Escape Gear 5th-Gen 4Runner Seat Covers

Video Transcript

Hi, this is Paul with Equipt Expedition Outfitters, and today we are going to install a set of Escape Gear seat covers in a 5th generation 4Runner. We have two rows to put in, and before we get there, I want to show you what a set looks like when you get it from Escape Gear.

What you see here are the tops for the back seat. Here are the 60/40 split for the bottom of the back seat, each of the front seats in position, and then an assortment of armrest covers and headrest covers. First, before we get too involved, I want to show you a little bit about how these seat covers work so that they make sense.

When you open up the bag and you see a cover that's hanging together like this, you're going to go kind of, okay, now what are we going to do with this? But once you look at it for a minute, it starts to make a lot more sense. The 4Runner is very similar to what is going on with the Tundras and the 200s and the Tacomas in how they put the seats together.

What they've done is they've set up the seat bottom with six straps across the front of the cover and two off the side, and you'll notice that they have them hooked together in a specific pattern. So notice the two side straps are hooked to the back of the front seat. If you look at the front of the top of the seat, there are three straps that come off the bottom of the seat top. Sounds weird, and they come to three of those buckles. On the other end, on the back of the seat bottom, are three more straps that go to the other three buckles.

So what we're doing is we're putting the seat cover on the bottom. Three of them go around to the front and hook up. Put the seat top on, three of them are going to go in between the seats and around to the front to hold on into place, and then the two straps on each side of the seat are going to go to the seat back at the bottom.

Now, the trick of this matter is when we look inside the 4Runner here, on the front seats, there is a flap that goes underneath the seat itself, and on the front of that flap, it's held in place with a couple pieces of elastic ribbon. Those pieces of ribbon need to be released from under there, and you get that flap out of the way. Now that gains you access between the seat back and the seat bottom. It's very important to do that; otherwise, you're not going to understand how all those straps are going to make it through.

So let's go ahead, we'll start with the seat fronts and we'll move to the seat backs. Put the covers on last. Let's take a look.

Alright, so what we've done is we've installed these seat covers, and we're going to take a look at them. I'm going to give you a few pointers and tips on how to install them. I think for Escape Gear covers, these are pretty darn awesome. This is the first set in the United States we put in, and they just hit it right on the head. I'm very excited about how these turned out.

So let's talk about the seat covers for a little bit. The seat covers themselves, the material in this vehicle had a black interior, so the customer decided to go with the charcoal gray. They used to call it a tough canvas, and what it is is it's a poly-cotton blend that's a much more robust material as far as where they put it in a wear machine. It's called a rub machine, and after 300,000 rubs on this material without any effect whatsoever, they called it good and just decided to call it tough canvas.

The light gray and the light khaki are both a 100% cotton canvas material. Think of it in this way: think of it as a cotton t-shirt versus a poly-cotton t-shirt. The cotton's a little softer, wears a little bit differently. The poly-cotton wears a little differently but is a little bit more rough to the feel. But as far as the materials feel, I really like it. I could not tell any difference between the cotton and the poly-cotton material as far as feel.

So it's done incredibly well in here. Like this is the charcoal. Everything about it from the surrounds for the headrests, the headrests, all of the stitching that goes throughout here, the piping around the bottom corner here, how it fits down into the plastic contours here, the tightening of the seats on the six buckles on the front, two buckles on the back, awesome job.

They have on the seat belt or seats, they have airbag compliance. They clip to each one of the seats, a little tag here, and it says this one fit this one on the right-hand side front seat only, which is kind of interesting. So they give you an idea which side to set the seats on here. Your pockets will always be on the inside of the seat cover. We have a map pocket on the back of the cover; we'll look at that in a minute. They have an armrest cover in here. I think they really did an awesome job with these.

Let's take a look at the back seat. So if we look back here, you'll notice we have the map pocket on here. Headrests fit nice and well. The piping around the corners, the pockets are nice with a snap in place on them. This is where that flap that I was telling you about is. This flap right here, we pulled that flap out, we were able to run all of our straps down and underneath there. That worked out really well.

The back seat here is set up in a very interesting scenario. We have two bottoms; we got a 40 and 60 percent. I'm going to pull the 60 percent up so you can see what happened on the bottom here. We've got four friction buckles across the front to back and one side to side to hold it in place. They've really done a nice job with all of the stitching around here or place for your strap holder on the back seats. They have the child seat restraint holes put into place. The seat belt is in a good position here. Headrests are all taken care of.

If we pull down the 60 percent here, you'll see on here a nice cover on the backing here. One thing that they were not able to do is put a center backing on this one piece here. Other than that, it's covered up pretty well.

To mention while we're looking at this as far as installation goes, see this panel that's right up in here, the crust is here. When you're putting the backs on the second row of seat covers here, if you take out this piece right here, it's going to be a lot easier to actually connect the two pieces at the bottom with the velcro. There's a little flap that pops open here with a screw in there and a screw in there. There are 10 millimeter sockets to take the screws out; it's a six millimeter bolt. One bolt, two bolts up out of the way, put your seat covers on, and then put that back in the same way, and it'll work just perfectly.

We'll close it back up. I'll show you the center armrest here. So the center armrest folds down in place. Cover on the armrest itself covers around the front, looks very nice, stows very nice, has the headrests on all three locations. As far as the seat covers go in this, I think it's one of the best fitting sets that Escape Gear has done. I'm very impressed with their work. They do an honest, high-quality job, and I'm honored to be a part of their company.

I appreciate your time. This is Paul with Equipt. Have a nice day.