New Seats

[foxdie]

Old thread resurrection alert!!!

Finally, a year after having the seats installed, I have wired them up (well, just one seat so far) for heating. Very toasty in a matter of seconds which is so handy in this weather. I still need to tidy up the whole install but its working and have Jason (foxdie) to thank for this. Jason was able to figure out the technical drawings, do the voltage/continuity tests etc to get the seats working. Took longer that we thought it would, so the passenger seat will have to wait for a while. Thanks Jason

I have also decided that I will be looking into fabricating a proper frame for the seat out of steel. I have located a steelworks close to me who will take the project on, so I'll hopefully take proper measurements and be able to rig up a generic template for use with any seat out there.

Glad I could help mate, although we're not out of the woods yet, they're currently permanently wired up to the car battery (luckily the seat controls have an "off" setting) but I'm gonna cook something up for Atik that'll only supply power to the seat controls only when the ignition is on and only after a button is pressed, this way the seats won't automatically be on in any situation, but you can simply press a button to turn them on

There's a mountain of needless wires in the looms to these Audi seats, but once you cut past the useless, they're not that hard to wire up. If anyone fancies going the way Atik or John TheAntique have gone (Audi Leather Heated / Electric recaros) then we'll put together some documentation to make the transition easier

[Atik]

A day of road-testing these seats in some cold weather, and they are frikking awesome! Starting the car this morning in 2 degrees celcius, I switched the seats to max (6) and found that by the time I'd reached the end of my street (about 800 yards) they were already toasting my behind. I left them on for about 15 minutes and found that the heat was very very efficient - almost too much! On the return drive, I had them set to 2 and they heated up just as quick and maintained a very comfortable temperature for the drive.

Jason, I may ask for a small modification to the system, in that I will be mounting the driver side controller between the handbrake lever and the seatbelt clip. There is an almost perfect spot for this to be mounted with a couple of zip ties. I dont think it's safe to mount the control for the driver in an area that cannot be seen/accessed clearly as its very difficult to flip open the armrest and adjust. The passenger side controller wont fit on the handbrake tunnel area so I may retain the original plan for that one. I have also got a few metres of black 3-core wire (like the wire I already had) which would fit very tidy under the seat. I'll replace the wiring we created with that single lead just to tidy up, especially as the driver switch will now sit in a visible location. I'll also loop some wire with crimps to reduce the number of grounds and +12V that connect to the central connection rail that we made. For those that are finding this gobbledygook, I'll be posting up pictures and documentation in this thread soon, so that anyone else wishing to go the same way can do it easy.

This is easily one of the best mods I've done on the car.

[John TheAntique]

Hre's where I put the switches in the centre unit between the seats. Atik I still have details of the heating wireing and photos if you want them again.

[Atik]

Thanks John. I actually still have the details you sent to me. We used those details you provided to work out the circuitry. There was a difference in the wiring between your installation and mine. The wiring colours and plugs were all different to yours which is why I struggled for ages.

I thought about placing the controls there too, but I dont want to lose a cupholder.