Heated Seat Retrofit - Removing elements from Donor Seats into your existing seats.

Joe90k

Joe90k

Speed doesn't Kill!
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I have missed having heated seats in my A3 this winter from having them in my Golf before.

As the title says, I have found all the parts to do this, including new seats and climate control for my A3. I am going to dismantle the new front seats and install them into my existing. Has anyone attempted this before? I assume the fabric on the front seats can me removed and the heater elements are only pinned on. I assume this because the elements are a part that is separate to the seat and must be able to be replaced if they fail or short. I did this in my Golf MK4 so it shouldn't be too different.

I am an auto-electrician by day so I have no problem with wiring etc. I will try to make this into a how to with pictures as I do it.

So far I have:
Donor seats (with heating elements)
Climate Panel with Heated seat switches

Looms will be constructed using various parts. If anyone is wanting these once I have made the first set I may be able to make others looms for a price depending on the cost of the parts etc.

Joe
 
Why not just put the donor seats in ?

Or are yours leather and the donor ones fabric?
 
Donor seats are all cloth and black mine are half leather with white inserts.

You have a PM btw.

Joe
 
I'm also doing the retrofit of existing pads as I got the seats cheap and can sell them on after to get some money back. I got the full set black on black cloth with door cards from a 3dr 08 A3.
 
Do you own ELSA? Its the repair manual & has all the wiring diagrams you will need. This would help show where the wires & possible relay all need to go. It can be downloaded from peer to peer (its huge though) or bought off ebay. All I can say is best of luck replacing the leather & getting it smooth, I've heard its tricky.
 
I have got ELSA now so should be quite easy, good idea though. The re-upholstering shouldn't be too much of an issue, my dad is an upholsterer so should be easy enough.
 
We havnt done this before but have fitted new elements to seats which means stripping them down and to be honest that was a right pain in the clock plus the sponges on the seats we did had clips or locaters to hold the elements in place which i am not sure the seats you have will
 
Can the clips be removed from the donor seats? Surely they aren't attached permanently to the foams. I don't mind a pain of a job, I'm sure I've had worse. I had to fit the elements to my golf and it was as you say a pain, took me a while but its worth it in the long run. There are only one part number for the foams, obviously there are different for different seat shapes but the elements are identical for all seats. I'll give it a go, the outlay of it is next to nothing and I want heated seats lol
 
Joe90k said:
I have got ELSA now so should be quite easy, good idea though. The re-upholstering shouldn't be too much of an issue, my dad is an upholsterer so should be easy enough.
Click to expand...
That is handy, I remember a member getting Audi to replace his base cover under warrenty due to wear & it was all mis-shapen!!


A write-up would be good :)
 
I looked into doing this including almost buying donor seats but speaking to people at work who do the seat trimmming i decided to bin the idea as getting the seat covers back on all smooth would be an absolute nightmare as you need to stretch them to get them off in the first place and stretch them again to get them back on.

Good Luck!
 
RobinA3 said:
I looked into doing this including almost buying donor seats but speaking to people at work who do the seat trimmming i decided to bin the idea as getting the seat covers back on all smooth would be an absolute nightmare as you need to stretch them to get them off in the first place and stretch them again to get them back on.

Good Luck!
Click to expand...

hi there nice car you have, could you tell me what type of sideskirts you have fitted, and the supplier, would you know if they would fit on my 2007 sline.
gary
 
Sorry to hijack your thread, bu I've only got two questions:

Is there difference in construction (I mean the metal parts inside) between the S-Line seats and standard seats?

Obviously the shape of the foams is different, but is it possible to put the S-Line leather foams onto standard seats?

Cheers
 
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