[Mr.wreckless]

Lots of seat threads lately..

The front seats:
1. Run the seat fully forward, gently pry off the covers and unbolt the 2 rear bolts.
2. Run the seat fully backwards, pry off the covers and undo the 2 bolts.
3. Center the seat roughly. (I dare suggest this is even more important with an electric seat, in case there is a fault or it doesn't function properly, having a centered seat is much better for driving it to a garage rather than fully forward/backward rendering the car almost undriveable unless you're an anatomical anomaly!
4. Go in the boot, disconnect battery, recommended to wait 10 minutes for the power to drain to negate the risk of an airbag blowing up in your face (this step is probably not necessary, but for the sake of 10 minutes and disconnecting the battery I think it's worth it). Don't do the mistake of closing boots/doors with the battery disconnected and mind where you keep the key so you don't lock yourself out of the car. I mention this as a precaution, not sure you'll actually lock yourself out but I'd feel pretty darn stupid closing the boot lid with the battery disconnected in case I then found out the battery needs connecting to open it up again :/

After waiting for the 10 minutes you can tilt the whole seat backwards to expose the small compartment underneath that hides the plugs. They are all colour coded nicely and have little locks that make undoing them relatively easy once you figure out which direction to slide the lock in order to unlock. Once you've done both seats lift them out. Helps to have a mate tilt the seat and shine a torch for you.

Fitting the new seats, lift them in, connect the plugs, connect the battery and check they work then bolt them down. If you already know how to and plan to do the rear seats I guess doing them with the fronts out makes it a lot easier. As for the rear seats, it really is rather easy, but be prepared to have clip replacements handy as you'll soon enough find the clips for the rear seat base WILL break and it'll be nice to have spares before you start, they're dirt cheap.

As for the harness on manual vs electric seats. I am no expert and I can't be sure, but somehow I believe you may be lucky and find the whole harness is factory fitted. The heating element is a different story but as you said you're not bothered. Look out for "component protection" though and you may find yourself with reduced movement of the seat until an Audi dealer can "unlock" it.

The arm rest I can't recall being anything special, I had the center console out but it was 2 years ago. Isn't it just 2 screws underneath? Just remove the cover on the underside of the rest. My memory is sketchy but I googled for Audi B8 center console removal and the A4 has the same removal procedure. It may help you out.

As for the door cards I wish you luck!

Nice car btw, are the S5 seats also RHD/UK sourced?

Best of luck, Regards

 

[Mr.wreckless]

Thanks for that mate, really helpfull and well documented!appreciete your time and efforts! could save me a few bob rather thna take it somewhere.

in regards to the electrics, so you think its possible its a straight swap?

I think (think!) Audi has left a standard harness in underneath the car so it is quite possible it will be very easy and plug & play. It was that way when I swapped my seats but I already had electric seats fitted. It would be easy enough to check, just run the seat forward/back and have a look in the small compartment where the seat loom goes in. You'll quickly see if the connector there will accept all the plugs from your new seat.

As for the component protection, when I swapped my seats I transferred the seat module from my old seats to the new so I never had an issue and things just worked 100%. Though I suspect if I plug in the car will not find the electric headrest and throw a fault since the S5 has an integrated headrest but I can live with that. It's not throwing up a fault in the dash. That being said, since your original seats were manual adjustment I'm not sure they even have a seat module. You'll soon find out though

I asked about the UK/RHD as a seat occupancy sensor is fitted to the seats, however if the seats from a LHD were fitted to a RHD car, the way this sensor works would then think you're not buckled up unless you had a passenger. I got this info from a build thread here where a UK guy got the Recaro buckets from a EU mainland RS5 fitted to his S5 convertible and he had hours of extra work making that sensor reading/operating correctly.

Regards

 

[Mr.wreckless]

As a rule, you will not find any wiring in the car that is unused and ready for adding additional features. They make the wiring loom for each car based on its specific set of options. If you imagine making a million cars a year and all the unused wire that would be in them and all the extra fuel being used to drive that unused metal around, you can see why they do this!

If a connector still has 1 pin used then the whole connector will be there and anything missing can be added once you work out what it is. There are companies that specialise in making retrofit wiring loom kits.

I imagine for the powered seats there is an additional fuse and larger power supply for the motors, the manual seats just wouldn't need this. Getting access to an elsawin system so you can look at the wiring diagram would be very helpful!

In general I would agree, but in this day and age with CANBUS my theory is that I strongly suspect it is WAY easier for Audi to mass-produce 1 harness that goes into the car rather than an option specific harness. The heating is an option and I have read somewhere it is a bit of a pain to retrofit so I'll give you that, but this guy already has electric lumbar support, every seat in the A5 has an airbag and that wire goes along the same harness (yellow connector) so I use that to support my theory and I'll cross my fingers for the OP that he'll have plug & play luck.

Regards

 

[Mr.wreckless]

http://www.a5oc.com/forums/build-threads/39521-mod-not-faint-hearted-14.html

Post #403 It mentions the airbag sensor was different for RHD/LHD cars, which I imagine is because of where the driver sits. You won't have this problem since your seats were sourced from a Same Drive car.

Regards

 

[Mr.wreckless]

I got them for 775 which included pallet delivery cost, this is the door cards, seats and arm rest

i would assume them being all red and rare they would go for more than 1200 atleast

did i get a good deal in you opinion?:surprise:

That's a fucking steal! I almost 3x that for mine, and they were plain black and no door cards.

Regards

 

[Mr.wreckless]

Well, as someone who as retrofitted B&O sound, DAB radio, drive select, interior light pack, reversing camera, rear power socket, SDS and more.. I can definitely say that they do custom make each loom as none of the wiring was there for me!. However that's not to say that in some specific cases the wiring isn't present though, so actually going and checking would be the first step.

Although the CANBUS does reduce the amount of wiring, it tends to be used to connect control modules together. They then use wiring from the control modules to actual devices such as the rear lights for instance. If the control module (such as rear camera controller) is not present then none of the wiring or CANBUS wiring or connectors will be present.

There are some great videos around showing the VW/Audi production process and how the entire just-in-time supply chain makes each individual sub-system separately according to the details of the specifc order and then they track all the pieces and bring them together. Well worth finding and watching

Quite a lot of retrofitting! Would be too daunting for me I see your point of view though. I hope the OP will return once he is finished and will let us know how he got on. At least then he can bring a definitive answer to the seat loom

I did read a thread where someone retrofitted memory to their el. seats and this was possible since the loom was already present, all that was needed were the buttons and to tap into the correct pin in the loom close to the door.. I have very little mechanical and electrical knowledge as well as english isn't my first language, but going off that thread I suspected the harness to be "a one size fits all" type. It could possibly be an electric seat specific loom Audi then fits to their cars?

Out of curiosity: SDS? And which parts of the Drive Select did you retrofit?

Regards

 

[Mr.wreckless]

Great to hear you had success!

The rear seats are fairly straight forward, but I'd head straight over to an Audi dealer to get the 2 clips under the rear seat bench as they will most probably break when you remove the bench (Audi allegedly claim they "may" break but every post I've come across the author have found that these clips "will" break).

The first step would be to remove the isofix plastic clips at the rear. I seem to recall they were self explanatory once you take a closer look with unclipping them from the metal bar they're attached to. Once that is done, there are 2 clips roughly under the center of both "seats" (where your bum would be when sitting in them). They grab quite hard and made a nasty plastic breaking sound when I loosened my rear bench but I haven't come across of any other way than brute force to get the bench loose. My advice is to grab the rear bench at the front and pull evenly and strongly across the one seat, and I'd stress that you try not to pull it further up than necessary in order to avoid bending the whole copper fram that makes the rear bench. Repeat at the other seat position and the whole bench lifts out (it's super light)!

You have to do that step first in order to access the cable connectors for the rear seat fold down mechanism. They hide underneath the rear bench, 1 piece for each part of the fold down seat. There is a small lid that you can pry off gently, disconnect the cable from the anchor inside (self explanatory when you see it).

Between the rear backrest, where they spilt, there is a bracket that support their pivot bar (for lack of a better term). The two backrest pivot bars rest on this bracket and they are held in place by 2 screws on top of this bracket that you need to undo, I seem to recall they were of a Torx type. Undo the 2 screws and remove the top part of that bracket.

Now you can lift one part of the backrest out of the bracket, I recommend as little as possible, but enough to allow you to slide the backrest out from where the backrests pivot bar is held in place on the "outer side". Pull the seat inwards towards the center of the car to allow the bar to release itself from the car and slide out and voila, the backrest is now loose. I recommend you do the smaller section backrest first as it's quite light and to release the pivot bar from the car is a bit finicky as it's stuck in there rather well. Repeat for the large section backrest, but this section is significantly heavier than the smaller and hence more difficult to manoeuvre, hence why I recommend to get the small section out of the way first.

Fitting is the reverse. With the caveat that I personally didn't fit the rear seat bench. I did see the clips and they consist of 2 parts, one that go in the car (a sleeve type) and one that attaches to the rear seat bench. I presume the idea is that the one piece attached to the bench slides into the sleeve attached to the car and locks in place. I'd make sure the rear fold down mechanism works and double check before I fit the rear bench as once it's in you're back into tugging it out and breaking the clips again if you need to redo it. The consolation is that the clips are dirt cheap!

My final tip is to consider having Audi swapping over the locks before you fit the rear seats. They managed to do it for me as I thought it paramount to have the key for the car to be the same that locks the rear seats and armrest.

This guide is from memory from when I did it this summer, however I think it's rather accurate and very detailed. Feel free to update and comment as well as correct any differences and faults when you finish up!

And photos!

Regards