[Icekube]

So this weekend inlisted the help of my brother and retrofitted an electric red leather interior into my E91 SE. (sorry for the crap phone pictures in advance, left my camera at home )

Major props to this thread, which has a wealth of information on parts required (specifically the pins required and where they go) http://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=480313

rather than mess about with the fuse box, we decided to run the power from the battery, with a couple of inline fuse blocks, we were removing the whole interior anyway, so running a couple of 30A cable from the back of the car wasn't really an issue and id just find an earth point close to the seats.

out with the old, bog standard SE seats:



Empty! (+brother helping with wiring)


Wiring starting its journey at the battery:


wiring making its way, this is the rear drivers side door, the wires split here with one going down with the fuel pump wiring then runs along the seat base to the passenger side, drivers side wire follows car loom through trunking and along sill:


Wiring arrived! (ran along the sill with car loom, then along in front of the sub with OE seat wiring):


Earth engaged (used the sub mounting bolt for earths)!
for some reason, the drivers side seat has two earths, we suspect its because of the control box and motors, compared to the passenger side which just has motors


We used BMW spade terminals to allow us to fit wiring into the OEM plug:


unfortunately, the side bolsters have their own power pin in the plug, and dont take it from the 30A connection, oversight on my part (as i could have got the correct pins if i had only read through that entire thread!), so we had to add in a "tail" to power the bolsters separately (white cable) :sadface:


Finished article (almost....)


no fully completed pictures yet as we ran into a bit of a disaster with the drivers seat, we thought (darn you BMW!!!) that the seats only needed power/ground to work, and this is 100% correct for the passenger seat.

However, the Drivers seat, because it has memory, does some sort of "sanity check" via K-Can, which if not connected it decides to cut power to the seat, rendering it immobile. this had us scratching our heads for a while, because when first plugged in it works great, so we bolted it down and it stopped working, unbolted it, un-plugged, re-plugged and its working again, momentarily. again the thread linked at the top highlighted this issue (and is where we found the solution) D'oh!!

so we dug out the heater unit and found a K_CAN wire in the back of that, stripped a length of Twisted Pair wire from some Cat 5e, and ran this down the centre console and down the fold in the carpet, soldered it onto the seat's k_can wiring, and voila, working properly! bolted down in the darkness so I could drive home!

ill need to revisit the K_Can wiring, becuase:
A. it was a shit bodge to get me home.
B. Cat5e twisted pair isnt as thick as the OEM twisted pair, so new length of wire required.

ill get some more Pictures at the weekend, but in the mean time, here's my in your face winter mode:

[basim07]

Firstly, looks gorgeous! very jel with the seats

Secondly, you looking to get rid of the black SE seats?

[Jamie_E92]

Amazing job on the seats! Looks fantastic!

and secondly, i'm all for 'out there' modifications but those winters just look horrible IMO sorry.

[Icekube]

I actually skipped the SE interior, they don't sell on eBay, and postage is prohibitive, add to that, the cars done nearly 190k so the interior was "battle worn" lol, there was a guy on here recently who couldn't give them away.

i did strip the doorcards of all the switch gear and speakers, as they might come in handy, and the centre console has USB and Phone prep that i've removed.

[Icekube]

Originally Posted by Jay325i

Amazing job on the seats! Looks fantastic!

and secondly, i'm all for 'out there' modifications but those winters just look horrible IMO sorry.

they will receive a lot of hate i'm sure, but hell, they were 100 quid wheels that needed a refurb, and I like Porsche Riviera Blue :P

[basim07]

ahh dammit! just my luck lol

needed a set to experiment with

[regy53]

My poor Poor eyes....

nice seats though

[IanS100]

Looks like you've got a couple of emergency spares on, but the leather looks great

[Robin330i]

Nice seats

Disgusting wheels which ruin a perfectly nice car.