iexiak
Well-Known Member
- Thread starter
- #1
Converted my passenger seat from manual to electric over the holiday! It's fairly straightforward, but wanted to put a bit of info on how to do this for anyone else interested. There's a few threads asking if this was possible with good information -
https://www.macheforum.com/site/threads/feasibility-of-seat-swap.31698/
https://www.macheforum.com/site/threads/can-i-install-premium-seats-into-my-select.31787/
Tools needed - torque wrench, Torx T50/T55 compatible with the torque wrench, plastic panel removal tools, Torx T20 bit, tesa cloth tape, zip ties, Micro 3 and Micro 2 fuse tap, relay. A set of seat bolts from Ford.
To get the seat out/in is only 4 bolts. These are listed as one time use, so order a new set before you start this project.. The front is Torx 55 and the rear Torx 50. Torque specs below.
The manual shows 2 bolts holding on the side plastic, but on both the manual and electric there are actually 4 bolts. The extra ones not in this picture are both towards the front of the seat.
Getting off the side plastic for the manual seat def requires 2 people, one to hold the seat and latch and another to fiddle with '3' in the image below.
Be very careful with the circled tabs on reinstall. They are very easy to flex out of place.
Getting the back off on the electric seat is way easier than the manual one. I had to bend the recliner handle metal to get it out of the way. Once that is done it's 4 bolts, 2 on each side. Torque specs below.
Removing the headrest holders requires pushing in a clip on the button side of the holder (it's on the same side on the one without a button). The manual says these are one time use, but they are so easy to get out I went ahead and reused them. My headrests work as expected, but your mileage may vary.
Removing the cushions for a swap is really straightforward. Everything is held on with j-hooks. Practice this on the donor seat cushions first. I'm not going to post pics from the manual on this because there's pages and pages of it, but let me know if interested.
Removing the seat presence sensor requires removing a bracket, the screw is underneath the sensor. I swapped this out for the one that was already in the car.
Now that the cushions are out of the way you should just have a frame and harness. On the donor (electric) seat, we need to remove all the accessories we aren't using (IE heated seats, weight sensor, airbag, and anything that is a duplicate from the harness we are taking from the seat in the car).
What should remain are only plugs for the motors, switch, and the forward rail sensor. Once that is done your harness should look more like this. The purple (12v+) and black (12v-) wires should be the only ones that remain on the car-side plug, and we can go ahead and cut those and strip them. Leave a good length on here so we can use them later.
The wiring diagram is basically [Power/ground] -> [switch panel] -> [motors]
Go ahead and retape this up with the tesa cloth tape so it looks like a harness again. At this point I used a fuse tap to connect to fuse 24 and tested all the motors with just the frame, before removing the manual seat from my car.
Now that the electric seat is stripped down, you just need to do the same to the manual seat except this time we don't need to chop any harness. We'll take the manual seat harness and swap it over to the electric, and then mount/zip tie the harness together.
Electrical wise, I am using a relay with fuse 1 acting as the remote turn on wire and fuse 24 as the power. These seats have a 30 amp fuse factory, but I didn't trip the 20 amp fuse on fuse 24. I'll update it if I do, but I'm pretty sure as long as you don't push all 4 motors (lumbar, tilt, forward/back, up/down) simultaneously I doubt you will have a problem.
Sponsored
Last edited:
