How To Remove headrest, seat, upholstery from Front Seats and Installed Heaters

• The backrest adjuster does pull off. Pull slowly evenly from both sides. It will come off, allowing you to remove the plastic from the outboard side of the seat. Not sure you’d have to do this, but I think it will be easier, when you drill a hole for the heated seat switch.

• Remove plastic from both sides of the seat.

• Looking at the bottom of the cushion start removing clips that are attached to the springs of the seat bottom.

• Now disassembly of the seat cushion. I tried to start with the back of the seat cushion. I ended up nearly removing all of the cover. I started with the side clips on the frame of the bottom of the seat. These are stitched into the fabric. Using your hands, grab the fabric and the clip and roll it back removing the clip from the metal seat material.

• Do this on the front left and right of the seat.

• Now do the front edge of the seat

• Now you have to release the clear plastic upholstery piping rod from the black clips.

• Don’t clip anything. Contrary to what you see on the Sonic Forums, the Cruze seats don’t contain Hog Rings, or zip ties.

• Carefully pull straight upwards to remove the clear plastic rod from the black clips. The clear rod does have some flexibility, which is good here. Be careful, this is something you don’t want to break. Put your fingers under the clear plastic bar, on both sides of each clip and pull upwards. I’ve posted some pictures at the link above of the clips.

• Start on the side of the cushion so you can see both sides of the black clip and how it works. Work from left to right.

• The seat back is the same construction, but has zippers on both sides of the back of the seat. Open the zippers, remove the upholstery piping from the clips, and lift up on the fabric.

• This covers most of any maintenance or repair to any part of the seat, except for removing the headrest mounts that are part of the seat. The service manual says “Use flat blade tool to depress and remove, The mysterious flat blade tools! , but I can’t figure out where! If you were going to completely remove and replace the covers, you’ll have to figure this out.

The components that I ended up using were an aftermarket kit that came with a 10mm round switch that could be mounted in the plastic surround on the side of the seat.

The switch was part of the kit. I've had good luck with the Dorman Universal Cut to fit seat heater. I was hoping to use original GM factory parts, and I researched this. Unless you have access to an entire donor car it's really cost prohibitive. There's a minimum of 2 control modules required, in addition to the factory seat cushions with heaters.

I powered mine from the interior fuse box. Essentially an add a line from the cigarette lighter. No cutting or slicing that way. I think original equipment in a non heated seat car also has different wiring harnesses from the dash to the seat connectors.

I'm surprised this how to hasn't gotten much response. I really like how it turned out. It takes time, it's not an hour job, but the results are very nice in cold Midwestern climates!

There's low, high, and off. There's no integral timer circuit. If you don't shut them off they go off with the cigarette lighter when opening the door.

The cigarette lighter circuits are not powered on upon remote start. So that's kind of sad. However, this product on high, will get the seat HOT in 1-2 minutes with an ambient temperature outside of around 0F.

I wish the seat pad went a little higher up the back of the seat. There's some products on Amazon and flebay that appear to be larger pads, but I've heard mixed reviews of success if you start cutting them.

And I paid a little much for the Dorman kits, all this stuff is made overseas, I just hope with the Dorman name these pads last longer than a fly by night seller on "the bay".

Good Luck-

Yep-- I did it.. I think the pictures are still posted on the shutterfly link.

I used an "Bussman" add a circuit to get positive power from the fuse box. And grounded them to a factory ground under the console. The heaters I purchased had their own switches and controls.

I placed the switch in the side panel of the seats on the outside edge. Drilled a hole the appropriate size with the plastic side plate removed. I had both of the seats stripped down to the springs. Doing the drivers seat first, then the passenger, so I could still drive the car!

The only thing I couldn't figure out is how to remove the fabric fully from the seat backs of the front seats. You have to remove the post supports for the head rest, and I couldn't figure that out. It's not required if you already have the seat covers on the seats that you want. However, if you were to swap just the leather covers for the cloth that would have to be done..

I have hot heat in 30 seconds in -5F temps. Much faster than GM OEM design. However, their heating pad covers more of the seat than mine does.