I had to buy off the lot.

Has anybody thought about retrofitting for heated seats?
I don't mean the $5 one but something that appears
to be at the upper end.

Like
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Innov...spagenameZWDVW

or
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Heate...spagenameZWDVW

 

When I looked into doing this on my R53 with the OEM retrofit, I was told that it involved replacing the seats and re-wiring the car.

 

That's always the dealer answer on everything.

I'm not saying at all it would be easy.
But I'm thinking you would
take seats out.
carefully take off seat covers.
install heaters.
wire heaters to fusebox.
with the wires provided.

In theory it seems not that hard to do.

I was more wondering about the in real life part.

And if you disconnect the battery, and remove the seats,
then put the seats back on, will that cause some type
of error warning light (?)

 

And mainly can the seats be taken apart and put
back together where it doesn't look like you messed with it.

I normally operate on the theory
"anything put together by man can be taken apart by man"

it's the getting it back together part that is the tuffy

 

I would be very surprised if the wires were not already there...
I mean, its a LOT cheaper to have 1 wiring harness, than custom make each one...

That being said, its easy enough to check...
undo the few (4-6?) bolts holding the seat in and check for a cable bulge under he carpet (or unused connectors).

But you WILL have to create a switch to control the heater (and its over-heat protection).

(BTW, I was told the same basic thing for fog lights, which is !@#$)

 

I'd also not re-skin the seats, just buy someone's take-offs from the list...

 

Is there a bomb in your seat like there is in mine? IOW the airbag. The safety of working on the seat and not damaging, activating or deactivating the airbag would be the biggest concern to me. I have the factory heaters so can't offer anything else, other than that I like them. The factory heaters are quite warm. Of the three settings I usually have to use the lowest. In comparison on my G35 of its two settings I usually use the highest.

 

ive decided to not even think about starting this
project until a bentley manual is available.

and even then maybe not until the warrenty is up.

 

Check Geno's Garage for seat heaters, they work great......

http://genosgarage.com/

 

Airbags are not a problem as long as the battery is disconnected when working on the system. you will not get any alarm as long as you follow this rule.

 

I have wondered about if some seats are not already pre-wired? I noticed that my seats have two wires coming off of the seat belt area and one terminates near where the switches would be so it makes you wonder? could you just get an OEM Switch and wiring and patch it in?

 

I previously had a car with aftermarket heated seats. Installation was a breeze. Just unzip the seats, slide in the heaters and wire them up.

They worked great, but the switch that I put in didn't have sensitivity. So they were either off, or really really hot. Otherwise, no problem at all!