It would be nice if nothing ever happened to your seats, like kids spilling coke / ice cream / dirty diaper.... or you're a U-boat commander and find yourself with yuckky seats. The last use I can think of... place plastic under your seat covers, to protect them from baby Jr.

You can just get your water hose and hose the seat down... but then your foam rubber will soak it up, and in a week you will have some mold growing on your seats.

Here is what you would need to do, to do it right.

First step is to remove the seat from the mount. There should be two screws in front of the seats, just under the foam. There should be two, but one of my front seats only had one. There are a medium sized Phillips screw. Remove the screws and remove the seat. Take the seat to a place that you can hose it off, with a medium powered water jet. I used my shower massage, with the handle removed. If you use your bath tub, use a rubber pad to protect your bath tub. These seats can scratch the hell out of your tub.

With the water remove any outside dirt from the seat (ice cream / diaper -- yuck!). Wash that stuff down the drain.

Now that it is safe to handle the seat, turn it over. With the seat’s metal facing you, look for the clips that hold the fabric / leather / what ever to the seat. There should be a 6 clips holding the seat cover to the metal frame. They are shaped like:

/| |\
/| |\
U

Note the barbs on these clips... They are painful if you try to grab one and brush up against one.

Use a small screwdriver to get under the clip, and ease it up. You do not want to break one, I do not have a clue as to were to get a replacement clip (I would be willing to bet that the dealer would tell you that you need to buy another seat, to get a clip!). If it is hard to get out, try to get some seat material and lightly pull up on it, while using the screwdriver. They should pop right out.

You should have all the clips removed, before going on. The rear of the seat, just use your screwdriver and slide it up the dip. The seat fabric should just come out. Remove the seat cover from the rubber foam. Be careful, you can not separate the seat cover and foam all the way, there is just four more clips you must remove. With the seat cover removed pulled up over the sides, look 2/3 of the way down from the top of the seat. You will see were the cloth is still attached to the foam / metal. You have a straight wire running in the seat, and round wire attached to the seat cloth, around the first straight wire. Again it is time for another cheesy ASCII graphic:

  |    Seat cover       |
  ---X-----X----X ---X---
\----O-----O----O----O---/
 \________Foam Pad______/

Using needle nose pliers, separate the looped / round wire. You want to open the loop enough to work it out, but not enough to have stress the wire (if you do, no big deal... might not matter anyway... or replace it with wire just as strong - coat-hanger should work great! I prefer to use original equipment manufacture stuff...). Note: This area is used to keep the seat from getting "poofed" up, or looking like you seat is not tight. If your seat has that problem, this is the area that you work on, and your done (You would have to put it back together again).

Great, you still with me? In one hand you should have the seat + foam rubber, and on the other hand the seat cover. Now dance a victory dance, that is, if you did not break any clips. While dancing you should sing we are the champions.

Now take that foam rubber seat to the water hose, and hose it down. Let it soak up all the clean water it can. When it seems full of water, press on the foam, to remove the dirt / water / ice cream -- what ever... Your just making a very large sponge. Repeat until no more dirt / what ever comes out. When the water looks clear, I think that it is safe. Set the seat outside and hang it at an angle so that water will "pool" at the bottom corner. Something like

 /\
 \/

About every 15 minutes, squeeze the water from the bottom. Repeat until no more water drains from it from doing that. When the drips stop, it is time to place it near an electric heater to dry (if it is not hot outside (75+). Follow the heaters suggestions about placement. If the heater instructions say 1 foot from an ignition source.... then make it 1.5 feet away. While the heater is going, check every 10 minutes. Make sure that the foam does not get too hot, it does melt - gets real sticky). You can tell if it is dry, when you squeeze it, no more moisture is felt to the hand.

The same process is done for the seat covers... but I just placed those over a fan, overnight.

Total time so far, 1.5 days...

Reverse the steps used to remove the seat cover from the seat foam to install cover on the seat. Again, be careful about not breaking any clips. If you wish to add a plastic cover for your seats, to protect from baby wetness, install between seat foam and seat cover. Tuck plastic into slot, where the clips attach to the metal bottom. This should hold it into place. You will have to make some small holes in the plastic for the round clips, but you can put some silicon into those holes to plug it. Let silicon dry before you continue on, if you installed the plastic.

Install seats back into Hummer...

--tlf

PS: This is not abuse, but use and learning. It is better to make minor mistakes while close to help, then way out on the Rubi trail! If you make a mistake now, it will not kill you. Become a u-boat commander on the Rubicon Trail, with ice - snow runoff, you had better know how to get your Hummer back into running ship-shape! After I have done this, I feel that the Hummer will always get me back... (and you have those parts that broke) You can trust a cheaper 4x4, but you get what you pay for. It is your life... don't you feel it is worth a little more?