Heated Seats

[CREGAN]

Thanks for putting pics up. I have been following this thread and am very interested in how it turns out- it is awesome to see the process happen.

Craig

[jwfchase]

I use a natural gas seat warmer...

Bean powered?

[Firesong]

Just a silly question :)

This will work for the L300 seats?
Do the warmers need to be just under the top fabric?

Thanks
FS

[jessef]

Just a silly question :)

This will work for the L300 seats?
Do the warmers need to be just under the top fabric?

Thanks
FS

you are correct !

[Mr. Flibble]

I will be going through the element install on Saturday and then post photos.

The heated seats I referenced at the beginning of this thread will actually work for pretty much any vehicle that does not have the seat fabric glued directly to the foam, and that is extremely rare.

The kits have pretty much everything you need to put the seat pads in. Or, at least the ones that are cheaper do! The "waterproof" ones I got did not have the double sided tape that lets you "glue" the seat pads in place during the install. Neither of these kits contain the connectors to wire into the 12 volt power supply, but that of course is easy enough to do!

For those who are curious, here is a bad photo taken with my iPhone of the switches installed in the Jeep.

I used a stepped drill bit to drill the holes to ensure that the switches fit perfectly in the hole. I tested this first on a piece of garbage plastic to be absolutely certain I had the correct hole diameter for the switch, once I had that done, I put the switches in and used a little bit of krazy glue on the back to prevent the switches from spinning. (Even though they do have a bit of a tab on them, I glued them just the same).

Switches in the Jeep Console

306340_10150473069190907_670215906_10700174_1702125525_n.jpg (55.44 KiB) Viewed 3796 times

Edit:

Here is another install link, and it shows how use the "silver tape" you get with the seats, and shows How to cut a hole in the seat pad if you need to. I had no idea what the silver tape was for! Wish I knew that before hand.

http://www.clublexus.com/forums/is-seco ... ats-2.html

[raffix]

can you take A LOT of pics? and i mean like a S**tload of pics :D because I will be doing this as well. and im a super noob. :P

the passenger seats only have the back heated, but the driver's have both the lumbar/back heated.

Oh does changing the elements make the seat a lot warmer compared to the old elements thats been used for 15years?

[Mr. Flibble]

Oops, double post in here!

(Note, I will be slow to update this thread as work projects are consuming all my time at the moment!)

[Mr. Flibble]

can you take A LOT of pics? and i mean like a S**tload of pics :D because I will be doing this as well. and im a super noob. :P

the passenger seats only have the back heated, but the driver's have both the lumbar/back heated.

Oh does changing the elements make the seat a lot warmer compared to the old elements thats been used for 15years?

Yes, I will take a bunch of photos.

The fact that you have a Royal Exceed like I do means you will have to do far less wiring.

If you have a working seat, I would leave it alone as changing the elements won't make much of a difference. The new elements might heat up faster and have greater coverage, but other than that there won't be a difference I know of.

Your wiring will be fairly simple as the switches are already done. In fact, if you look under your seats you will see the connectors for your heated seat wiring already there. So, in the case of the Royal, you only need to replace the broken elements, wire them to the existing wiring for the seats, and you are done!

I will say this - when it comes time to do it, you could leave the seats in place.

Don't.

Take them out, carry them into the house and work on them there. While you could do them inside the vehicle, there are some finicky things you will have to do, and that is much easier to do inside. it is also much easier to take the covers off when they are lying on the floor in your living room than when attached to the vehicle.

I also highly recommend you read through the Jeep install that I linked at the beginning of this thread, as the process for our Delica's will be almost exactly the same believe it or not!

[Mr. Flibble]

Ok, so I just got the drivers seat done, and after much agony and trial and error I got the seat pads in place. I took the drivers seat out before I began, which is what I would say is the normal best practice, taking out the seats and bringing them in the house to set them on carpet.

As it turns out, I had a nightmare getting the seat out, the old Karaoke amplifier under the drivers seat, plus lots of un named wiring everywhere made getting the seats out a chore, worse, as I put the seat back in, I stripped 2 bolts!

But, generally, it is easiest to do this kind of thing inside. However, I did not follow the normal procedure... In fact, I cheated.

So now I have CHEATED SEATS

The pads are in place, but I have not had time to go through with the wiring. Figuring out how to do everything in a Delica specific way as opposed to the directions for the Jeep TJ took a bit of figuring out. In many cases I muscled through things and bent a few of the seat securing mechanisms. But it seems to have worked so far. I leave it up to you if you want to follow my directions, or do it the "professional" way as outlined in the Jeep tutorial. :)

First, if you feel the need to fight with removing the seat, unbolt all four.

Dirty_Bolt.jpg (92.64 KiB) Viewed 3734 times

Realize the need to clean your carpets as well...

Annoying_Cables.png (608.73 KiB) Viewed 3734 times

Fight for an amazingly long amount of time with the millions of cables while you remove the old disconnected amplifier that you did not need in my case...

Skyward.png (250.02 KiB) Viewed 3734 times

It also helps if your girlfriend is playing the new Skyward Sword at the time.
And bring the seat inside if you desire. (Although, I now believe you could do it in place with the brute force method I found).

[Mr. Flibble]

Looking under the bottom of the chair you can see one of the clips holding on the back of the seat. (You can access this WITHOUT removing the seat BTW)

The clip holding on the bottom seat fabric can be seen when the seat is upside down...

Back_Clip.png (554.41 KiB) Viewed 3730 times

You can pull on it near the middle in two places to tug it off the side parts...

Pull_Clips.jpg (84.13 KiB) Viewed 3730 times

I pulled both ends off in this manner.

The middle part was more problematic, I ended up using the end of a crowbar as a "hook" to nudge the piece off... what happened in reality is that I bent that middle part all out of shape and ended up manhandling the plastic bit right off the seat! Not the best way, but it worked... after I bent the metal back into place...

Pull_Front.jpg (91.96 KiB) Viewed 3730 times

I then pulled hard at the front of the seat, pulling down to detach the plastic rails from the seat

More to follow, other chores beckon before finishing updating all this....

[Mr. Flibble]

Pull the front of the cover off....

Pulling cover off (Actually quite easy!)

z_Seat_Off.jpg (89.43 KiB) Viewed 3700 times

It comes off pretty easily.

Off

z_Seat_Off_2.jpg (105.36 KiB) Viewed 3700 times

Here you can see the old heated seat element, it is actually PART of the seat cover! I ended cutting the bottom one out with a knife to make room for the new one. You don't have to do this if you don't want to, but I wanted it out of the way for the larger element in my case.

Old Element and cover

z_Under_Cover.png (606.95 KiB) Viewed 3700 times

[Mr. Flibble]

Here you can see the metal rail that holds the seats in place. There are metal hog rings on this, or at least some sewing holding down the seat cover to this rod.

As my seat covers fit very loosely, I realized I would not have to cut the cover away from these points, and I had more than enough room to slide the heated seat element under the seat without having to do any cutting on the inside. If your seats fit tightly however, you will need to cut the seat free from these and when done, re-attach the cover to the seat with zip ties.

z_wires_and_hog_rings.jpg (84.02 KiB) Viewed 3700 times

Here you can see that I was able to reach my hand with ease all the way to the back of the seat, this is because the covers are so loose on my old seats. Again, if you can't do this, then you will have to cut away the cover from the hog rings to put your elements in. (See the heated seat install for the Jeep at the beginning of this thread for how that works.)

z_reach_back.jpg (91.76 KiB) Viewed 3700 times

If you do choose to go the route of cutting all the hog rings, this photo will help. Note, you need to replace the hog rings with zap straps when you put the seat cover back on!

Hog_Ring.png (736.74 KiB) Viewed 3678 times

Here is how I fed the element underneath the seat. However, I found my element was a little too large to do it exactly in this manner...

Z_Cheating.jpg (96.7 KiB) Viewed 3700 times

So, I cut out the bottom of the seat element to make enough room for the wide seat element I had. I could have put the element under all that, but I could not see the point in having a double layer of fabric on top of my heating elements to slow down the warm up time.

here is the removed old element that was part of the original cover.

z_cut_Old.jpg (115.2 KiB) Viewed 3700 times

After sliding the element underneath, I put some double sided tape on the front of the seat to help hold it in place while I was snugging everything down. Given how slippery the waterpoof elements are, in retrospect, I would have put more double sided tape on these to prevent slight slippage in the seat cover when seated. The non waterproof ones don't have a slight slippery feel to them. This is not actually something you would notice AT ALL unless you were the person who installed the seats though! :)

z_Double_Tape.jpg (98.9 KiB) Viewed 3700 times

Fold the seat down over the tape to make it stick. NOTE, if you get the non-waterproofed version it will have double sided tape already attached, so you won't need to buy any extra to do this.

z_Lower_Heat.jpg (92.1 KiB) Viewed 3684 times

[Mr. Flibble]

Once that is done, and you have routed the cable out the back of the seat which I have not shown.
(But believe me, putting the cable out the back of the seat is REALLY REALLY easy. You will see what I mean if you try it yourself. It just comes out the back of the part where you unfolded the plastic from the 3 metal bits (where I bent the middle one) You really don't need photos of that! )

Wait, no, I do have a photo!

z_wires_back.jpg (94.41 KiB) Viewed 3684 times

Put the seat cover totally back on:

z_Folding_Back.jpg (90.56 KiB) Viewed 3699 times

Then fold the front down and snap the plastic on the edge of the seat into the metal edge of the seat itself. This is really simple to do:

z_Folding_In.jpg (82.21 KiB) Viewed 3699 times

Attach the back part after routing the cable (Again, that part on the back of the seat with the 3 metal bits I did not picture here, You can see photos of me removing it earlier in this series. Re-attaching is really easy.)

Next, we move on to the lumbar support. The lower seat part is now done except for the electrical wiring.

There are two options here.

Option 1, remove the arm of the seat by unzipping the arm cover, unscrewing the arm, remove the headrest, remove the back hog rings, remove the whole seat cover and the internal hog rings, add the seat element, and then perform the reverse order to finish off.

OR

Cheat your seats.

This involves, removing the Hog rings at the back (required):

z_Back_Hog.jpg (91.42 KiB) Viewed 3699 times

[Mr. Flibble]

Now, cut those four hog rings. They are tough, and you might have to cut them into little bits to get them all out. They will leave very small holes in the seat. I recommend enlarging the holes with an awl or screwdriver if you have one that works. I actually used a two pronged turkey fork as it was the only thing I had on hand! (The point of enlarging the holes is so you can feed zip ties through them when done everything else to replace the missing hog rings.)

z_Hog_Rings_Cut.png (672.28 KiB) Viewed 3684 times

Next to those hog rings, on either side of the back you will find some small plastic clips that pull out to the sides with ease. Take these apart as well. (No need to cut, just slide them when the hog rings are gone.)

Clips in:

z_sliders.png (553.13 KiB) Viewed 3684 times

The slider clips removed:

z_Clips_Out.png (603.42 KiB) Viewed 3684 times

[Mr. Flibble]

If you want to remove the whole cover, you are going to have to flip the seat cover back like this, and pull up...

A1_Flip.png (506.83 KiB) Viewed 3683 times

However, to do so, requires removing the mid passenger footrest, arm rest and headrest. Not to mention cutting all the hog rings inside the seat back itself. I took a quick look at this and decided I did not need to to this at all.

Instead, I pulled the fabric for the seat through the front of the seat like so:

A2_Pull_Through_Front.png (529.11 KiB) Viewed 3683 times

And with this part forward, I found I could reach my hand under the seat cover as I had done before with the bottom seat pad. I saw that there was absolutely no need to remove the entire cover at all! This would save me tons of time!

So, I matched the element up to the size of the seat:

A3_Match_Size.png (414.62 KiB) Viewed 3683 times

Then I took note of where the actual internal heating elements where. (I drew on them with sharpie marker so people on the forum could get a good idea of where they actually are in relation to things).

A4_Mark_Parts.jpg (71.6 KiB) Viewed 3683 times

I then cut the top edges of the seat taking care not to cut where the side "rails" are on the seat, but enough to taper the size of the element to fit in the back of the seat where the seat tapers at the top. I used the silver tape provided with the kit as I now know what that stuff is for!

A5_Cut_Top.jpg (77.32 KiB) Viewed 3683 times

Then I just slid the seat element inside the seat and pushed it up with my hand. It fit between the old element and the seat with ease, so no cutting was required. I then fed the cable out the back and made certain to route it to the side with the other cable I had moved out before.

A6_Feed_Wire.jpg (102.31 KiB) Viewed 3683 times