swapping for heated seats

[2000blk1.8t]

I have a 2003 fairly base model. I bought a parts car with front AND rear heated seats. I have the entire donor car. I am planning on swapping out both front and rear seats for the heated ones. Is this a fairly straight forward swap? I'm assuming I need to pull the harnesses and the HVAC controller. Is there anything else tricky that i'm going to have trouble with? They aren't full power luckily. Just lumbar and heat. Parts car is a 2002.

[Charles.waite]

Nope. Just the wiring and the seats bolt right up.

[BoostFreeak]

Im pretty sure that its mostly straight forward! I would consider looking into the fact that there is a dedicated fuse for the heated seats under the dash if i remember correctly. That might be a challenge. Not positive though!

[2000blk1.8t]

Im pretty sure that its mostly straight forward! I would consider looking into the fact that there is a dedicated fuse for the heated seats under the dash if i remember correctly. That might be a challenge. Not positive though!

Awesome! Just pulled the donor in tonight. Plan on tearing it down this weekend. Sadly the car has the perforated vinyl seats. They are in good shape so I was planning on using them, but if swapping covers isn't a total nightmare I'd consider using the heated pads and and my leather covers. We'll see though.

[eljay]

Awesome! Just pulled the donor in tonight. Plan on tearing it down this weekend. Sadly the car has the perforated vinyl seats. They are in good shape so I was planning on using them, but if swapping covers isn't a total nightmare I'd consider using the heated pads and and my leather covers. We'll see though.

I am slooowly putting together a DIY on recovering a Recaro seat, so I can tell you that swapping covers is not too difficult, but very time consuming if you are doing it for the first time and trying not to bend and break the various plastic clips etc.
Regarding swapping heating elements, just be aware that they are glued to the seat foam pad. So, while it is certainly possible to remove them, you have to do it with a lot of patience and be careful not to break the heating wire.

[2000blk1.8t]

so Ive got the parts car tore down. I'm a little confused on which plugs I need to worry about taking from the parts car. My current car has zero power options. It is a full manual seat with no lumbar. I just want the heat element plug and the plug for the lumbar. There is a yellow, red, green and black.

[jjvwg]

i just swapped heated seats into my girlfriends car 2 weekends ago. swap is super easy. but i used a premade kufatec harness (which was wired wrong btw)... i think the hardest part for you is gonna be seperating the wiring you'll need from the wiring harnesses. you'll need to run wiring from the seat harness plug in the floor up to the climatronic unit, run power from the fuse box (fuse 44) to the climatronic unit and run power from the 30 post to fuse 44. you'll need a 30A fuse for the spot 44 also. yellow plug is the airbag, green is the seat heater plug, red is for seat power, and the black plug had wiring for the seat belts and some other stuff. wiring from plug C on the climatronic to the seats for temp sensor (C/5 to pin 1 on driver seat plug, C/6 to pin 1 on passenger seat plug). pins 2 and 3 on the seat plugs are grounds on both sides. plug F on the climatronic gets power from fuse 44 at F/3, F/1 (to pin 4 on drivers seat plug) and F/2 (to pin 4 on the pass. seat plug) feed power to the temp sensor. thats all there is to the seat heater circuit for the front seats. you'll also need to run through basic adaptations on the climatronic unit with vagcom.

[jjvwg]

heres the wiring diagrams for the rear seat heaters.

[2000blk1.8t]

thanks!! any help is appreciated. I wouldn't consider this an "easy" swap. Definitely time consuming. I spent all evening/night separating the harness like you said. I got both front seat plugs out and separated. I ended up cutting some of the wires I couldn't get to pull through the loom, but i'll solider them up when I do the install. I didn't want to pull the dash out so I could completely disassemble the harness. I haven't tackled the rear yet but now that I have a handle on it, it should be easy. I didn't know I had to run power to the "heated seats" fuse spot. I assumed it got its power from the HVAC that it already had. I'll have to look into that. My GF currently drives my car, so I didn't have it there to compare.

[Charles.waite]

Nope, the heater elements get power from a spot on the a-pillar. The HVAC rollers simply controls the power draw and seat temperature. I believe when I did mine the kit just pulled power from the power seat motor pins, but I can't recall exactly as it's been a while.

[jjvwg]

Nope, the heater elements get power from a spot on the a-pillar. The HVAC rollers simply controls the power draw and seat temperature. I believe when I did mine the kit just pulled power from the power seat motor pins, but I can't recall exactly as it's been a while.

power for the heating elements is brought from fuse 44, which is fed from the 30 post 12v constant power per the wiring diagrams. i doubt your harness pulled power from the seat power, would probably overload the circuit.

[2000blk1.8t]

so is there something goofy with my setup? I pulled the fuse holder from spot 44. it went over by the HVAC controller to a factory splice that leads to the HVAC, and from there going back to the rear heated seat controls. Unfortunately I cant really see much on the picture you posted. If I try to zoom in it gets too distorted to read the writing.

[jjvwg]

I'll have a look in a bit, not familiar with the rear heated seats, but I'm guessing they also get power from fuse 44 which is why it splices off. Either way, that wire from fuse 44 will go to pin 3 on plug F behind the climatronic unit

[jquattro]

I am slooowly putting together a DIY on recovering a Recaro seat, so I can tell you that swapping covers is not too difficult, but very time consuming if you are doing it for the first time and trying not to bend and break the various plastic clips etc.
Regarding swapping heating elements, just be aware that they are glued to the seat foam pad. So, while it is certainly possible to remove them, you have to do it with a lot of patience and be careful not to break the heating wire.

I'm interested in what you are working on too. I have an '02 A4 with rear heated seats and I have S4 rear seats to install. I'm planning on doing it this summer, when things warm up and I want to put the seat heaters into the S4 seats.

[Charles.waite]

power for the heating elements is brought from fuse 44, which is fed from the 30 post 12v constant power per the wiring diagrams. i doubt your harness pulled power from the seat power, would probably overload the circuit.

I think you're right actually. As I said, it's been a few years since I tackled that project.

I bought a wonky Kufatec harness on eBay that was for a c5 but with some cutting and rewiring I made it work.

I was probably confusing the ground block with the power block.

[Charles.waite]

Hmm. You know what, ignore what I was saying earlier about the power going to the seats. Pretty sure jjvwg was right and I was wrong. That wiring diagram should show all the connections.

[jjvwg]

so is there something goofy with my setup? I pulled the fuse holder from spot 44. it went over by the HVAC controller to a factory splice that leads to the HVAC, and from there going back to the rear heated seat controls. Unfortunately I cant really see much on the picture you posted. If I try to zoom in it gets too distorted to read the writing.

just looked at the wiring diagrams again. it does appear that cars with rear heated seats has the red/white power wire splice off to send power to the rear heater controls. i cant confirm if those wires go directly there or not, because the wiring diagrams dont show them straight throughand i was too lazy to track down where the wires go in between but youll find out when you pull all of that wiring from the donor car.

[2000blk1.8t]

finally got the wiring all done. Just set the seats in to test everything out. couple questions. It seems to take forever for the seats to get warm. Is that normal? maybe it just felt like forever with the car idling in the driveway. Secondly, the rear seat warmers aren't working. There is power to the switches, but no power leaving the switches. I find it odd both switches would happen to be bad. jjvwg what does your wiring schematic say the brown/white wire is? it goes to both front and rear heaters and I cant think of what that would be. Small wire too. Not a larger power or ground wire.

[jjvwg]

where is it in the harness? only brown/white wire im seeing in all of them is on the seat harness itself. fronts appear to be power to the heater temp sensor and rears it looks to connect the seat back and bottom heating elements.

[2000blk1.8t]

there is a brown/white wire from the seat harness in the floor to the HVAC. There is also A brown/white wire coming off the plugs for the rear seat heater switches. They all connect in one factory "wire nut".

[jjvwg]

there is a brown/white wire from the seat harness in the floor to the HVAC. There is also A brown/white wire coming off the plugs for the rear seat heater switches. They all connect in one factory "wire nut".

according to the wiring diagrams there is no brown/white wire between the front seat chassis plugs and the climatronic unit, nor are there any coming off the rear seat heater switches. you sure you have the color correct?

[2000blk1.8t]

yes. I will take some pictures when I get off work tonight. sorry bother you with this. I need to get my own Bentley. I have both hard cover volumes for the Passat b5's that I used to own. Haven't gotten one for this car yet.

[2000blk1.8t]

well I feel dumb. I did some searching on why the rear seats wouldn't be working. I can confirm they are activated by pressure. I just hopped in the seat last night expecting it to already be warm. Well I had my girlfriend actually sit in the seat while we took it for a spin tonight all put back together and it works perfect. I am a little disappointed in the drivers seat. The seat back doesn't appear to work, and the seat bottom takes much longer to warm up than the other seats. Looks like I need to look into replacing the heating element.