OK to cut the pad where there is no mesh, so I made sure to remove only the area where I could get away with it.
Back to those hog rings. I didn’t feel like spending too much on an upholstery specific set of pliers, Ringer gave me a tip and I picked these up at Home Depot. They are sold for using hog rings on fencing. I also bought a pack of clips. They’re probably twice the gauge of upholstery rings, but they’ll do.
These things are pretty neat. You set the clip in the pliers and when you squeeze them, they close nicely
Once the clip was in the pliers, I put one end into and around the upholstery rod and dug it into the foam to get it around the anchor in the foam.
I ran the wires under the seat. I didn’t take any pictures of how I ran the wire, but the switches were mounted in the dash and I ran power from the 12v outlet.
They take a little time to heat up (10 minutes or so) but they do a nice job of keeping important parts warm.
While I had the seats out of the Jeep, I put back on my neoprene seat covers – these have done a really good job of keeping my cloth seats clean.
I also picked up a used pair of Smittybilt G.E.A.R. seat covers from a Jeep forum and put those on as well.
They match the tail gate organizer I picked up a while back.
