wiring a drivers electric seat into an LX

[ben19td]

Guys, I'm stuck and need some help please. I've got 3/4 of the way through fitting the leather interior from a 1998 executive into my 1998 LX and hit a wall.

The passenger seat was a doddle, found the correct plug for +ve and -ve almost straight away and it works fine. I thought I would have similar luck with the drivers seat, but no.

Because of the memory function (which I'm not using) there doesn't seem to be a simple way of just running 12v to one pin and ground to another, it actually looks as if I will have to re-wire the whole seat by trial and error, wiring the switches that move the seats into the motors!! what a nightmare!

From what I can see, the large white plug on the right runs to the switches to move the seat, the larger orange plug goes to the motors, yet having tried applying 12v to all of these pins in sequence, i can make the chair move, but not via the switch.

Has anyone done this before with any success? Is there actually a way of running 12v to the seat and it working without a complete re-wire?

[jonsowman]

Basically you need to splice the loom so as to bypass the seat ECU (which, trust me, isn't worth the bother of fitting).

Have a look through this thread and the pictures viewtopic.php?f=28&t=20586&p=205033

[ben19td]

cool! thanks for that, i found a helpful article in the knowledge base too, now it's pissing with rain I may as well head into the garage and crack on with it!!

[jonsowman]

Good stuff. Do ask if you get stuck or aren't sure

[ben19td]

Thanks, you might regret that offer soon! but in the meantime, how do you make the solder stick to the terminal? I'm applying heat to tinned wire and it isn't having any of it!

[jonsowman]

Yes that is a pain, a decent iron and soldering flux is the answer. That copper pad is quite extensive behind the bit you can see, and very effectively pulls heat away from the iron so the solder never gets to melting temperature That's why the OEM wires are crimped rather than soldered I suspect.

If it's really not working then you might need to beg/steal/borrow a more powerful iron. That's all there is to it I'm afraid!

[ben19td]

my soldering iron is very old, maybe time to upgrade then!