Northwest Seat Covers® - Active Series Neoprene Seat Cover

Neoprene seat covers may be the most comfortable, but Cool Sport covers feature a Northwest Exclusive Design. The 4-layer neoprene fabric features a comfort tested 7.0 lb compression rated foam backing. Cool Sport looks great and helps to keep your original seats cooler due to the ventilation properties of the special double knit jacquard fabric.

Care & Cleaning
Neoprene Fabric: Polychloroprene with laminated PU foam, polyester scrim backing and a nylon top surface.
Fill bath tub with warm temperature water, add a cap of wet suit cleaner or clear liquid dish and let soak for about 30 minutes. Then gently rub any area that is stained just to loosen residue caught in the knitted nylon fabric and let it soak for another 15-20 minutes. Hang dry in a shady area.
The nylon top surface will resist staining with most spills and neoprene seat covers guarantee that liquids won't get through to your original cloth. All liquids can be easily wiped up with a cloth. If condiments like ketchup or mustard drops onto the surface of the fabric simply dab it with a damp cloth and lift it off the surface. The cleaner we recommend is an HE liquid detergent because it produces a low amount of suds. The HE liquid detergent will do a good job of breaking down any residue from the stain.

Installation
Headrest and Latch Holes
In many models, headrest holes, power holes and/or latch holes are not cut. This is due to past trouble with properly aligning the covers once the holes were cut. In these cases, it was deemed better to cut the holes once the cover is properly aligned and installed. To make these holes, simply install the cover, then cut a small "X" cut over the area where the hole needs to be. Then, in the case of a latch hole, lift the cover up and slide the latch through the hole. This process ensures that the holes are placed in correct spot every time.

Choosing Your Fabric

What is the best fabric for seat covers?
From the start, NW committed themselves to providing customers with the highest quality selection of fabrics. Since they were going to be manufacturing seat covers for cars and trucks, it just seemed like a natural fit to use genuine automotive fabrics.

High abrasion is probably the most important feature for seating fabrics. Vehicle seats are subject to a fair amount of wear. Imagine how many times you get in and out of a vehicle everyday. Think about the amount of time you spend sitting on the seats, not to mention the amount of shifting around you do. Now multiply that by 365 days and the number of years and miles you'll be driving. This is why the durability of fabrics is at the top of list.

Durability
When NW first consider a fabric they always look at the Wyzenbeek test results.
This is also known as the double rub test. This is a durability test that was developed by 20th century inventor Andrew Wyzenbeek. A piece of automotive fabric is placed on top of a half-cylinder covered in a #8 cotton duck fabric. The half-cylinder then rocks back and forth simulating, in this case, the action of someone sliding into his car seat and sliding out. This is one double rub.

UV Protection
The second factor you look at is UV light protection. After many test samples, NW decided to include a grade 3.5 UV light protective coating (200 hrs). The fabric will still fade over time but, at a much slower rate. Grade 1 coatings leave fabric feeling very natural but, with almost no protection, the color black would turn to brown in one year. Grade 5 coating does a very good job for protection but, makes the fabric quite stiff. Outdoor furniture is often receive grade 4.0 - 5.0 coatings.

Flammability & Safety
The third consideration is flammability. NW fabrics are FR coating and depending on the style of fabric they'll pass either the FMVSS302 (Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard) or CPAI 84 Sections 5 and 6.

Waterproof
The fourth aspect NW take into consideration is a fabric's ability to provide waterproof protection. Most of fabrics offer high water repellency or are waterproof. Just as with outerwear, at some point due to normal use, the effectiveness of a fabric's ability to repel water will diminish. You can restore the fabric by either spraying Scotchgard on O.E fabrics or a DWR (Durable Water Repellant) on any of others.

HD Designs
Technology has really changed what NW can do with fabrics. A good example of that is the family of camouflage fabrics NW offer. Realtree, Mossy Oak, and Fishouflage all require as many as 10 screens to produce the camo seat cover patterns you all love. NW fabrics really shine in HD because of the quality of the image when using heat transfer paper and the fact that NW use durable 600 denier polyester fabrics.