[jmfecon]

Hello everybody,

I am considering upgrading my 11 535i seats to comfort seats, and I have some minor questions that I couldn't really find a good and definitive answer.

Considering that I already have fully eletric basic seats with memory, and I plan to change them to comfort seats with no heat/ventilation/massage, my questions are:

- Do I need an additional wire harness to plug the head restraint to ACSM?
- My car has memory controller on the driver side only, but it seems that the donor had memory on both sides. So, it will require additional wiring to make this work on passenger side? I mean, at the door?
- Is just VO code the option (replace 459 with 456, will need to add lumbar support which I think is 488) or need to flash some ECUs?
- The seats that I am considering buying have the RSE professional screens, mine is the regular RSE. Just changing options (from 6FH to 6FG) should be enough? What else I need to flash?

Any answers are highly appreciated, so thanks in advance.

[M_Bimmer]

Originally Posted by jmfecon

Hello everybody,

I am considering upgrading my 11 535i seats to comfort seats, and I have some minor questions that I couldn't really find a good and definitive answer.

Considering that I already have fully eletric basic seats with memory, and I plan to change them to comfort seats with no heat/ventilation/massage, my questions are:

- Do I need an additional wire harness to plug the head restraint to ACSM?
- My car has memory controller on the driver side only, but it seems that the donor had memory on both sides. So, it will require additional wiring to make this work on passenger side? I mean, at the door?
- Is just VO code the option (replace 459 with 456, will need to add lumbar support which I think is 488) or need to flash some ECUs?
- The seats that I am considering buying have the RSE professional screens, mine is the regular RSE. Just changing options (from 6FH to 6FG) should be enough? What else I need to flash?

Any answers are highly appreciated, so thanks in advance.

Sounds like you are trying to fit LCI F10 seats into a pre-LCI. If true, the seat rails will keep you from doing a safe and proper swap. A pre-LCI F10 must use pre-LCI seats.

Please confirm that your replacement seats are pre-LCI......

[jmfecon]

Originally Posted by M_Bimmer

Sounds like you are trying to fit LCI F10 seats into a pre-LCI. If true, the seat rails will keep you from doing a safe and proper swap. A pre-LCI F10 must use pre-LCI seats.

Please confirm that your replacement seats are pre-LCI......

Yes, the seats I want to buy are from pre-LCI car, I am aware that the rails are different in a LCI car. Donor is a 550i 2012.

[zener]

I'm at close to same situation. I have memory sport seats and only driver side has memory function. Looking at prelci comfort seats with ventilation (only bad thing is, they dont have control modules, and part numberis different on comfort seat). I wonder if the passenger side memory can be coded out, since no use for that. I have not looked in to it yet. I'm after the ventilation since my e65 has it and it's great for summer.

And it seems, that I already have active head rests with my sport seats.

[zener]

Well, I bought the seats, modules for them and ac panel with cooled seats buttons.

[zener]

Got panel and seat modules. Seats should arrive on monday. I also ordered some paint and cleaning stuff to fix the drivers side seat.

[zener]

Seats arrived and comparing pins, I only need to run pin1 to f67 on junction box.

[zener]

Did I get too old seat nodules?

[M_Bimmer]

zener, 9/2011+ BMW switched the seat occupancy sensor (A64) for the front seats and how they are wired to the Crash Safety Module (A11), as shown below.

Obviously your F10 is pre- 9/2011...not sure you've stated the model year of your replacements seats or the P/N of your new seat modules. This might help to determine if you just need to FDL code the seats, or........

Best to look at the large yellow connector (X12*2B) as you can see that there is a pin assignment difference. Hopefully your "new" seats are pre-9/2011 too.

With the current BMW codes in ISTA, I'm pretty sure you'll have or will receive both a Passenger's seat airbag warning, and possibly a Driver's too, on your instrument cluster at engine startup.

[zener]

Damn, that I did not take to consideration. "new" seats are from 09/12 car. Gotta think how I could get around this...

And no restraint faults are present, only the seat belt warning light is always on. As on european models the occupancy sensor is only used for seatbelt light.

[zener]

Bought older style occupancy sensor for 25bucks so that should fix that. Ordered newer seat modules so hopefully I get ventilation to work after they arrive.

Drivers side lower part heating does not work, heating mat reads around 9-10ohm, passenger side that works odly showed about 34ohm (started to go down after few seconds, drivers side was steady) which does not make sense. Ista says it should be around 1,5-4ohm. Looking with ista seat temperature sensors seemed to work.

Guess I'm gonna swap out seat module from passenger side to drivers side tomorrow and test.

[zener]

I swapped thigh support from side to side and vola lower part started to heat up.

[zener]

Well, that did not last long. Heating no longer works on lower part of the drivers seat. Mat on the cushion is broken now, gotta check the usual place again...

EDIT: yes, it was the usual place and fixed for now.

[zener]

Installed new seat modules and coded, finally got ventilation to work. Next up is someday wire the memory panel for passenger seat. And install the older style occupancy sensor when it arrives.


Heated seat wiring was burnt at usual location with comfort seats, so I repaired it... Let's see if that holds.

[zener]

Self talking, but for someone who does it in future. I found passenger door wiring, which seems to have plug for the memory switch. Wiring diagram shows that on car side everything is already there, so I just have swap out the door wiring and install door card with memory switch and it should be done.

Next retrofit is surely gonna be S316A.

[zener]

Used occupancy sensor arrived and seems to work. Seat belt light went off when I connected sensor. Guess it's time to take the cushion a part and install the sensor.

EDIT: got it done and seat belt warning works now: https://f10.5post.com/forums/showpos...postcount=3571

[MatthewLC]

Nice that you're keeping this updated! Normally these threads die out without ever getting to a resolution!

I did a similar swap to yours. I went from powered and heated "base" seats for North American spec pre-LCI F10 (09/10), to comfort seats with ventilation and active/massage feature. Similar to you the main wiring I had to do was add the additional power wire from the junction box.

I took a different approach to the pass seat occupancy sensor as I didn't want to disassemble the seat. You can code ACSM to disable the occupancy sensor. Did that and I haven't had an issue. Its interesting you got a seat belt light? I was getting an airbag error in the ACSM due to the seat occupancy sensor miss match. I did swap the seat belt buckles from my old seats to my new ones to try to avoid any other miss match issues?

I also added the memory function to the passenger side. You don't have to swap the door harness as long as you're able to get the pigtail connector with the memory seat switch. The memory seat switch runs on the LIN bus, as does the door mirror. I tapped the seat memory switch into the door mirror wiring, in the door harness (for power, ground and LIN signal). After doing this you need to make sure to code the FRM module! I struggled for a while to figure out why the switch wouldn't work. Turns out if you don't code the FRM the switch doesn't power up/wake up.

For anyone else looking to do this, the hack to get cheaper front seats is to get them from an F01 7 Series. Most 7 series (at least in N/A) are 750's and are typically fully optioned. Tones of them are being parted out due their age and N63 failures. I was able to get my front seats for less than half of what the average set of used F10 comfort seats sell for. The F01 seats have a illumination on the seat back which is a neat extra. If you go this route don't make the same mistake I did which is get seats from a very early F01. The early F01's used a similar looking seat modules that came from the E series cars (big black modules vs. smaller white ones). These were an absolute pain to figure out how to code correctly. The seat harness connectors are also slightly different for the seats that use the earlier style modules so you can't easily swap out to the newer style modules.

[zener]

Door wiring harness cost less than the plug so it was worth to buy and you get more factory look installation. Seat occupancy sensor differences on EU and USA market are explained in newtis. EU version only runs the seat belt light since we have switch to turn off the passenger airbag.