Anyone here got aftermarket seat covers?

My leather seats got somewhat damaged in the fire (leather shrunk where hot glass fell on them) so i picked up some Clazzio seat covers while i was in Japan.
Also one headrest was melted so thats been replaced with a cloth headrest (since its getting covered by the Clazzio stuff it doesnt matter)
 

But here's my dilemma... I put the cover over the cloth headrest and it sits perfect and snug etc and looks like a factory finish. But when i put the cover over my leather headrest, while it looks neat, the cover sort of slides over the smooth leather underneath it. The fit of these seat covers is great, but they SLIDE!
(If i take the leather off the headrest before putting the cover on then the cover is loose...)
 
I havent started on the main seats, but i dont want it to feel like there is a cover on there...
 
Whats the secret to putting seat covers over leather seats? Double sided tape? Attack the original leather with coarse sandpaper? Glue?

i wanna say ... GARSON?
 
i think they do ..

maybe there is somewhat of a spray adhesive for cloth?? like spray the headrest and apply the cover?

Sounds like crappy seat covers.  Aftermarket seat covers are supposed to replace the existing leather it should not require the leather to be to kept on the car.  Are they supposed to be slip covers or replacement seat covers?  Regardless if you are going to keep them sandpaper/glue/tape is not going to help.  

In order to get it tight what you are going to want to do is buy some 1/8" foam from a fabric store.  It's a spearmint green color.  Cut/sculpt it with a razor blade and place it under the covers.  That will keep them snug, be more comfortable, and not look like they are slip covers.  If you spray ANY type of adhesive you are going to be a sad panda.

They are probably what you call slip covers. Most/all the seat covers sold in Japan are like this, including the Garson ones (was searching through and found VIPCel's post showing how he did his)
 
They do have about 1/8" of foam padding on the inside and when i put it on the cloth headrest it sits incredibly snug and does not slip around at all (pretty much impossible to tell there is something over them. These were probably just not designed to go over leather (why would you cover leather with pleather?)
 
Would the green foam you talk about grip the leather enough not to move on it?

I have installed Clazzio ones to my old Aristo and they didn't slide at all. and I installed the Garson ones to me new car which also has leather interior and still no issues. Be sure when you tie everything down that they are tied tight so there should be no play in them.

Ok I will give it a go. Hopefully its just the headrests that are like that!

you could always just remove your leathers???  I just removed every leather in my car to have them custom done....The difference for me is that I will be putting back the originals rather than new covers...but that shouldn't be a problem

yeah but thing is that there are designed to go over the original covers... without them the covers are loose! I'm just gonna try putting them on as-is and if they still slide I'll get that green foam stuff

hey you fuck

garson makes em for your car, not too epensive either dom
but i think the ones you got from here should work, but if they dont get garson. loved mine

As strange as it sounds most JDM vip cars come with factory cloth interior, where as here cloth interiors were not even an option.

i would look into finding an upholsrty shop (small) and have them redone there.

Cheers grant i remember Garson wasnt too exxy... But these cost me $90 posted and they are in immacculate condition :biggthumpup:
 
And yeah, if i had cloth interior it would be NOooo problem (the headrest i bought with cloth fits like an OEM finish). But as i found out when buying my parts, 2 options that we take for granted are rare as hell in japan: Leather interiors and Sunroofs... Hence why seat covers were my only option...
 
Augdogg, do you mean having the seat covers redone? Or getting them applied there?

im my install bay we come across simple problems like this everyday. now if the fit is snug enough for you.. and your just trying to eliminate the sliding feeling (leather is slippery), get your hands on some 3M spray on contact adhesive. in the shop we use it out of a big tub  and pour into our air spray gun. you can get it from home depot or lowes in an aresol can. not sure exactly the brands they carry but its basically contact cement. 
you spray on light and let it dry for 5 minutes (tacky to the touch) then wrap the peice with your new peice. once its on and fully dries its basically like glue.

[IMG]http://www.ellsworth.com/imagelibrary/jpegs/100/LargePics/90_SPRY.jpg[/IMG]
 
thats the stuff we have in the aerosol cans. cure time is 1 minute so you spray on each peice... wait a minute for it to tack up then you can pull your cover peice. sometimes a heat gun with help out  with vinal stretch or shrink a little bit so i would expirament with that on a low setting as your wrapping to see if it will help u get a tighter fit. just dont get it to hot itll make your peice shrink up like a raisen or get stretch marks.

Spray adhesive is meant for headliners/dashes/door panels not seats.  The bond won't last a week.  No [zero] car manufactures use glue to hold seat covers in place.  Maybe if the seat was fiberglassed it would but that wouldn't be very comfortable.  Maybe, MAYBE you could use it on your headrests but spray adhesive is not meant to be used on upholstery foam period.  

When you sit down, the leather and the foam compresses, when you get up, they do not decompress/go back into shape at the same speed, so they separate from one another over time. Plus, the leftover adhesive, gets VERY nasty, and when you remove the glued on covers, you pull up bits/chunks of foam.  Big enough that you can see the pock marks when you recover the seats. 

If they are just slip covers and you tie them around the seats then they absolutely do not require the factory leathers to be removed [nor be glued into place] If you want them to fit tighter you can try strategic stress cuts [little V shapes] and get the seat covers to slide down further, then you can tighten them further from there.

Car seats uses hog rings to keep the centers in place/not be poofy.  Since slip covers don't have that, there is going to be a level of slipping that is unavoidable, since its inherent in the slip cover design.

With all respect to nervekiler, spraying glue on your covers is not a good idea. I do both custom interior work and reconditioning/restoration for dealerships.  I see this stuff all the time.  There are 2 ways to fix a problem.  The fast way, and the right way.  Spraying adhesive on the backs of seat covers is the temporary solution to get the customer to stop complaining and get out of service.  When it starts slipping again and the car goes to the upholstery shop, the person working there is going to be pulling off the seats shaking his head.

And yes, the green foam will grip it enough to keep it from sliding.  The tension creating from the foam filling up the excess space causing it to slip, combined with the texture of the foam, will keep it from slipping.

Thanks for the great info guys. The 3M contact adhesive sounds good, but GreenGrundel does make some valid points. I'm going to try the green foam first, but i am worried that it will be hard to coordinate since the headrests for example are a very snug fit... i can imagine its going to slip out of place as i wrestle the covers on
 
Will update the thread with my progress...

D'oh...
 
So i am looking on the Clazzio site for info on how to fit these, and i found that they have a note saying these seat covers are not designed to work with Leather seats. Would explain why they slide a little on my leather headrests; but fit like OEM on the cloth headrest.
 
Ok, so now i know these arent supposed to be a straight fit anymore, i guess i need to look into bolstering up the volume and getting them to stick in place. Lets hope that green foam works well.

thanks sam for settin me straight. :pat:
 
i do car audio and that stuff is great when we make new panels.. like u said: dash, headliner, trunk, etc.. i dont do seats though.
and i also see a lot of the DIY guys comin in with things that make me say wtf?

Ok bringing it back from the dead with an update...
 
So i went looking for this green foam, but ended up getting a white foam which sounds and feels very similar. It was a good 1/4" thick and it grips the leather pretty good.
But while i was there at the rubber/foam shop the guy also recommended this rubber matting they had. Its basically that rubber mesh that they sometimes use as non-slip patches to rest phones on your dash. This stuff even sticks to the smooth/shiny sections of the leather so i got a bunch of that too.
 
So far i have only done the rear seats but i ended up using a combination of both. Rubber matting cut into sections to match the seams on the seats, and some foam padding on top of that to give room for the seams in the seat covers. There were enough adjustment straps to get the seat covers looking very flush, even with the matting/foam just on the face of the seats.
 
The result is a very flush fit and not a milimeter of slide in the covers - it feels like factory finish!
 
I still have to do my front seats though and this might be hard since the top part of the seat cover is supposed to slide over from the top (makes it hard to lay the foam strips/padding down as they will just slide too)

 
 
Will post pics when done. So far i am very happy!