Hi All,

I posed this in the interior section, but I realized this may be the better forum.

I just installed a set of Classic Green Lounge Leather seats in my 2013 Cooper S. While these new seats are heated, my car was not optioned that way. My seats came with the modules and all wiring needed for the heaters. Would it be possible to pin in power and ground (I have the 30A fuses and they get power) through an aftermarket switch and get these to work? If so, would that option need coding?

Given my car was not optioned with heated seats, but the correct fuses are wired and get power, but the wiring does not go all the way to the seat plugs. I am looking for a work around to get these to work vs swapping in the factory switches in the center dash. Although if this wasn't too difficult I would likely go this route.

I know there are lots of threads about heated seats, I think I have read most of them. From my reading they fall into two categories:

1) Full retrofit with coding and factory switches
2) Aftermarket kit installs

I am trying to morph these two as I already have the factory equipment in my new seats.

Any and all help is appreciated. If I somehow missed the holy grail thread, please point me in the right direction

 

Did you get anywhere with this project?

 

I researched this pretty heavily during one of my builds as I really like the "factory" look and function of the buttons. It's not as easy as making wire connections and adding the switch bank. The factory switches are built into the switch bank and part of the internal circuitry. Cars without factory heat have some of the wiring, but not all. The heating elements are also slightly different than just making switches as the thermistor is built into the factory harness/circuitry.
I ended up going the aftermarket route and have on 5 other builds. The center console is a great location for the switches and there is room behind the trim for the wiring without putting pressure on the rear of the switches. They look clean and the location keeps them out of the way of accidental activation. Carefully use a step-bit and it makes the perfect sized hole that keeps the buttons locked in position.

 

@chav I have not made any progress on this as of yet.

@texasmontego To clarify your post, did you use full after market kits including the in seat parts, or did you use after market switches with factory heated seats? Sounds like the former.

Nice location for the switches. I would really like to find a way to make the factory heated seats work, if possible with aftermarket switches.

 

I used the aftermarket full kits. .
I respect your desire to utilize the factory heat elements in the seats, but the complexity involved makes it a big challenge when the aftermarket kit is plug/play. I routed the wires over to the passenger kick panel/fuse box and tapped into the Red w/ White Striped wire for both seats. It's a thick wire and stands out from the others. Then used a step-bit to gradually increase the whole size until the switch snapped in tight. Take it slow cuz if you get the hole too big, you'll end up needing to glue it in position.
For the heating elements, the seat back element requires no cutting. Peel and Stick, then run the wires under the seat. For the seat bottom element I cut two channels front & rear that coincide with the hog ring locations of the seat cover. It's not exact and you won't be able to add hog rings at the outside edge of the heating elements, but it doesn't matter. They put so many hog rings in the seat covers that you can't even tell. Just don't cut the wiring on the outer edge of the heating element. It's the wiring that connects all the squiggly wires together. If you cut that, the whole element won't work. You can cut the squiggly wires and it will only not heat the wires that were cut.