I'm considering the purchase of Recaro's to swap out the stk leatherets in my 2010 Mini S . I know you need to disconnect the battery before the seat wiring harness removal or the air bag light will trigger. But what happens when I do not reconnect that seat harness and reconnect the battery? Because I will not need it. Will it cause an error code ??? Please educate me ! Thanks....

 

you're going to have all sorts of problems without the harness connected. Among other things, the original seat contains vital things like a side airbag, and occupancy sensorts.

I'm not saying this translates to the R56 necessarily, but my friend swapped his stock seats in a VW Jetta for recaro-style seats without airbags or occupancy sensors, and he got a constant seatbelt chime, and the computer disabled all the airbags (so the dealer said).

 

I was worried about that. I can't stand the look of the leatherette's. I like the black cloth checkered pattern ones much better !

 

Yes you will have all kinds of problems if the connectors are not connected to the items they are looking for. I.E. seat side airbags, passenger seat occupancy sensor just to name the quick ones.

 

I like the look of the leatherette much better!
I'm convinced the clother wears much faster too.
Just something to think about.

However if you are determined for the cloth try to find set from junkyard
(use national locator) for an entire cloth set. I saw the leatherette set
in KY (coincidence) for $700 but I didn't have the money at the time.

 

It might be easier and cheaper just to have the seating recovered in material of your choice. A good automotive interior shop should do a nice job. I stopped at MINI of Cincinnati (huge selection of MINI's on their lot) and noticed a hardtop with a very non-standard leather interior, but on standard MINI sport seats. Just a thought.

I too like the cloth. I am wishing I would have saved the $2K I spend on lounge leather when I ordered and purchased the cloth. The lounge leather looks great, but is already showing wear at 20K miles, so recovering my be in my future at some point.

 

Thanks for all the replies. I have scoured this site and others for hours on end !
I have everything figured out except the weight sensor. Sort of. The Recaro Sportster CS is what I'm looking to install now. If I can remove the bottom seat cushion / skin. I can then install the weight sensor over from the stock seat as designed. Others have done this mod with the Sparco EVO seats.

 

You need to install resistors to the open plugs of the harness to fool the ECU into believing there's still an airbag seat in place...that all...I've had my Sparcos for over 5 years and the resistors are still there, no cells...

I recall 3 or 4 ohm radio shack resistors but don't hold me to that...do a little research in this forum...somewhere I and others have already posted about this with the correct resistor type...

 

Get some that can code the car and code it so that it fools the ECU into thinking everything is fine. Dealership will probably not do it unless you get in with the mechanic and they do it as a side thing under the table.