I am Chris Duke and this is Motorz.
Over 25 years ago, Mitchell Katz founded Katzkin Leather Interiors in Southern California with over 2000 vehicle applications and 59 color combinations. Katzkin is a leading manufacturer of leather in North America, licensing to GM, Dodge, Chrysler and Jeep. Their product features top-grain leather without scarring which means you're going to have the softest material possible. They also differ from their competitors by having the thickest foam which means you're going to have the most comfortable seat.
Today on Motorz, I'm going show you how to install Katzkin Leather Interiors on a Ford F-150 Pickup Truck.
Now what you get from Katzkin is this big old box of all your leathers, including the seats and the lean backs, but they also offer an additional installation kit, which includes this spray adhesive here, some hog clip pliers, a ton of hog clips, this upholstery tool and a couple of torx bits.
Now for this installation, you're going to need a lot of tools, so open up your garage and get ready to grab everything, but here's a couple of key tools that we use. Of course the silicone spray, you need a razor blade, we use the box knife and a lot of different screwdrivers, the torx bits. You need some socket wrenches and some crescent wrenches. You're going to need both metric and standard sockets. You're going to need the upholstery tool, some dikes for cutting off all those hog clips, of course the hog clips, some needled-nose pliers, the hog clip pliers, you're going to need some gloves, the power drill and then a lot of elbow grease. Now there are two bolts in the back of the seat and two bolts in the front of each seat, and they both require a T50 bit to remove.
After you've removed the four bolts from the bottom of the seat with your Torx T50, lean your seat back. There are two cables that attach the airbag sensors, you are going to want to remove those. And then remove the seat. And I am going to repeat the same procedure with the driver-side. And undo these two bolts right here. Now repeat the same procedure on the other side and you can remove the top portion of the center console now.
Now to show you how to remove the seat part of the center console, we went ahead and removed it from the truck entirely, so we can show you underneath here how this works. There are these two rubber grommets with metal from the actual seat that are pushed down in there, so we need to pull up on that seat and then it slides out from there, just like that.
Now for this Ford F-150 to get the back seat out here, we have to remove this cover from the top of the seatbelt covers, plastic thing, kind of pinches up with the flat blade screwdriver, and take a 10 mm and remove the nuts right in there, there is two of them on top. And then remove this Torx T50 bolt right here by the seatbelt.
Now I can't stress, how big a pain in the butt it is to remove the back of the rear seat, because what you have to do is you have to reach your hand around the corner here, you have feel for a little black tab and you're going to want to push on it. While you're pushing and pulling up on the seat, it's most difficult, but if I pull this forward like this, I'll show you what it looks like. This is what you're ultimately trying to press against.
Remove the Floor Jack underneath the back seat with a socket, there are 210 mm bolts. For removing the backseat, there are three Torx T50 bolts, and it'd be removed, there's one here, there's one right here, then there's another one right over there. To remove the rear seat cushion, there's a 19 mm bolt which you've got to remove. Get the seatbelt out.
Well that's out of the way, and lift up on the corner of the seat, and the seat slides out from there, just like that, and I will repeat the exact same procedure with the passenger's side seat.
Now once you've got all your seats removed, it's a good time to clean out all the old French fries, so grab a Shop-Vac, go to work! Now put all your leather out in the sun, so that it can get nice and warn and loosened up for your installation. Now that we have removed all the seats from our F-150, it's time to replace the cloth on these with the Katzkin leather. We're going to start with the front center seat here, and since there is lot of sharp metal here, you really should be putting on some gloves when dealing with these or your figures are going to get cut up, so grab a screwdriver, flat blade, and just start peeling up on these guys.
After you've peeled this cloth back a little bit, you'll notice that there's these hog clips right in here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to get rid of the metal, get rid of the gloves and you're going to need some dikes and get in here, you're just going to cut these guys off, here's one, two, three of them. Make sure you get all these out, otherwise it's like sitting on shrapnel, and you don't want that.
Now once you've got all your cloth off, it's time to put the lower back on, just grab the metal bottom again, and the leather. I'm going to take this plastic bar that's here, need to hog clip that back down to that post that's down in there.
Now that I've done putting the Katzkin on the front center seat, I'm going to start working on the rear seat. This is the small part of the bench seat. It has got some hardware on here, got to take this off first before I can put the Katzkin on this one.
Once you've removed this screw right here, pop-off this plastic piece to reveal the Torx T50 bolt. We've got to get that off in order to get this hardware off. Now that the hardware has been removed from this side and there is nothing really on that side. All that's holding this cloth cover on is this plastic clip right here.
Now that the stock cloth is off the seat, I'm going to put the Katzkin on, and this one just slides right in.
Now once again add on the hog clips. When you get to the end of this zipper and you've got all zipped up, just tuck it inside.
You want to remember where the stock hardware went on the seat, because you've got to put this Torx T50 bit back in here. So what you want to do is you want to feel around where this guy is going to go with your finger and just grab a small Phillips head screwdriver, once you've figured it out with your finger, just kind of pierce it. You don't want to make that hole a little bit bigger with the blade, put the hardware back on.
Now that I've got the smaller section of the backseat done, it's time to get the largest section done. The same setup, I've got hardware on one side, I've got this plastic thing on the back holding it together. So let's get this hardware off and go from there.
Now on this rear bench seat, we have the same thing here. We've got six hog clips that we need to add and then we've got these four Velcro strips, we are going to have to karate chop this material into that, once we've got it all on.
Now we've got the rear bench fully upholstered, well you've got to put the hardware back on again. So once again, feel for the hole, there is going to be two of them, you want the one in the front, take your Phillips screwdriver once again, find the hole, break it. Make it a little bit bigger with a razor blade, because you want that bolt to go right through there, and put back on your hardware.
We bring up our next victim, with this guy, we've got to first remove these headrests. Now we can start popping the plastic off to get this off.
When you get to these headrest posts, just pull the material, it pops right out.
Now with the cloth off the rear lean back, put Katzkin on. Now with these headrest posts here, I'll show you how to do that all the bit, these are tricky.
Now once you have the rear lean back fully upholstered with the Katzkin leather, you'll notice that these hooks here and these go on to the Ford truck in the back, I need to cut out this material, so that these are exposed again. So very carefully cut these out.
Now you've got your fully upholstered lean back for the backseat and you think you're all done, but guess again, you've got these posts here, you can't really see them right now, but they are hidden and you have to cut them out. So what you do is you kind of feel with your fingers, you want to feel that little indention, stick a Phillips screwdriver in there, pop a hole. The next thing you want to do, you need to make an X, you want to go real light, so that you don't scour the plastic itself underneath, and it'd be easier to do it. This way by cutting off the excess pieces you can do with scissors or you can use it with your blade, then you want to stretch this material around that post, so that pops down underneath it, just like that.
For the front seats, remove the headrests and then you need to detach this hardware that's down on this side. To remove this lever, there is cotter pin down here on the back side, choose a flat blade screwdriver, separate it. Now we've got this lever removed, we need to get this lumbar knob off here, and this is just put on through pressure. You can't really pry it off with a screwdriver or anything, because you're going to damage all the plastic. So get a tube sock or an old towel or something, you want to kind of wrap it around the backside of it. It isn't the easiest thing to do, because then what you want to do, is you want to get a good hold of it with a rag, you want to pop it off, that's it.
That is whole side panel needs to come off, there is a clip in the back you can just pull-up, then there's down in here there is one of these little tree clips, you need to pull that up and then start prying out the center piece. This is all just snaps in like that. When you can get to these screws, there is one here, one here and one here. To remove the cloth on the seat bottoms, turn it upside down and again put on some gloves, because there is a lot of sharp metal down here, and just start disconnecting where you see these black tabs. Once you've got all the plastic clips off, flip the seat up and you can take off the cloth.
And what do we have here? Some more hog clips. The front lean back is held on with this black clip here, so just get your screwdriver in there, get it started, flip the chair up carefully. I am going to start to peel it off now. Once again when you get to this point in the lean back you have, guess what, more hog clips.
Now when you get to the top of the seat, you've got these headrest posts, you want to leave those in the foam and just work the material, just kind of stretch it around these plugs to get it off. Now with your front seat completely naked, grab some new skin, and unfortunately we've got three of these, we need to hog-tie down. There's one, two, three in the front and there's one, two, three in these channels here. So lay it over the front, these are all the hog clips you're going to need, lay it over the front, peel it back and start tying it down from the front, undo one side and undo the other side.
And here's a little Motorz tip that's going to save you a lot of time, because we just spent a lot of time trying to get our way out of this, but before you put any hog ties down before any Velcro, put this back piece on first, this is on the passenger seat and this is on the bottom cushion.
Now that we're done with the bottom, we need to do the lean back. So take your leather and turn it inside out.
If you want to reveal these seams, those are what is going to guide you when you put this back onto the foam. Now take your hand, put it inside and feel the seam and line it up on the corner and start to put it down one side and switch to the other side, stretch it over and do the same.
You want to slowly inch the material down so you get to this bar here, because that's where you need to do some more hog clips.
Alright, I just put these three hog clips in there, add some more Velcro, but before you sit those down, you cinch this down with both hands, or you can alternate back and forth. Make sure these are lined up over the Velcro, we'll karate chop those later. And finally all that's needed to secure the lean back is this zipper. Tuck these ends down inside.
Once you're done with the zipper, flip the chair up on its back and you want to get those down into those seams with the karate chop.
Reattach the side panel. So tree clip in front, there is a clip in the back, and there are these three screws, and finally for the headrest posts, you need to find these holes again.
Now that we're done with the seat, we need to do the headrest. So turn it upside down and separate these two plastic pieces, they are holding it together. Once you've done that, you can slowly peel this thing off of the headrest.
And finally we need to get this on the headrest. Now our forward headrest already came with this plastic bag, so we're going to reuse that. If you don't have that, you can use a really thin plastic bag or something from a grocery store and you're going to need a lot of help to get this guy over there, because this is small and this is kind of puffy, so we are going to use some silicone spray right here and we've got a steamer down here on the floor, that's going to help heat this thing up.
Now the silicone spray is going to make things real messy, so we're going to drape this cloth around here, so we don't get silicone spray all over the place, then you're going to shake this up, spray the headrest with the spray. Then you want to take your steamer, stick this inside, and get this real hot and steamed up, especially the seams on the side, that's going to be the toughest part to deal with.
It's good to heat it up, that should be good. I am going to take your silicone spray, spray it inside as well. Again, especially on the sides, and while it's still hot, start sliding it on. You may need a friend to help you out with this to hold down one side. So I think, I'm going to get Jason's help right now. And we are back and thanks to Jason's help, we actually have this thing on here. Just used two fingers down in here to kind of pull it down at the same time pushing. So you might want to have one buddy pushing in on the foam while you've got another guy who has got his fingers down in there, pulling this mess down. This is probably the hardest part.
Once it's on there since, it's still kind of warm, you've got the silicone in there, you kind of move this around, get it exactly where you want it to go. So take this plastic bag and tuck it up inside, because what you want to do is take these black plastic clips here. I'm going to pull this one around. You want to get them inside of these guys all the way down. Then repeat the same process on the headrest that go on the back of the truck.
Now as for the center console, I got a little eager last night. I went ahead and disassembled it, so I can show everybody here how it works. There is a pin that goes along the back side at the top here, just grab some pliers and this thing comes right out which will allow this top to come off.
Now this is just snapped on to the top, so grab a screwdriver and kind of pry this thing up carefully, there are a lot of black tabs in there and this comes off, and once you have that off, then you are able to get the cover off of there. So that takes care of the cover.
As for the bottom part of it, what you want to do is you want to take a razor blade, you want to cut along the entire outside of this thing, all the way around. Once you do that, this easily comes off, so it reveals the foam, so we'll get rid of that. The Katzkin has a replacement piece for that, that's right here, so get rid of that.
Next thing you want to do is you want to remove these two pieces of foam, they pop right off just like that, and finally, you want to get rid of this cloth here, just grab some pliers, you are able to pull this thing up out of that channel.
The next thing you want to do, you also want to get rid of this around the cup-holder. Now this is tricky, because there are a lot of these little white tabs down in here, and you might need a buddy to help hold this while you undo all of those, because you do want to get this part, because you want to get this cloth out of there as well.
Now once you've done all off of that, then you take and you put the foam back on and you wrap it around here and you want to take it and slide it back into this channel using an upholstery tool, bending it in there, and cutting off the excess when you are all done and we'll repeat the same for the cover, Katzkin also supplies a piece for that.
Well, we just finished installing all the seats back in our F-150, and it looks great. Now Katzkin recommends that you leave it outside with the heat on for about an hour. What that's going to do is it's going to help relax the leather and help it conform to the seats a little bit better, get all those wrinkles out. They also recommend, you clean it once every couple of months with just a washcloth with some water on it and they also have a leather cleaning kit available at their website.
For more information on the Katzkin and all of the color combinations, head on over to www.katzkin.com.
For more of our videos, go to www.motorz.tv, and please be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple iTunes.
Hog clips!
Ha... ha... ha... blooper!
Now for this installation, you're going to need the following tools.
Oh hell! On second thought, I'm not going to go over all these, just grab everything in your garage, because you're going to need it.
Alright! Smacking me with his tail.
More cowbell!
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