Possible to add heated/cooled OEM seats?

harveyfamily · December 29, 2016

I have a 2015 Sierra SLE with the cloth seats. Is it possible to swap the seats out with the factory heated and cooled and use the factory switches? I know I have some wiring in that area behind the center bezel.

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Andy Seibel · December 29, 2016

Do you already have the switches in the dash? I doubt it if you don't already have heated seats.

I have a feeling that none of this would be plug and play even if you got the new seats. maybe someone has done it and can report the cost. All of these options would be cheaper if purchased with the truck than to modify later.

14 Silvy · December 29, 2016

It would be a lot of work and expensive then you would have to have the bcm flashed (if dealer will). I didn't go with cooled but I put a katzkin leather kit and a universal seat heater kit and absolutely love it. The factory heated and cooled seats use fans iirc. The kit I used has carbon fiber elements and heats up quickly and better than my wife's Denali.

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dlang13 · January 17, 2017

I popped off my grey piece around my screen today and found 2 plugs on each side which looks like its for the heated seats. What are the chances if i was to get a switch the power would be going to the seat as well? Thoughts?

TJay74 · January 17, 2017

No, even though the wiring harness is there you will be missing the module under the seats, the elements in the seats and you will not be able to get around the part where the BCM would have to be flashed for the heated/cooled seats to work. Dealer CANT do that as GM does not allow it on the 2014+ K2xx trucks.

If the truck did not come with the option/feature from the factory then you wont be able to add it after the fact with OEM parts. Your only option will be to go aftermarket with the heated seats.

Harry Glands · November 17, 2017

I also noticed the plugs are at the factory switch locations.

what I would like to know is .....

does anyone know if the harness is run to the seats from the dash?

I was thinking of adding aftermarket heated seats when I do my Katzkins leather installation.

It would make things easier if there was power at the factory switch locations ( at the harness plug), and if the harness is run to the seats that would be awesome too.

I don't need factory controller, but was not sure if the wiring from the switch location to the seats would not work without BCM programming.

bndawgs · November 17, 2017

The easiest thing to do here, would be to wait for @pgamboa to get hot in the summer and install cooled seats. Then just buy a pnp harness from him. Lmao

pgamboa · November 17, 2017

2 hours ago, bndawgs said:

The easiest thing to do here, would be to wait for @pgamboa to get hot in the summer and install cooled seats. Then just buy a pnp harness from him. Lmao

LOL. Ok. Here is what I know about it. I have had the opportunity to help a local member with this retrofit.

Current As-Build - His Truck is a 2015 that came with Heated Cloth Seats. So since had Heated Seats, he already had the K29 Heating Control Module under the passenger seat. He swapped the seat heater button on the I/P with one that has the heat and the cool buttons. All the LEDs on the buttons lit up. This is when he came to me.

He acquired Leather Heated/Cooled (ventilated) seats. It also came with seat harnesses. When he tried to install the seats WITH their harnesses, there were issues. He lost power functionality of the seats (couldn't move them at all with the side controls). Air bag light on the DIC came on (we think there was an airbag module missing on the passenger seat triggering the error).

So I spent the next 3 days (different times), exploring all the connectors between the seats, tracing down all the circuits, cross referencing circuits, etc. I found MANY differences in all of it. I found connector ends that were physically different, the seat motors were different (think seat memory vs non-seat memory), etc. Seat motors on the cooled seats had additional circuits for the memory recall while the stock seat didn't.

The first goal was to get the seats to power adjust so he could move them to a comfortable driving position. We ended up reverting to using the stock harnesses and transferring them onto the Cooled seats. Think of DL8 to DL3 Upgrade and what happens with you try to use a DL3 Harness on a DL8 Truck. The circuits in the harnesses were all "optioned" and pinned for each option. Once we got the power adjust working, we moved on to the cooling. I found a Vent Blower circuit missing going to each seat. This comes from the K29 Heater Control Module. So I ran a line from the module to each seat. I also had to transfer connectors since they physically didn't fit. There was a lot of circuit rerouting/repinning between the harnesses just to get them to link up and main seat harness connector.

The END RESULT. We got the cooled portion of the seats working. We're NOT able to get the heat portion to work. Ran out of time. The issue with the heat circuits is that the Cooled Seats contain a 4-pin connector (power and some reference signal circuits) for the heat portion while the heat only seats have a 2-pin (heat/ground).

So can you add cooled seats on a truck that came with heat? YES. Can you add heated and/or heated/cooled seats to truck that doesn't have heat? Most likely NO.

There is still some work here on this and haven't had any time to resume.

Hope this helps

Edited November 17, 2017 by pgamboa

TJay74 · November 17, 2017

i will second what PGAMBOA just said, in short NO you cant do this swap. If the truck didnt come with it from the factory then you cant add it after the fact. No matter what you do with hard parts and putting the pieces into place, you wont be able to get around the BCM programming that you will need in order to get everything to talk to each other correctly.

We ran into this on the Camaro6 forum with the 1LE Camaro's. We have the exact same Recaro seats that the ZL1 uses, all of the heating elements and cooling parts are in the seat. A member has been at it for 6 months now substituting parts from a Camaro 2SS that has heated/cooled seats and he still cant get it to work and that is even with custom circuit boards and such. The stock cooling feature uses PWM to control the motors, so short of replacing the hard parts with ones that use a on/off signal and motors it isnt a viable upgrade.

Sad too as I really would have loved to do some slight mods and have heated/cooled seats in my Camaro SS 1LE.

swathdiver · November 18, 2017

Anyone with a laptop and GMs MDI system should be able to flash the module from Tis2Web with a 3-day subscription. People have done it with the Tech2 on the GMT900s so why not the latest?

TJay74 · November 18, 2017

3 hours ago, swathdiver said:

Anyone with a laptop and GMs MDI system should be able to flash the module from Tis2Web with a 3-day subscription. People have done it with the Tech2 on the GMT900s so why not the latest?

Because it requires GMTIS to override and put a custom BCM firmware in the system to turn those features on, and GM just doesnt allow that to be done now. The modules are all VIN tied now, so the system knows exactly what features were shipped with that VIN and it wont allow them to flash in features that were not there as the vehicle came off of the assembly line.

swathdiver · November 18, 2017

Ok, I thought that your explanation even applied to the GMT900s as well but we are still able to add things.

BlkSS · November 20, 2017

On ‎11‎/‎18‎/‎2017 at 1:54 AM, TJay74 said:

Because it requires GMTIS to override and put a custom BCM firmware in the system to turn those features on, and GM just doesnt allow that to be done now. The modules are all VIN tied now, so the system knows exactly what features were shipped with that VIN and it wont allow them to flash in features that were not there as the vehicle came off of the assembly line.

Would White Auto and Media Services (www.whiteautoandmedia.com) be able to do it? They show to offer custom BCM programming.

TJay74 · November 28, 2017

Yes, Chris could possibly do it but....

If you every took the truck in for service or warranty work that requires the BCM to be updated it would over-write the custom flash from Chris. Then you would have to send the BCM out to them again to be flashed again. While the BCM is out the truck is not driveable.

Viktorrocks15 · November 28, 2017

2015-2017 Silverado cloth heated seats to 2017 leather heated and cooled seats.

Forgive me for not take before pictures when I had the jet black cloth seats but I’m sure everyone has an idea. One late night I found a pair of 2017 HC jet black leather seats on offer up for a really good price, I just wanted the leather seats. On the process of purchasing the seats I found out the seats were ventilated, I thought my truck is not equipped for that so that’s probably not going to work, again I was just shooting for the leather seats., I’m the middle of the process I purchase a stereo trim piece because I messed up mine from trying to spray painted and the one I got came with the ventilated and heated buttons. So installed it with those buttons and what do you know.! My passenger side worked!!! Driver didn’t. Eventually with phil gamboa helping me with wiring and schematics, and more wiring.. they’re are finally working. Heating is not working yet but we’re in Texas so I don’t really mind. Here’s some pictures. And phil gamboa himself..[emoji1303][emoji1306]

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