Adding oem Seat heaters to sport seats worth it?

[Dodobrown]

Its getting quite cold finally now that its december and all and ive had a confort seat heater sitting around for some time now and ive been playing around with the idea of adding this to a decent set of sports seats that i have currently in the car.

my question is that i have a small tare in my seat will pulling the seat apart risk ruining the seat?

just a heads up my car is all wired up from the factory for headed seats all i really have to do is add the heaters to the seats

[ZM Blue Devil]

your body will love you for it.

[Dodobrown]

beleve me i know. i hate waiting for the car to warm up only to have a squeeky ass blower on the hole time im in the car. has any one done this and have any pointers?

[StereoInstaller1]

Heh...what you don't know is how much hassle is involved in putting the heater elements in

[Dodobrown]

the actual insertion of the heaters them selves? or the process of taking the seat part and putting it back together? can you give some insite as to how i might be able to make it easier?

[iwantspeed]

http://www.e30tech.com/forum/showthread.php?t=82306

[Dodobrown]

thanks that help out alot, ive looked threw a few diys but nothing about seat heater ever pops up. i have a spare vert seat that i really dont want to take apart but i think it might just be worth it rather then messing up my seats i got in my car.

[CabrioPunk]

Love the heated seats. Even if it is a bit of a pain to install it can't be that bad and worth the time. Take a seat out. Take it inside and put the TV on.

[StereoInstaller1]

So the "Why so much hassle" of installing seat heaters is actually the element itself, assuming you are gonna do actual factory stuff.

If you look at the stock element, you will see it is shaped like a hand, sort of. The "palm" is tiny and the "fingers" are really long, but you will get the idea when you have it in your hand.

The lino ribbons of element go in between the seat leather and the 1st layer of padding.

What I did was first take apart a rotten seat to see how it was done at the factory.

Then, I took apart a good seat. When I got the seat covers off (you are on your own there bubba, major PITA) I cut slits in the padding so I could slip the "fingers" between the seams, which required quite a bit of finangling and precision cutting.

[Dodobrown]

whats your opinion about using an inspection scraper to cut in between the leather and the padding. i know what you mean by how it has the fingers. when i removed the heaters from the original seats it was a pain in the ass. also im installing these on a non vert seat if it makes it any easyer.

[DaveSmed]

I would think a better idea would be to install aftermarket seat heaters, rather than hoping 20 year old heater elements that have been sat on for however many miles will work after being pulled from one seat and reinstalled in another.

The aftermarket ones feel like they could cook a pizza on high.

[StereoInstaller1]

The E30 seat heaters sucked when new IMO. Any new domestic will kick its ass.

[BMWManiac]

Anyone already using an aftermarket kit that they would like to share their opinion on?

I'm thinking of going with the one from heatedseatkits.com; $180 for driver/passenger seats.

[airkhin]

^^ would be very interested in the same, especially the massage option, cant imagine that in the e30 m3!