Retro fit seat heaters

adriahome

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Has anyone done this and which heaters did you use?
we are having a refurb at Regal Ilkeston and seems a good opportunity to get this done
 
Not sure there is such a thing, I'd be inclined to buy some upmarket seats which have it fitted and get the controls and relays etc too.
 
adriahome said:
Has anyone done this and which heaters did you use?
we are having a refurb at Regal Ilkeston and seems a good opportunity to get this done
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Yes there are companies who will do this, here's one in Bristol.
But before doing this consider a couple of things.
You may require a larger starter battery, and is the material used on your chairs suitable
I don't think TEP is suitable, as well as some others.

Heated Seats Upgrade

Retrofit Heated Seats for any vehicle Have you ever considered upgrading your car seats to be HEATED..?? Fitting heated seats will certainly take the chill o
www.automotive-control.co.uk www.automotive-control.co.uk
 
Best suited to leather covered seats but it is a pretty simple thing to retro-fit and makes sense to co-incide with a seat recover. I fitted a pair of Waeco Heaters on my car which worked nicely. Had a seat and a back section with a high and low setting.
I've no idea how much companies charge to fit generally, but as mentioned, if the covers are coming off anyway, it is dead simple to do at that time. The kit I bought was just £50 for the pair which was pretty good I thought (that was back in 2008 mind).
This is the kind of kit I am talking about ..... https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/261877066299

I love heated seats and if I was getting a seat recovered would definately fit again. On a camper, one thing to make sure of is there is enough slack and movement to allow for the seat to swivel. If there is a pressure sensor on the seat (for airbag/belt pretensioner) you could use that as a guide.
 
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Pudsey Bear said:
Every day a school day on a forum :D :D

dunno if I would or not TBH, but if redoing the covers anyway I suppose siting the control would be the hardest part.
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Its actually pretty straightforward.
If buying a kit such as a Waeco ones, the cabling and switches are included and you just run the cabling to the seats in the most appropriate way for your installation (so routing will depend on switch location and battery location for example) and plug the bits in.

So to give an example of the one I did back in 2008 on my 2005 RAV4, I was swapping out the cloth seat covers for Leather covers, so took the seats out and ran the cables to go underneath the seats.
Ran from the front dash area along the centre console and then to each seat position under the carppet, using existing cable runs wherever possible
1674123647814.png

Waeco supplied colour-coded cables - I used Blue for the Drivers side and Black for the Passenger.

Then have the cable pop up in the most suitable place. I came up where there was existing cabling seat (the Yellow cables will be for the side seat airbags and the other cable in the corrograted conduit would be the seat pressure sensor).
1674123871098.png
1674123805671.png

The Weaco cable has just three wires - one will be ground, the other two will be for used for High and Low. As you can see, the wires are not particularly heavy - seat heaters are pretty low intensity and don't have to draw a big current to be effective.

Then fit the heater controls.
The switches fitted will depend on the Heater system. Some OEM heated seats have multiple settings (I think VWs have about 5!); some, like the Corsa I have now, just have an On/Off (I do wish it had a high/low as it does get pretty warm!); Most I think are maybe the high/low option, which is what the Waeco ones I fitted were (they even had an "L" and "R" on the switch which was a nice touch).
1674124241507.png

I did actually make a little tweak to the kit and added an LED indicator into the circuit for each switch that would go Orange in the "I" (low) setting and Red in the "II" (high) setting, but that was the only change I made and it was not necessary, just something I wanted to do.

Switches were in a very typical place for this kind of accessory and just used existing dash blanks, making holes as needed.
And the final setup, with the newly covered seats back in place.
1674124599929.png

(as an aside, the photo above also shows the aftermarket Cruise Control stalk from the 'Gold Cruise' kit from Conrad-Anderson on the lower left of the Steering Wheel binnacle. The little white bits on the end are the three speed presets you can engage to take the car automatically to your preferred speeds rather than driving to a speed and then engaging cruise. That really is much better than OEM Cruise :) )


Posted all the above really to say:
a) Yes, this is an absolutely and very doable thing.
b) No, it is not a complicated process and really is a DIY process if someone wanted to do it themselves. If someone is happy working on their own Campervan/Motorhome, this is well within their possibilities I would say.


The most complex part is actually properly fitting fitted seat covers. My seat covers were full replacements, with the originals removed and the replacements installed, which does need some specific tools and whilst I was able to do the rear seats myself, I actually got a company to fit the new front covers - but I handed the two seats to them, old covers removed and seat heater pads in place ready for them to fit the cover, so the fact I now had heater seat pads was irrelevant to their work.
 
Thank you David, might be handy on those cold winter mornings, fire up the engine and then put the seats on for five minutes, What I would really like is heated windows, got them on the Fiesta, I hate the ritual or trying to clear the screen and get the water out of the van, I do have to vacs but someone has lost the chargers :rolleyes:

We have Remis blinds but unless we parked facing the rising sun, they make zero difference
 
Pudsey Bear said:
Thank you David, might be handy on those cold winter mornings, fire up the engine and then put the seats on for five minutes, What I would really like is heated windows, got them on the Fiesta, I hate the ritual or trying to clear the screen and get the water out of the van, I do have to vacs but someone has lost the chargers :rolleyes:

We have Remis blinds but unless we parked facing the rising sun, they make zero difference
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My Corsa has an electric windscreen (fitted as standard as the air ventilation on them was poor and Vauxhall decided that was the cheaper fix). Really handy :)

Something ref the heated seats ... there is no reason why in a camper they could not be connected to the Leisure battery if the cab seats get swivelled and used when parked up to give a bit of extra localised heat. It would be neccessary to keep an eye on the power use of course, but it is always a possibility ....
 
I don't really use them David, comfy yes, but I like to hold hands wiv me bird in the back ;) ;) and she is a lounger, plus we tend to reverse park with the rear lounge facing the view/sun, and ready for a swift exit should we need to.

We have had a few vans with a front lounge and they are okay but we've gone back to the rear lounge now.
 
For the price of recoving I got top of the range front seats from recycled center / scrap yard. If you do, get switches also from same vehicle as they have the icons on.. Range rover or Bentley. ?.. Have cooling fans and or vibrating motions included. Lush. But for now.
I just brought the chrysler voyager front seats all electric been fitted in van 2 years now. but not wired up the heater part as they have air bags also fitted and need the switches to know what wires do what . So stuck .
 
1 Cup said:
For the price of recoving I got top of the range front seats from recycled center / scrap yard. If you do, get switches also from same vehicle as they have the icons on.. Range rover or Bentley. ?.. Have cooling fans and or vibrating motions included. Lush. But for now.
I just brought the chrysler voyager front seats all electric been fitted in van 2 years now. but not wired up the heater part as they have air bags also fitted and need the switches to know what wires do what . So stuck .
Click to expand...
I don't have a specific answer, but in the VW Conversion world, people fit all manner of front seats to replace the originals, including fully-electric ones. If you visit https://www.vwt4forum.co.uk/ and do a search you might find some posts that could cover the wiring on the Voyager seats?


You will need to confirm the following for yourself, but there tends to be an industry-wide standard of using yellow cables and connectors for airbag circuitry, so as long as you stay away from the yellow plugs you should be ok.
PS. I fitted replacement seats in my VW T5 which originally had Side Airbags but they had been removed prior to shipping from Poland (Regulations about transporting explosives). Depending where/how you bought the seats, you might find the airbags have been removed on yours? They would likely never be any use anyway as you won't have the right sensors for them as you have the 'wrong' vehicle.
 
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