First and foremost 56K users take caution as there are a lot of images in this article.

Ever since the idea of adding a stereo to my xA popped into my mind I wanted to do a how to on gutting the interiror for the install. Now that opportunity has come and I would like to share this process.

This article is very long because of the detail needed to get everything done, it's a long read but it will cover all the aspects of removing the interior

First the boring stuff:

WARNING: Keep one thing in mind, you are doing these mods on your own free will. This is written as a guide to assist you in doing this mod yourself. If you muck something up, it's your own fault, not mine. So no finger pointing please.

Also during the removal you will encounter some delicate parts and wiring. Make special note not to damage these parts including the tube running down the passenger floor for the rear washer nozzle.

Tools required:
1/2 inch drive socket wrench
3/8 inch drive socket wrench
10, 12, 13, 14mm sockets in both 3/8 and 1/2 inch drive.
#2 Phillips Screwdriver
Flat Blade Screwdriver
Good amount of workspace were you can work and store items without them being scratched.

Time Required:
2-4 Hours (This will of course depend on you work speed and if you have help.)

Getting Started

First and foremost park your vehicle in its designated space. Set out all of your tools and make sure you are ready for the mass of parts your car is about to vomit out at you. Put all of your windows down so you have plenty of ventilation in the car.

-- Begin by removeing all junk, garbage, loose change, passengers and floor mats from your cabin. Do not worry about vacuuming your car at this point, it is useless.

-- We will begin by emptying the trunk space: Remove the trunk floor by gently pulling up and out at the same time. Remove the spare tire cover, jack bag, spare tire nut and the tire. Then unbolt the utility tray with a 10MM socket and set these parts aside. Save the utility tray to hold any small parts, screws and bolts.



-- The next step is to remove all the seating surfaces. Start with the front seats. Open your front doors all the way. Slide the seat back, all the way, and remove the two front bolts using a 14MM socket. They're in tight so some grunting and screaming is required. Once you have removed the front bolts, slide the seat forward so you can remove the back bolts. The rear bolts are covered by plastic trim pieces that just pop off and out of the way. Again using the 14MM socket remove the bolts.




Looking under the seat, there is a clip for the electrical harnesses. Unclip the harness and make sure it is out of the way. The harness on the drivers side is secured to the seat frame with a plastic clip make sure you remove this clip before you yank the seat out. Repeat the above steps for the second seat.

Once both seats are unbolted and unwired remove them carefully and set them aside in a safe place. Use caution not to scratch the door panels or car when removing the seats.

-- Next we will remove the back seat, this one is tricky so pay attention. Begin by removing the seat bottom. Lift up on the corners of the bottom cushion at the front and the cusioin will pop free from the clips holding it in place.



You should be able to lift the cusion up enough to pull the seatbelt locks through. There is a special clip for the one seatbelt in the center. This belt is relesed by pressing on a white button on the lock with either a key for flat screwdriver. This white button holds the belt into the lock once you have released the belt from the lock it will slide up into the top of the seat. There is one more step to removing the bottom cushion.



Your trunk should be empty now, so, looking at the back and bottom of the rear seat you will notice the black bar that is bolted to the car. This is the rear seat support. in the middle of this you will notice a loop of yellow foam attached to a clip on the black bar. This yellow loop is the last thing holding the botom of the rear seat in place. pull on the loop (don't worry it has a metal loop re-enforcing it) and pull hard, the loop should pop free and release the bottom cushion from the vehicle. If you can't get it to come off, go to the next step and you can pull the loop off later.



The rear seat backs are held into place in a couple of areas. First there are three 12MM bolt that hold the bar in at the back in the trunk, remove these bolts and set them aside. Next under the seat bottom cushion is one more bolt holding the bar into place. Once you remove this bolt the bar may rotate on you so be careful not to get caught up in the bar.

Next pull the sides of the seat cusions away from the plastic trim to expose the rear seat hinge bolts. These bolts are 14MM in size carefully remove these and set them aside. Now the rear seat in unbolted from the car remove it. It's bloody heavy so if you aren't rugged enough get some assistance removing it from the car. If you weren't able to remove the rear seat loop, now that the backs are loose, slide them forward enough for you to remove the loop and pull the seat bottom out.



Now you should have a seatless car. The next few steps will be removing the various plastic trim pieces.

Removing the door panels is very simple in the xA. There is a phillips screw located in the center of the hand pull, in the center of the door handle and a plastic screw clip near the leading edge of of the door. Remove both screws and the clip and set them aside.



-- Next all four doors have "sail panels" or areas of trim that cover various parts of the doors. The front sail panels contain the stock tweeters and simply pop right off. The rear sail panels are located right above the door panels and also pop right off, set them aside as well.

-- Next remove the switch panels from each door. Pull up on the switch panel and it will pop free from the door. Unplug the harness for the switches and set the part aside, repeat for all four doors.




-- Next we will remove the door panels. The door panels are held in internally with plastic clips. To take the panel out all you need to do is pull out to unlock the clips and the pull up to pop the panel out of the window track. You will now have completely removed the door panel from you door. Repeat this same process for all four doors.

-- The next step is to remove the interior trim from the hatch area.

First you will want to remove the trim pieces that are located on the door sills. There are four in total and you need to pull lightly to remove them. Next remove all the weather stripping that is attached to the vehicle. These pieces line the opening of the doors and are a friction fit. You can remove them by pulling lightly and they will essentially just fall right out. There are four in total make sure you keep the rears from the fronts as they can get mixed up. This weather stripping helps hold in the headliner, lower B pillar trim, rear hatch trim, and front kick panels.

The hatch trim is quite easy to remove. but before we progress we need to remove the rear seat belt bolts. These bolts are 14MM in size and are located at the base of the rear seatbelt lanyard, remove both bolts and set them aside.



Now standing at the hatch you will find four plastic screw clips holding the latch trim in place. Remove them with the philips screwdriver and set them aside. The trim piece will now just pop off. Next looking at the hatch the walls are in two colors, dark grey and light grey. The dark grey section needs to be loosend first by removing the phillips head screw in the cargo cover latch and the grocery hook. The grocery hook will need to be poped out by pulling on it lightly. Next remove the 10MM bolt located in the center of the rear cover recess. This will loosen dark grey section enough so you can pop it off. When doing so the light grey section should also come with it as it is simply held into place with more plastic clips.



The dark grey panel is held in by more of the plastic clips at its base, so pull the panel out and remove both the upper and lower sections from the car and let the seatbelt dangle in place. Repeat the process for the other side. This should. leave you hatch area exposed and barren looking.




-- Next we will remove the left over parts.

The lower B Pilliar covers will need to be taken off next. They Simply pop right of with a gentle pull providing you removed the weather stripping earlier.

Next we need to remove the lower front seatbelt lanyards. These bolt are hidden under a plastic cover that pops off for easy access. The bolt is 14MM remove them and set them aside.



Next take off the front kick panels. These are held into place with a small plastic nut and can be removed by simply unscrewing the nut and pulling the kick panel off, easy as pie.

Remove the rear seat belt brackets with a 14MM socket, there will be two bracket to remove with two seat belt locks on each.



Remove the inner hatch door trim by pulling it off. It is also held in with these wonderful white clips, just be careful as it can be hard to get your fingers in there.

-- Next we will remove the center console.

At this time the only thing that should be left in the car is center console and carpet. The center console is quite easy to remove. Unscrew your shift **** (manual transmission). Look in the back cupholder, if you have a felt pad in the bottom pull it up to reveal a single phillips screw. Remove it and then gently pull up on the front of the console. This should pop the console out of the floor. Those of you who have the factory LED lighting or and Release Series lighting option (like mine) need to remove the console very carefully so you dont break the wires. The switch for my LED lighting in my RS2 was mounted in the center console. The wires are clipped into the switch with male/female spade connectors and were easily remove to allow the console to come out of the car.





I accidentally popped my switch out which is why you see my disassembling the wiring with no center console in the above picture.

-- Next remove the last part. the carpet.

Along the sill plates you will notice the white clips that the carpet is attached to. The carpet simply is slipped over the clips to hold the sides into place. Unclip each section of carpet from these clips.



On the rear "hump" where the bottom of the rear seat was attached you will find the carpet looped around the rear cushion clips. Pull the carpet off the clips. Next in the center along the "hump" will be a round friction clip that holds the carpet in the center of the rear "hump". It will be grey in color. Pull this clip out. It may take some persuasion with a screw driver but it will come out. Finally the carpet is attached under the dashboard by two more of the friction clips, they are at the very bottom of the dashboard attached to the white ventillation ductworkat the back. Locate them and remove them or slide the carpet over them to unhook the carpet.

To remove the carpet simply fold one side over to the other, taking care not to snag it on the floor ducting, wiring or shifter and e-brake. Losen the rest of the carpet and drag it out through the hatch. Loosening the carpet is vital to getting it out easily so make sure it's not hooked in anywhere and it will be a snap.

By now you should have everything removed and you interiror will look something like this:




Take this time to vaccuum any dirt out of the inside of the car. I also replaced my carpet padding with a more dense 3/4 inch foam pad, and fully lined the lower walls, and the entire floor and hatch of the car with Grace Ice and Water Barrier. This stuff works the same as Dynamat just without the aluminum backing plus it's cheap. I got 225sq ft at Home Depot and only used 1/2 of it. I also placed foam padding in areas of the hatch I thought would produce some noise. The end result is a quieter car which doesn't expell any base frequencies at all.

-- For those of you who are like me and want an even quiter car, you can add sound deadening materials to the under side of the dashboard.

To remove the dashboard begin my brmoving all of the silver trim accents from the dash. These will come off with a simple pull and there are four in total.




Remove all of the center dash storage and HVAC controls, more on that here



Remove the radio by removeing the four screws that hold it to the dashboard.



Remove the center cluster by removing the two plastic screw clips under the trim piece and then pulling the trim pice off. The cluster is held in by three phillips screws and of course the wireing harness. Unclip the harness and remove the cluster.



Remove the bolt the holds the top of the dashboard in place, this bolt is located under the trim ring for the insturment cluster. This bolt should be a 10MM bolt.

Next remove the A pilliars by pulling the slightly toward the center of the car. This releases the clips and then pull it out of the dahbard by pulling them straight out.

Next remove the three gold screws holding the dash top in place. One will be located under the silver trim next to the drivers side door. the other two will be in the center of the dashboard where the HVAC control were located.




Remove the glove box.



Remove the 14MM bolt hoding the dashboard in. This bolt is located behind the glove box and is attached to the airbag assembly.



Finally looking at the right side of the hole where the glove box was, you will see a wiring harness that has a yellow clip. This is the narness for the airbag. You will need the flathead screwdriver to loosen one side of the clip and unclip the harness.

Now, lift the front of the dashboard ( the part closest to you) up and pull back gently. This will loosen the seal on the windshield and allow you to ull the dashboard out of the car.




This is what my xA looked like after being fully gutted (minus the carpet padding and white foam) It was a scary sight and the 40+ parts lying on the ground was breathtaking!




The clips that hold many of the interior panels may stay behind in the car, if that happens just remove them with a pait of pliers or a screwdriver.

Re-installing everything was as simple as reversing these steps. Take extra caution not to cross any threads on the bolts as it seems to happen easily with our cars.

Those of you looking to get familiar with the procedure needed for sound deadening an xA or just need to disassemble the interior of the xA will find this article handy. Now if you will excuse me I have to go soak my hands in warm water, man thats a lot of typing.

 

Thank you so much...I've been waiting for a write up like this for awhile. I didn't see a mention of removing the headliner though?

 

COPY CAT

nice walk through.

Headliner removal isn't really something most people do...if you crease it, you're screwed...I removed mine out of my first car....wasn't pretty.

 

thanks. i might need this one day.

 

Thanks guys, I opted to not include the headliner only because a majority of owners probably wouldn't go that far into sound deadening, although I removed mine to rewrap it in black fabric. Remvoing the headliner is that same as you would do for the xB. There is a good how-to in the tech section for how to remove the headliner.

 

GREAT GREAT write up..... adding this to favorites for when the time comes to strip and re-do the whole interior. Thank you so much UBER

edit: do you think bucket seats can directly replace the rear bench seat without to much modification/blocking the rear window?

Headliner is easy just unbolt the oh chit handels take out the dome lights pop out the plastic peices and pull it out the hatch being very careful not to crease it to much.

 

Woot!!! Tech article

Enjoy everyone!

 

Thanks for the write-up! Now I have a use for my L-Mat that I bought about a decade ago

 

this should be stickied! I've done most of this before ,but through trial and error, and it took twice as long to do. still great information and write up. makes everything more clear.
have you sold your xA yet btw?

 

Woow, what a way to explain everything in such a detail manner, thanks man.
One day I'll try that.

 

nice right up. i want to add deadener to the wheel well rear, so is it section where the rear shock is? what's the easiest way to remove the hatch rim? do i need to remove the rear seats or can i just fold them down, unbolt the seat beat and screws and just pull it off?