Don Carter

The seats in my 89 TBF car where very faded so I bought a pair of nicer seats from the 88 that the replacement engine came out of. This car only had 59k miles, so the seats are pretty nice. I've installed the driver's side memory seat, but the replacement passenger seat doesn't have memory (the original does).

I don't mind losing passenger seat memory, so would just like to rewire the connections to get the new seat installed and functinal. I've done some searches but have not found much info on this, probably because passenger memory was a rare option. I've got the wiring diagram, but can't make much sense of it. There are only 4 pins on the replacement seat, I'm guessing positive and negative power to the base, and back seperately?

Swapping leather might be an option too, but leaning towards just installing the new seat as is.

Anyone done this before? Should be fairly straightforward but I don't have the car side, non-memory passenger side plug, so not sure the best way to make the connection other than replacing the plugs with non Porsche connections after I locate the correct wires.

Landseer

There should be a brown and red heavy wires within the harness leading to the seat.
Red should be hot all the time.
You should be able to open the connector ( I think its a 14 pin female ) to remove those power wires, then connect them to the power feed on the passenger non memory seat. You might need to splice a different connector on the power wires to match the seat.

You should be able to tape-up the female connector, leaving the rest of the memory wires in place within the connector.

So, you've provided power to the new seat. And the seat switches should work regardless of the presence or absence of the various memory wires from the equation.

I've done the opposite, fitting an S4 memory seat into an early non-memory car, so I'm familiar with the seat-side male 14 pin connector. My memory board still powers the memory seat, but only the power wires are connected.

All those other little memory wires are position detectors. Rather cool setup. Each motor within the memory seat has a little plastic position encoder slipped onto the drive shaft. Each of the drive cables for the memory seat are slightly different than the ones for the non-memory seat, to accomodate the extra width when the encoder is used. Damn cool. These seats are works of art. Keep the old seats! The motors can be used on a nonmemory seat, if nothing else.

I think the connections can all be consolidated to brown and red in order to operate a seat without memory function.

The 6 pin Bosch connector on the non-memory seat can be consolidated down to just red and brown. It splits power to the seat back vs the seat bottom, IIRC.

roqueton

I did it.
You must to dissasemble the frame of the seat and interchange the leather. It is the best.
The problem is the position sensors. They are attached to the motors and only goes with the memory set.

Good luck

Don Carter

Landseer,

Thanks, I'll check the wires for the thick red and brown and test for voltage.

roqueton,

Not sure I understand. I'm only trying to feed power to a non-memory seat. Why would the motor position sensors be a problem on the old seat I'm removing?

heinrich

Don I have an underseat module for memory.

Don Carter

heinrich,

I have all the memory parts, just don't want to go to the trouble to move them all over to the replacement seat since I don't think I'd ever use memory on the passenger side. From what I've read here it's a huge job to move all the motors, sensors, and controllers.

roqueton

Sorry, I didn't understand.
As previously mencioned, only brown wire for ground and red wire for 12v.

Podguy

If I remember right it was more plug and play. The wiring should be there for normal seats.

Don Carter

Dan,

I hope you're right. That would be awesome if it was already wired for both.

Tom in Austin

Don, when you get this all figured out I'd be interested in talking with you about the memory stuff. Remind me at 3rd coast ...

Don Carter

Tom,

Happy to share what I learn, if anything, from this. See you in 2 weeks!

Ninespub

As I understand it, the seat bottoms are universal (left or right). I recall talking with Paul Champagne about this same issue and he suggested removing the leather and just swapping the bottoms, moving the controls to the opposite side and re-install the leather. That way you are not f'n with the motors, sensors and controlers......just the leather. Someone recently just posted a seat-leather removal thread so that would help you too. If all you want is a passenger seat without memory I'm sure someone (maybe even me) would be happy to swap bottoms with you. I'm installing (new to me) 12-ways with heat and would enjoy the memory on both sides.

Podguy

I beleive you have to do the top swap too. There is also the issue of the switch possible being different for just standard seats and ones with Lumbar and heating.

Nothing is univeral on the S4. The 85-86 seat backs can be swaped right to left.

Landseer

Bottom leather is side specific (cutouts for switches on opposite sides)

Bottom frames have seatbelt fixtures on opposite sides.
Can't remember if they can be swapped.

We should have a whole section about seats.

Random pics for entertainment -- since Don has gone to intermission on the project

Podguy

Nice picts