Freezing your butt off in the mornings? Read this!

I saw this on boards.ie...

Freezing your butt off in the mornings? Read this!

Hey all.
Thought I�d throw up a short guide on how I installed heated seats over the last few days into my �00 BMW 728i.
During the cold snap I was sick of the freezing leather in the mornings and the original owner opted not purchase the cold weather package so I thought to hell with it, I could do with some heated seats!

I got the heated seat kit from www.heatedseatkits.com who provide heated seat elements to the car industry, to manufacturers like Mercedes and BMW themselves. They�re even used in the 7 series produced today so I thought no better choice. Price was about �170 shipped for two kits, one for each front seat.
Each kit consists of two heater elements and a single wiring harness with an inbuilt switch and fuse. All you have to do is get the elements under your seat covering whether it be leather or cloth, and wire up the 12v + and � to the cars battery or ignition. There are two heat settings, high and low and the mode is indicated by either a green or red LED on the heater button.







First things first, you absolutely have to get the seats out of the car or you�ll drive yourself nutty.
If you have electric seats, you have to disconnect the wiring harness under the seat. Disconnect the battery first or you�ll get an airbag light on your dash also. The seat belt also had to be unbolted as well as the automatic adjuster for the seat belt height in the B pillar.

Four bolts removed and the seat was in the house. The flash makes the leather look filthy when in fact its immaculate, I promise!



Then I had to get the plastic housing that holds all the electric adjustment buttons off. A series of screws held it on.



Then pop the buttons.


And off it comes.


Then I started removing the backing of the seat, two more screws.





The idea here is to get the leather off the seats with minimal removal.
The leather is held on with little metal claws all the way round the seat, and each one has to be bent to unpin the leather from the seat.




Here is the location of the large screw that holds the bottom of the seat and the seat back together.




Now the leather is free to be removed from the back of the seats, however it is still pinned to the front of the seats to stop it moving around when sat on.

As I did not have the correct tools to reattach the leather, I did very little removal so as I could get the leather back on with no problems.