Not wanting to spend over $1500 on new leather covers and unable to find better seats, I picked up a set of black Hampton seat covers for my GTA. Well it's the off season, time to install 'em. I have my driver's seat torn down all the way to the factory leather pulled off of the seat bottom. I have the new cover in place on the bottom and hog ringed along the sides of the central cushion, the middle square of the seat. Here's my problem. From the factory that central part, right under your butt when you're in the seat, is secured on all four sides. The front and sides with hog rings, and the back with a strip of velcro. The seat covers I picked up from Hawks have no provisions for hog rings at the front of this square and the velcro doesn't stick to the cover at the back. They'll never sit nice and tight without the mount at the front. Has anyone else had this problem or am I missing something? I'll probably cut the original sleeve off of the factory cover and stitch it to the new cover but it's a strange omission. I have been taking pics of my progress just in case this isn't making any sense at all. They also don't have any reinforcement in the little sleeves for the side hog rings so I swapped the factory twine over. I'm also surprised to find that there are no holes for the side switches, for the air lines to the bladders, or for the head rests. Easily done but still, it makes me wonder. GM sure loves their hog rings. There was well over thirty in the bottom portion of the driver's seat alone! Thankfully the little pliers for the new rings works surprisingly well for such a cheap tool.

Anyone else tackle recovering their Ultima seats on their own?

i just got done doing my ultima seats and they turned out nice, to get mine to laydown nice i just used a little spray adhesive since the cover's don't come with the velcro strip they should have the spot for the hog rings call bruce and tell him they will correct the problem for you. or just use more adhesive your choice. i also decided to leave off the accordian peices off the side's of the seats and they lok much cleaner... hope this help's. mine didn't have the holes for the swithches hoses or headrest either just cut the holes out no problem.

YOU NEED TO CALL BRUCE ABNOUT THE COVER"S
here is a pic of mine

They look very nice. Were they hard to install?

actually very easy hardest part was getting them apart to recover

lol The worst part so far is cutting off the old hog rings. There's a billion of 'em! A little pair of bolt cutters sould be so, so handy.

I e-mailed Hawks about the problem with no reply. I'll resend the e-mail tonight. Spray adhesive crossed my mind for the back of the lower cover (the velcro area) but I ahte the idea of gluing the covers down. I mean, what if I want to replace the covers again in another twenty years? And I'd hate to have the new cover tear the foam apart since there's no give to the adhesive. I haven't taken the front seat backs completely apart yet, hopefully I won't have the same issues with those covers.

I think I'm just going to carefully snip off parts of the old cover and stitch 'em into the new one. Maybe this is why this set was in the 'clearance' area on the site. It would've been nice to know that they had this problem.

don't email them call them

As e-mailed to you this A.M., I await the pictures to see what you have done during installation to further assist you. This is the first time that I have heard of this issue with the upholstery. Once I have been given the opportunity to see what is wrong, we will, as told to you, get this fixed.


Thanks Jeni

Thank you Jeni, I e-mailed some pics last night.

I have just received them and will get with Bruce to advise as to what it is that you will need to do.

Thanks so much for the pictures

You have hog rings and pliers on their way to you. No need to cut off the old ones. Sorry for your trouble.


Thanks Jeni

Thanks, I sent you an e-mail not long ago. I think maybe we have a little confusion...

I'll be recovering my seats as well in the next month or two. I'm thinking about just letting an upholstery shop install the covers for me since I don't wanna spend the time doing it myself.

It's definitely a time consuming job if you haven't done it before. I imagine that my passenger seat will take about half of the time, once I'm done the driver's seat. I've been at a standstill for a while though. Now that I'm healthy enough I'd like to get back to work on it, just gotta figure out what to do with this one problem (so far).

What about the quality and feel of the Hampton covers? Do they really look "like leather" ? Are they soft to the touch? I've looking at this covers for a while, and while I'm tempted by the leather covers, these are simply too expensive for me right now. So, any feedback on those Hampton covers or the ones from youngsfbody.com would be appreciated.

I put those covers in my 87 gta and the notchback rear seat covers and they fit great.Ive had them on for six years and they fit perfect.

I had an upholstery shop do mine. I'm glad I did. I started to take the old covers off and realized that it was going to be a HUGE pain and take up a lot of time that I could have been spending with my daughter. I also left off the accordion pieces.

What about feel? From 1 to 10; 1 being the plastic feel of common vinyl and 10 being the smooth feel of real leather, how do you guys rate it. Also, how would you compare it to the OEM material? thanks

Most people dont know they arent leather till I tell them.

Is that leather or vinyl? Btw, that car is stunning!

The seats in your car looks really awesome! I'm almost positive I'll be going with the Hawk covers. I'd still love to know how the texture feels though.

Most automotive vinyls today look and feel very much like leather. I have a '04 Chevy minivan that has leather captains chairs and a vinyl third seat. If I hadn't read in my owners manual that the third seat was vinyl I never would have noticed the difference, the color and texture is exactly the same. I'm pretty sure the Hampton vinyl is the same thing as the "ultra leather". I have felt of the ultra leather and it feels very similar to real leather.

intruder, those look very nice. What's the Hampton name of that gray? There are several different grays, both dark and light. And from the color samples that are posted online, you can't really tell how each color actually looks, so seeing an actual photo of a finished product, like yours, really helps. And was there any extra charge for the two-tone color scheme?

I can't say I'm happy about there not being any velcro on the insides, though. Having to glue the covers to the foam just doesn't seem right. I'm surprised the manufacturer would overlook such an important element of the fit. That's a kind of thing that would make me buy something else or have the seat covers custom-made.

I forgot to ask before..... are these covers perforated like the stock ones? I can't really tell from the pics.

you can get them perferated or non perferated, mine aren't
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the velcro part don't really matter, the part on the cushion sorta sticks to the foam on the back of the cover's
. i didn't use any adhesive in that area of the seat

Hey, thanks man! That is Hampton Vinyl that I got from Hawks. I had the headrests embroidered locally. BTW the shop that did the embroidery has the image on file so I can get anyone else's done fairly cheap. Mine were $95, but most of that was for the work to digitize the third-gen bird logo and prep it for stitching.

Go with the Hawks covers and don't look back. Best bang for the buck. The texture is great. It feels more like leather than the factory leather IMO. It is VERY soft. The only thing that makes me think it doesn't feel like real leather is that it has a "tacky" feel to it and not a "slick" feel. It's hard to explain. But either way, it feels great. WAY better than my factory leather did. And my upholstery guy (who does $100k + show car interiors regularly) is constantly trying to talk people into going with vinyl over leather. He told me that leather is not the same as it was in years past. They have a process now where they can take a cowhide and "shave" it to make 3 or more cowhides ... thinner versions of the original cowhide, thus thinner leather. It provides them with more product, but it is of a much lower grade. He said the vinyl, if maintained properly, will last much longer and look much better than leather.

If you HAVE to have leather, I would look up "The Covergirl" on this site and send your seats to her. She does amazing work.

Oh ... almost forgot ... if you're really worried about the texture, call Hawks and they will send you a sample.

I purchased some 4th gen recovered seats from hawk's a few months back. Couldn't be happier with them. The only downside I encountered was that the seat frames where they bolt to the floor were a bit rusted (nothing a little por-15 couldn't fix ) I had been wanting them for quite some time but finally bit the bullet and ordered them when Hawks had a sale.

They've been sitting in my garage for the past couple of months and I plan to install them this weekend along with some 4th gen seat belts, hawk's door panels (in the same matching grey hampton vinyl), and a 4th gen console.

These are seat covers from Iggee's. They actually slip over your factory upholstery. I paid $200 for the two front seats.

Lets resurrect this one.

My front seats have been in since spring. They look alright, the pleather isn't nearly as tight as the old material but it looks better than the old word OEM leather. Now that I'm on vacation I have time to tackle the rear seats. This should be easy, right? Here's the factory leather.

And here's the best I've been able to do with the kit. I've tweaked the position of the hog rings and this is the best I've got. I'm seriously considering going back to the factory cover for the rears. The foam is still nice and soft, it doesn't feel badly compressed at all. This seems like a lot to tighten up over time.

Oh and if anyone is interested I've been taking pics of my progress the whole way through, from the factory seat sitting on my basement floor all the way to a recovered seat. If anyone needs a pic of an area inside one of the Ultima seats I've probably got it.

SBlackfoot sent to you a pm.

I was having all the same issues you are with my Hampton covers from Hawks. I finally took them to a local upholstery guy. For $100 he put them on for me and they look great. He stitched the velcro on for me, and added padding in the front that the original covers have but the Hampton ones were missing. Link to some pics:

http://www.thirdgen.org/techboard/at...-07141224a.jpg

http://www.thirdgen.org/techboard/at...esized_pix.jpg

http://www.thirdgen.org/techboard/at...t-07141224.jpg