(Please excuse cross-posting).
Gaak! My wife's 2008 Cabrio has seat heating coils but they weren't connected. I installed the retrofit connecting harness and everything looks good up to the two grey/red wires that go to an X1019 connector. My 2005 MCS has this connector behind the left door sill trim, but the Cabrio doesn't. Any idea where I connect these wires?

TIA.

 

Grey/red wires throughout the car are for switch and gauge illumination. Some other locations where you could pick it up are in the center console. Does the ring on the cigarette lighter illuminate at night? If it does, you can get it there (on my 2006 cabrio, the cigarette lighter does not illuminate and the wiring is missing). Otherwise, find a grey/red wire at the back of any of the center console components (toggle switches, radio, hvac).

If you don't connect the grey/red wires, the seat heater operation should not be affected. You just won't get the orange glow in the buttons when you turn the lights on.

 

Thanks rkw! It never occurred to me to try the seats out, since I didn't think the wiring was complete. My wife says they work fine. The lighting is moderately important, since the switches tell you whether the seat is on, and whether it is on low or high. Her lighter ring doesn't light up. Would I just splice into a grey/red wire (say, from the switch console) and attach the seat light wire? I see in my Bentley manual that there is an "instrument cluster connector" behind the fuse box; I wonder if that would be a place to connect the seat light terminal connector?

 

I believe that the grey/red wires only control the orange glow night illumination, and would not affect the green LEDs that indicate off/low/high. Are you sure that the green dots aren't lighting up?

Yes, simply splice into a grey/red wire (and split it to go to both heater buttons). By "instrument cluster connector", do you mean X15 that I see in the wiring diagram? It looks like where your missing X1019 was supposed to connect to, with grey/red on pin 1. It does look like a connection you can use.

 

OK, rkw, I finally got back to this and got it working, although not in a way I'm totally proud of! You were right about the loose wires being only for the orange night illumination. I took off the fuse box and tapped into the terminal of the large grey/red wire that goes into the X10206 green connector in back of the box. That allowed the orange illumination to work, but the green dots weren't working (they never had). While I was thinking about what to do next, I noticed that the seat heating harness connector that plugs into the same X10206 was loose. I reconnected it, and all the green dots and the seat heater worked! In other words, if I had made the connection so it wouldn't have come loose in the first place, I'd have saved a lot of effort.
The two night illumination wires in the harness come with a connector you can use to tie them together in case there isn't enough room in that X1019 connector, so I'm using that and I'll just see about making a permanent connection to the grey/red wire on the X10206. Or, I might get lazy and run it through an add-a-fuse.

The instrument cluster connector pictured in the Bently manual is actually outside of the fuse box and next to it. When I took it apart, it didn't look promising as a place to connect the night illumination wires, but I could be wrong. I can't find a description of X15.

Thanks so much for your help -- it allowed me to figure out what I was working with, and now my wife can enjoy Minnesota winter with the top down!
Tom