When I got my 1998 T4, it had the original patterned grey fabric.  Now I appreciate that many people out there like their vans to have original parts, but I admit this pattern is not my taste!

With a long way to go on my build I decided to save money by buying seat covers rather than reupholstering.  This would also protect the original fabric incase I ever need to restore the seats to their original condition.

I wanted to have my seats look really good so I invested in a set of seat covers that were specifically designed for VW T4’s from Vee Dub Transporters.  They were not cheap (£120-ish at time of purchase), but this is A LOT cheaper than reupholstering.  Plus I’ve had a lot of people compliment me on them – not realising that they were in fact covers!

I’ve put seat covers on many cars and it should be a simple job, but there are are couple of tricky bits on the T4, so I thought I’d write out a helpful guide!

 

THE BASE

The bases of the seat covers go on very easily as you would expect.  The only thing that is a little trick is fastening them underneath the seats.  I used a combination of knotting the elastic to the seat frame and carabiners to join the cover elastic loops.

 

THE HEADREST

It might seem strange to do the headrest next, but you need to get these off to reach the back part of the seat or bench.

You can’t just pull the headrest off.  I believe there are a couple of different types of headrest on VW vans, but if you have one of the same era as mine (1996 – 2003) then you’ll likely have a clip at the base of each headrest post, attached to the main body of the seat.

Pull up the headrest as far as it will go.  The press the buttons on the clips inwards as you continue to pull up the headrest.  (This is where you will wish you had three hands.)  The headrest should pull fully off at this point.

To cover the headrests is easy, just pull over the cover and secure in place with the velcro fastening underneath.

 

THE BACK COVERS

Once you have the headrest off the driver seat, the cover easily pulls on over the top.  For the bench, you’ll have to remove the central column cover.

Image: below left.  First carefully remove the top section, which runs down the back of the bench.  It is held on by two fragile clips towards the font two corners (facing the windscreen).  Press the top section in as you lift upwards and you should be ok.

Image: below middle.  Then you need to remove the front collar.  In the picture you can see that there are shallow grips along the edges of the collar and a central spike which feeds into the main seatbelt column.  Because of the spike you need to peal the two back edges away form the seatbelt column and then pull the collar towards the windscreen.  This will release it intact.

Image: below right.  Shows the top cover, collar and headrest.

Now you can put the bench seat cover on.  This wraps around like a waist coat and zips up at the front (you can just see the zipper in the image: above middle).  The zip did really bother me as I put on the cover, only because I wasn’t expecting it and I thought it looked ugly.  However, the central seatbelt does cover it perfectly so it is rarely noticeable.

Tuck the edges in at the bottom and sides, then reattach the seatbelt cover and headrest.

Don’t worry if there are a couple of creases in the covers when you first put them on (image: above right).  These soon drop out and leave you with beautiful, new seats.

 

THE FINAL RESULT

 

I really think this is a great place to save money on a build, but it can be hard to know what makes are good quality when viewing online.

If anyone has any experiences with other brands of seat covers for our beloved van conversions that look great, please do share them!