heated seats installation

[abutterman]

I'm installing a heated seat kit that will be used along side my Clazzio kit that's on its way. I have the heater kit now and just need some quick guidance for wiring. It's all prewired to a harness and switch. The harness has a black and red wire coming out of it (presumable ground and power). Then, from the illuminated switch there are 2 more loose wires, yellow and red which i am unsure of their function. I plan on connecting the main red power from the harness to the 12v cigarette lighter power in the center console and finding a ground point for that. My question remains what to do with the switch wires. Is red power as well? What about the yellow? Can i connect the power wire to the same 12v source that the harness is going to? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Gir]

Yellow is normally battery +, and red is normally ignition. Basically means if you turn the car of, but leave the heated switch on, it will still be turned off by the ignition.

[abutterman]

Originally Posted by Gir

Yellow is normally battery +, and red is normally ignition. Basically means if you turn the car of, but leave the heated switch on, it will still be turned off by the ignition.

Ok so could i potentially connect both the yellow wire and the red from the harness to the red power of the cigarette lighter wiring and then just pull the red from the switch to an ignition wire... maybe from the stereo or something?

[Gir]

That should work, but it should have come with a wiring diagram which will explain it better. I'm purely going off what I would normally expect wires to match up with.

[abutterman]

ok cool. The instructions weren't really clear on what was what. I wonder if i even need to use the wires on the switch? I found a youtube video of a similar installation and the switch was connected to the harness as mine is but with no extra wires and they just tapped into the fuse for the windows so that it would only power on when the car is on. If i was to leave the 2 wires on the switch not connected to anything and just have the main power wire from the harness connected to a similar power source, would that effectively do the same thing? Also, on that note, is the power wire from the cigarette lighter always active or is it only on when the car is on? I had wired up some LEDs in my old car via the cigarette lighter and they would only turn on when the car was on. Hoping its the same way here...

[Gir]

Cigarette lighter should turn off when the car is off. Might be worth testing different connections to see what happens. Those wires might light up the switch when the car's lights are turned on.

[abutterman]

i was just looking around in the car and noticed there's fuses in place for seat heater left and seat heater right. Is there any actual wiring in place or are the fuses just there with no actual purpose?

[John_Duh]

from a cost point of view car companies usually don't give you the leads when you don't order the option.
Going from my experience with Audi, you could hit up your dealer and order a wiring module so that you can modify your existing wiring to accept the heated seats. Saving you the hassle of guessing where you should connect and what wire thickness to use (these things need quiet some power)

[abutterman]

Originally Posted by John_Duh

from a cost point of view car companies usually don't give you the leads when you don't order the option.
Going from my experience with Audi, you could hit up your dealer and order a wiring module so that you can modify your existing wiring to accept the heated seats. Saving you the hassle of guessing where you should connect and what wire thickness to use (these things need quiet some power)

I know there's no harness installed or anything but my kit came wired up and ready to go. just needs power and ground. I wonder if there's any active power line running into those fuses. If there is i could try to just tap into the fuse

[John_Duh]

Again going from audi experience, the fuses are mounted on an iron plate, so one side of the fuse should get power.

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[abutterman]

ok yea i'm thinking about trying a fuse tap to that location. Worst case if it's actually a dummy spot, i'm out $1. If taping to one of the seat heater fuses works, that would be ideal since it's meant for that and would be a clean install. Otherwise i'm probably going to try a wire tap to the cigarette lighter. I just have to see if it'll hold both wires securely as the wires on the harness are pretty thick and i'm not sure what gauge wire is used for the cigarette lighter.