Escape Gear Seat Cover Installation on Toyota Land Cruiser 200 Series

Video Transcript

Transcript

Hi, I'm Paul with Equipt Expedition Outfitters, and I thought I'd take a couple of minutes to show you some of the seat covers from Escape Gear out of Cape Town, South Africa, that I have for my 230 series. We're going to install the front seats. The rest of the seats I've taken out of mine, so we have the front seats to take a look at.

What comes in their set is the two front seat covers, center console cover, and a couple of headrests. I want to show you a couple of things because the instructions are a little bit cloudy on how these things go together as far as the seat covers go.

Let's take one of these and open it up and take a look at it. Now, if you look at it, put them all set together, they come hooked together, the back and the seat. If you take a look at how the straps are set up on there, it'll start to make a lot more sense when you start going through all.

Okay, so if you look at the back of the seat back, those are attached to the sides of the seat body. Okay, that one's pretty straightforward as we can undo those two and then we're going to take a look at the rest here.

Okay, so the seat front has two straps that are going from the front of the seat back down through the crease between the seat back and the seat bottom in that crease, and they go forward. You can tie on to the front of the seat bottom.

Okay, so if we take those two off of here, this one here and this one here, that separates the seat back from the seat bottom. And so if you look at a seat bottom itself, we have the two straps that go to the rear of the seat on the sides to hook on the back of the seat back, and then there are two more seat straps. These go from inside the crease where you have the seat back and the seat bottom, they go through here and forward.

Okay, we have one strap here and one strap here. Okay, so if you notice, we have them on the front of the seat front. We have four buckles. Okay, so that's going to be the two straps from the back of the seat bottom and the two straps from the front of the seat back. All four of those are going to go to the front, and again, we have the two straps on the sides of the seat cover that go to the back of the seat.

Let's go ahead and put these on. There are a couple of things that are unique to the 200 series Land Cruisers that they've started using on a lot of the different vehicles, and I just want to go through them real quick. The easiest way I found to get the seat headrests off is if you push the button on the side here, it goes up to there, and then you're like, okay, now why doesn't it come off? Well, actually, you can raise this side up just a little bit more. I turn it about 90 degrees and it pops right off.

And what it is, is there's a little catch on the side of the headrest, and I think if you push on there's a little notch there, you can push a button in there and it releases it, but I just found it easier to twist it 90 and it comes off. But the real tricky one on these seat covers is that the 200 series has a flap that goes from the seat back down here underneath the seat, and it's held in place with a couple of pieces of elastic ribbon.

And underneath the seat on the Z channels that are the coils for the seat cushion itself, there's a couple of little C clips on there, and so you need to get your hands down and underneath the seat covers, and when you get under there, feel for that flap. It's going to be a piece of material that folds forward under there. Go to the front edge of that flap, move your hand back and forth, and you're going to feel those two bands of material.

Okay, and so I'm gonna do the same thing right here, and I can get the one off pretty easy on this on the inside. The next one over a little trickier but not too bad. Feel forward, just feel around for a second, and you'll feel the clip that that band of material is held into, and you just move that material forward and out of it.

Okay, so now if you take that, see those two bands of material, this one here and this one here, those are for don't fold it forward and then stretch forward to hook onto a couple of little plastic C clips hooked on underneath there. Once you have that open, that gives you access between the seat back and the seat bottom. Otherwise, you can't figure out how to get all those straps down through there, and it gets really frustrating that way.

So first thing you do is unhook this. Now, well, let's take a look at the rest of the covers. Setting the seat covers on here is pretty straightforward. You've got the back here, and it's gonna slide on over the top on the seat back.

Before I get her all the way down on there, I want to show you here are those two straps that are coming off of the seat bottom. This flap here on the bottom of the seat that is going to lay flat and go in between the seat back and the seat bottom. You're gonna be able to go back there with that flap up out of the way and pull these straps out down between the two seats.

Now, before we even get to the front seat cover, what I want you to air the bottom, what I want you to do is to take these two straps and slide them up underneath the seat and get them up in the into the front foot well of the seat. We want to be very deliberate about how we put these together with the front of the seat covers.

So you get these two on the seat first, get them up under front so you know exactly where they are, and then we're gonna work on the second piece so I can fit this down down here a little bit easier. Now get this in place, but it takes a little bit of snuggling to get it around, but you can get it on there nice and fit and then that goes underneath.

Okay, so now on the front, what we have going on here is we've got four buckles across the front. There's a cut up up the side. This would be the outside of the passenger seat. It's the same on the on the driver's side, and they've made some adjustments to the seat covers just recently.

What they have is a piece of plastic piping inside that seam right there. This is going to tuck inside the plastic housing on the side of the seat cover or on the side of the seat itself right down there. And if you look at the back there in the back right, you'll see where the strap goes down in there.

Now back up here, take a look at this. That is this strap right here. Okay, so when I put it on here, this strap is going to go down, and what our goal is is to take it down between the seat leather itself, the seat material, and the hard case on the side of the seat. We want it to go down as close to the side that seat a piece of plastic as we can because that's where it's going to pull out behind and hook up correctly on the back of the seat back.

We have the two straps here, you're going to tuck those down in between the two seats and push those forward and be very deliberate that you know which one is which when you bring them up forward. Now what I have done on the seat cover over there is I just made a decision. So we've got the four buckles here, I took the seat back straps and I put them on right and the right seat bottom cushions I'm gonna put on left and left.

Whatever way works for you is okay with these guys, but it's nice to have them straight and linear under there so you're not crossing straps under there and trying to tighten down in different directions. Something to keep in mind so you keep all of those straps up front, bring them up, push them through this buckle. It's a friction buckle, so you take it up at the back of the buckle as close to the webbing here as you can, take it up through there, back through here, and that allows that buckle to tighten down nice and tight.

The only strap left is this guy. This guy goes between the center console and the seat, and I took it on the space between the center console and the seat belt buckle itself in between those two, not between the seat and the buckle but between the console and the buckle. I took it back there, took it down below, and was able to put it on there nice and tight.

So that is really the system that we have going on here. It's quite easy to do. We can set this front cover on here, we get it started, and in just a few minutes, I'll have this all put together for you.

So we've got the seat covers installed now, and I just want to review exactly how we put them all together. We've got the seat back and the seat bottom. They come together when you get them, and they're a series of straps and buckles, and you want to take a good hard look at those when you're come out of the back so that you get those all associated correctly.

Separate those two pieces, get into the vehicle. There is a flap underneath the seat with two elastic bands on the front of it. Under those bands, pull the flap out of the way. That's gonna gain you access between the seats here.

Take the top piece, slide it all the way down onto the seat. Take the two straps that are on the front of the seat back, we'll go down in between the seat pieces, run those up front first of all. Now you take this piece, slide it into position, take the flap that is on the seat bottom, push it through, align those up front so now you have four straps you're gonna attach up on the front of the seat cover.

There's a seat strap on this side on the outside of each one of the seats. What I found was the key to it is to literally just run the strap vertically straight down to the ground, get it out through the bottom of the seat here, and then you can move back to the back of the seat and tie it on correctly.

The one that's on the inside next to the center console, run it between the console and the seat cover or the seat belt strap, run it to the back. Those will be put on last.

Okay, so now you take the straps up to the front, run them through the friction buckles, start tightening them down, situate this the best you can, tighten them all in place, then take that flap underneath and put it back underneath, hook it onto the hooks that were underneath there.

Take these two straps on the interior and exterior of each cover, tie them to the seat back, tie those down into place, and that's how you're gonna get out your seat covers in place.

The seat headrests, these were incredibly tight. They were harder than the seat covers to get on, incredibly tight, and I think they turned out pretty well. We have a center console on here as well that has webbing that goes underneath to hold it in place. I think that turned out really nice.

This particular color is what they call a tough canvas. The seat covers are available in a light khaki, which is more of a tan color, a medium grey, both of those are 100% cotton canvas. This dark charcoal is a polyester cotton blend they call a tough canvas. It does wear a little bit more. Consider the variation between a cotton t-shirt and a poly-cotton blend t-shirt. The cotton t-shirt's a little softer, but it keeps it doesn't keep a shape as well as the poly cotton blend, and the poly cotton blend is going to last you a little bit longer.

Exactly the same situation we have with these covers. So they are very soft and very supple, and they do the job wonderfully well, but they are not as soft as the cotton canvas. So it's really up to you which one you choose. I like the dark charcoal in this vehicle because it's all black interior. I think it turned out really nice.

They really do take their time making these seat covers with all the piping, the side pocket on the interior, there's a map pocket on each one of the seats on the back, airbag compliance on the seat covers, and each one in the covers has a stitch for each one of the panels that you find on the seats of your vehicle. I think they did an awesome job on these. I'm sure you're gonna like them.

Again, this is Paul with Equipt. Thanks for your time.