Heated Seat Kit - 17803282

[&CDFiXER%]

Apparently my heated seat kit number 19159289 is not a correct number according to the dealership. That could be, I am going by the instruction sheet, not the invoice that I no longer have. Oops. Mine is probably 17803282, if it helps.

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I am not sure if I have enough info to qualify as a how-to but here are some of my notes and recollections about my install:

 

The instructions start with the drivers side seat, but I did the passenger side first. I did this because I needed to use the truck and only had a few hours block of time every few days to work on this. I did not encounter any troubles doing it this way, just more hassle due to having to unbolt the passenger seat twice.

 

The tools needed are 10mm socket, and 11 & 15mm 'inverse' torx sockets. Socket extensions (6" and 10")are also very handy as is deep well version of the 15mm torx socket. Small flat bladed screw driver or pick. I used a 3.5mm flat head on the seat covering clips and a 2.0mm on the 56way electrical connector. I did not use a trim removal tool, I have one somewhere but my trim came off just fine without it. I also used a 7mm socket and philips head to remove some of the trim to run the wires to the switches, I amnot sure if this really needed done but I had 'stuff' blocking every access through the inner dash to the dash mounted switches, so I ran it behind the trim.

 

The seat removal is pretty straight forward. Just be careful not to crush any of the electrical connections when setting the seats off to the side.

 

The seat cover removal (I have the gray fabric covered seats) was pretty easy except the black-and-white pictures suck here -- in Figure one in the directions with my kit, the plastic 'rails' that are sewn to the seat cover are held into the foam seat itself by orange clips. The 3.5mm straight head worked awesome for this. I just inserted the screwdriver blade in the open cavity between the hard plastic piece sewn to the cover and the orange clip and twisted slightly and the plastic ribs would pop out. When doing the flat part of the seats, be careful to push the heating pad skinny part down into the seam in the foam. If you just flatten out the pad and stick it to the foam and leave no slack where the middle of the seat is, then you will have problems when it comes time to push the plastic pieces that are sewn to the seats back into the clips. I did not do this, but I can see how it might be an easy mistake. The seat back pockets/trim piece was pretty easy to remove, I slid mine down to free the top then pulled it out from the top and unhooked the bottom. There were three clips on each side of the seat back pocket/trim piece. I was able to reach in and release these manually.

 

The note in the instruction set that tells you to take caution when drilling the holes for the control box are well founded! The holes you are drilling are right over some nicely greased ball-screw drive units for the seat geometry adjustments. I used magnets to keep the seat frame magnetized and tapping lube on the drill bit to keep the metal filings from going everywhere.

 

Pushing the seat fabric trim plastic piece back through the gap between the seat and seat back worked and then pushing the front of the seat backwards while guide the foam with my fingers through the narrow gap worked well for me.

 

The wiring harness is pretty hard to screw up EXCEPT: Mine had no indications of which wire went to the seat heater and which wire went to the seatback/upright heater! As the wire colors were the same, I guessed. I got the passenger seat correct but reversed the drivers side. I also could not figure out where all the holes were in the seat framing members to push the wiring harness securing clips into. I used several but on the ones I could not find or match up a harness in a convenient way, I used heavy duty wire ties. The instructions make several mentions of wire ties so perhaps I am not too far off in what I did. By doing the passenger seat first, using its smaller harness, and moving the seat forward and back several times, I was able to verify none of my wiring was in the way of mechanical movement. The seat heater pads and seat back heater pads are interchangeable in my kit, they are the same for passenger and driver side. The seat heater pad is about twice the size of the seat back pad. The tech at the delearship said that made sense because he said he knows the seat heats much better than the seat back.

 

Routing all the harnesses and connectors away from the seat geometry adjustments in the drivers side seat was fun. I used several existing holes and wire ties and everything clears. I could not find a place to plug in the clips for the two large connectors that go to the harness for the dash. They are currently resting on top of the HVAC duct on the drivers side.

 

The harness that runs from the drivers side to the passenger side I ran underneath the carpet. The instructions say one goes under the carpet and another one goes between the carpet and the center console. As there is only one harness that goes from the drivers side to the passenger side, this made no sense to me. There is a channel underneath the carpet and I used that. I lifted the console out of the truck and the harness went in very easy and is laying in the channel. This will keep the harness from being pinched by the console. The weird part is they show pictures of TWO harnesses going from the drivers side to the passenger side. There is in fact only one. Weird.

 

Running the harness from the driver side seat area along the door and was also straight forward. Just be sure to route the wire along the floor and up along and behind the emergency brake actuator parts, there is plenty of harness length and there are clips there to hold the cable down. My instructions had a picture #31.5 of routing the harness around the hood release. Whaaaat? That did not look right to me as my trim fits tight there and even if I got the trim to fit back that way (doubtful) the hood release lever would have been interfered with. Use your judgment...

 

The black cover over the large wiring junction block to the left of the brake pedal is removed by gently pulling the sides away from the mounting 'ears' for the junction block. The cover is very easy to remove this way. Once the cover is off, the junction block will pop off the same ears, swivel down on hinge pins and release/fall away from the firewall. The two 56-way (56-way = 56 wiring connections are possible in these blocks) are black and gray on my truck. They are keyed and impossible with out large pliers or some huge a$$ arms to force in the wrong way. The pull tabs that both held and removed the connectors are blue on my truck. Both moved freely and started the connectors on their way to being fully released. I had to use my small screw driver to walk both of them out the rest of the way to free them from the junction block.

 

The two connectors are labeled M3 in each 56-wy connector. The pictures suck here very bad. There is an M1 row of pins on the junction block to help you locate M3 (third pin on row M). One of the 56-way connectors has a yellow wire and one has a purple wire. The instructions warn to only do one at a time but they are wire tied to the wires feeding each connector so unless you are color blind (and I am a little) you can not screw this part up. To remove the wires and connectors, use the small screw driver or pick to pop off the red plastic 'banjo' lock that is securing the pins in the one side of each 56-way conenctor. These red locks will simply pop and slide out. This is very important as the electrical connectors will NOT come out without the locks being released! Once the red locks are released and laying safely out of the way, then you can use the small screw driver on the front of the 56-way connector to lightly push the other release, it is very easy really. The yellow and purple wires you have released then go into two small electrical connectors supplied with the kit. The wire contact ends themselves will slide into the plastic connectors easily, you will feel a tiny click. You can then slide a gray (on my connectors) lock over the wire and it will be locked into the electrical connector. IMPORTANT: It might be helpful to match up the connector cavity needed to the matching plug on the new harness! The supplied connectors have two holes each but you only use one on each. Pictures 38 & 39 show the connector and lock, although mine was shaped slightly different and the lock was not able to be released fully from the connector, it simply slid into place to lock. Both of my new connectors/matching harness connectors are behind the big junction block, there is plenty of room.

 

The 4 way connector in my kit was cream colored and had one small gauge (@20) green wire in it and plugged into the front of the junction block.

 

Don't forget the ground wire taped to the 8-way connector wiring on the new harness! It gets spliced into the heavy black wire (looks like @ 16ga) in the next 8-way connector up on the junction block. On my truck (no rear seat entertainment center or powered side steps) the next connector up on the junction block was after an empty spot. The pictures kind of show this in picture #44. By the persons lower finger is the cream colored 4-way connector and to its left is an un-populated socket on the junction block and then the next space up is where the new 8-way connector is plugged in. Above that is another empty (on my truck) spot and then the connector with the heavy ground wire in the lower left (as you look at the rear of the connector) corner.

 

 

 

Ok enough for now, I will cover the dash at a later time. My fingers are tired and I have to go shoot my keyboard, it is a serious POS.

[&CDFiXER%]

Here are some pictures of the seats in various stages of being taken apart, interesting areas, or FYI type of stuff.

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And the rest of the seat picts....

[&CDFiXER%]

Oh, yes that is the living room. Why she lets me live I will never know. She is pretty easy to get along with though ;)

 

(should have been her the time I was using the sawzall in the kitchen -- while cooking...)

[Jason952]

any pics of the switches in the dash?

[&CDFiXER%]

As requested, pictures of the dash switches.

[&CDFiXER%]

Here are pictures of the drivers side heaters in operation. The seats have three levels of heat and two 'modes' of operation. One 'mode' is just the seat upright/back on at one of the three levels and the other 'mode' is both the seat back and seat itself on at one of the three levels.

[&CDFiXER%]

Oh yes, the gray connector for the dash switches is the drivers side. I guessed on that one correctly. Nothing in the instructions on this one. The other dash switch connector is black and is the passenger side connector.

 

As far as what harness plug goes to which seat heater, I had guessed on those as well since the instructions again do not say. Struck out on the passenger and driver side. Both sets of seat heaters were backwards, the seats would heat up when the seat upright/back was selected. Figures. I had routed the harnesses so they could be swapped easily and I did so. The colors of the wires in my kit may be of help. The passenger seat heater plug had 2 yellow wires, one solid black, and one black w/red stripe. The passenger side seat upright/back had one dark blue, one light blue, and two brown wires. The drivers side harness was not as helpful. BOTH connectors had 2 yellow wires and 2 black w/red stripe wires. If you get them wrong, just swap them later.

[&CDFiXER%]

Oh yes, the dash switches will go into the plastic bezel any way BUT the bezel will not line up with the hole in the dash and the plastic clips that hold the bezel in UNLESS you put the bezel in the right way! This means the switches have to go in the right way too. If you look at my pictures, you will see the distance between the top of the holes for the switches and the top of the bezel is narrower than the space at the bottom. This places the switches just slightly towards the top of the mounting bezel.

[Jason952]

great, thanks for the pic!

[&CDFiXER%]

The instructions I scanned at 600 dpi look better than the originals. The downside is each file is @4MB. Scanned at 300 dpi, not so good.

 

Anybody have a reccomendation on where to store the scanned images?

 

I can dump them to a pdf but they will probably get bigger in a pdf.

 

I dumped them to jpeg so they are already compressed. I had to scan in 'color' mode because black-and-white left the images totally unuseable.

[&CDFiXER%]

The instructions I scanned at 600 dpi look better than the originals. The downside is each file is @4MB. Scanned at 300 dpi, not so good.

 

Anybody have a reccomendation on where to store the scanned images?

 

I can dump them to a pdf but they will probably get bigger in a pdf.

 

I dumped them to jpeg so they are already compressed. I had to scan in 'color' mode because black-and-white left the images totally unuseable.

 

Ok I was not thinking. I did a quick batch resize and they did not loose much of the detail they appear to have gained when I scanned them.

 

The directions are 24 pages in length, but they are in multiple languages. All I scanned were the english version.

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