'05 Tahoe Interior Restoration Job

[Timmy]

do you still have the stock steering wheel?

 

[BlackDenali]

Sick Man, Sick....Looks like a brand new denali

 

[Brick]

excellent job man nice and clean

 

[homedic3181]

the katzkin looks great, how much of a pain was it to install?

 

[Boomer73]

the katzkin looks great, how much of a pain was it to install?

That's actually a pretty interesting question. For starters, when I was done the job (and I had a helper) I had four fingers on my right hand and two on my left hand that were bleeding around the nails. The work is ******* the hands - specifically the fingertips, and I already have pretty tough hands from construction work and weight lifting. Despite this, my opinion was that I would have preferred if the covers were about 5% tighter across their width - the length was just right. So you might be thinking, given the effort to put them on, why would you want them tighter? Well, now that I've done it once and learned some technique, I'm pretty sure I won't have bleeding fingertips when I do it next time, and the tighter the fit the better they will look and the longer they will last.

One thing that everyone seems to struggle with that I thought was a breeze is the headrests. I've seen videos of people just about splitting the seams of the headrest covers trying to force the headrest in through a significantly smaller hole. One technique that my local trim shop told me was to put the headrest in a plastic garbage back and stick a shop vacuum against the headrest holding the plastic tightly around the nozzle, then turn the vacuum on. It sucks all the air out of the foam and shrinks that thing down something fierce. Then you just stick it in the headrest cover with literally no effort whatsoever, and turn the vacuum off. The foam expands to fill the headrest cover and you trim away the excess garbage bag and close the cover up. I did six headrests in about 15 minutes.

Believe it or not, the rear 50/50 split seats were the worst. The belts are in an awkward position and they require just about complete disassembly in order to remove/install the covers. You can do it all with hand tools if you must, but I had an angle drive impact wrench and that made it go much faster/easier. The front captains chairs were a breeze, requiring just about no disassembly except for the side trim covers. The 60% side of the second row 60/40 split was middle of the road, and might have been harder without a second set of hands, but wasn't bad. Something a lot of first timers screw up when they install seat covers (and carpet too) is that they over cut. You have to do next to no trimming on the Katzkins, but you do have to cut out the areas where the plastic guides for the headrest posts go through. You don't want to remove these plastic pieces - leave them in the seat. Here is how they should be done:

Step 1. Put the seat back cover on and feel for the plastic piece. Make a very small UNDERSIZED "X" over the piece with a new razor blade, then trace around the borders of the "X" with your razor. If you make your "X" the same size as the plastic headrest guide, you're totally screwed:


Step 2. Trim the pieces out leaving a small square hole. Notice the size of the whole I cut is not much larger than the circular opening in the plastic piece:


Step 3. Working from a corner, stretch the cover over the plastic headrest guide. You will not split the vinyl/leather. Leather is very tough and doesn't tear easily and vinyl is very stretchy:


Step 4. Work your way around the top of the plastic guide until the cover pops over the top.


None of the install is rocket science. It just takes some muscle and some patience. If I wasn't up against a major time crunch, I might have done one seat a day for a week instead of all of them in 5 hours.

Despite the fingertips, not only would I install Katzkins again, but I'm very much looking forward to the opportunity. It was 100% worth it. Oh, and they smell fantastic.

-B

 

[HitandRunDriver]

I hate when people thrash their trucks, but you my friend have given that hoe a new lease on life. Take care of her and she will take care of you

 

[homedic3181]

Boomer, again it really looks awesome, thanks for putting up the pictures and the info. I have been looking into having my seats covered in new leather at a shop and the prices are rediculous. After this info I think my cracked leather on the seat bolsters is soon to be a thing of the past!

 

[blueflamed03]

looks great man....one question, where did you get the matching carpet, and do you like it?

 

[Boomer73]

I got the carpet from stockinteriors.com along with the mats. The mats were a "Genuine GM" product and the carpet was selected to match them. I got the Standard pile carpet with mass backing and Jute padding. In the past I have also worked with:

1. Standard pile carpet with no mass backing
2. Plush pile carpet with no mass backing before

The Standard pile carpet with no mass backing is worthless in my opinion. God help you if you get Plush pile carpet with mass backing - it probably weighs a ton and is impossible to cut through.

I definitely prefer the finished product using the standard pile carpet with mass backing. Without the mass backing, these carpets don't really hold the shape of the mold to which they are formed. They are supposed to be molded to the floor pan of the car, but the non-mass backed carpets seem to flatten out very easily when they are rolled for shipping. The mass backed carpet has a layer of heavy rubber on it that holds its shape much better and deadens sounds much better than anything else. I will only use that carpet product in the future. The carpet looks and feels great.

Believe it or not I do have a list of regrets for this project. One of them is that I ordered the carpet before ordering the Katzkins. While the carpet is a perfect match to the few clean areas on the original carpet (for example, the pieces tucked under the rear trim panels), it is not an exact match to the carpet-like material used on the Katzkin rear seatbacks. While probably nobody but me would notice unless I pointed it out, I notice and that's what's important to me with my work. For instance, in this picture it looks like the carpet on the back of the seats and on the floor is a perfect match:



But in this picture it looks like there is a difference:



To a degree this is the light. Even still, next time I will order the Katzkins first and then match the carpet to what Katzkin uses on the seat backs - that way there will be no variation whatsoever no matter the lighting.

-B

 

[01TX_Tahoe]

that would probably drive me crazy too but overall it still looks bad ass!! awesome job.. well worth the bloody fingertips if you ask me!