Power seat conversions
 

This is in two parts due to posting rules.

This thread is a basic reply to over two dozen e-mails and instant messages I’ve received asking pretty much the same basic questions about power seat track swaps.

I’ve been answering them piecemeal and rather than continue answering the same questions over and over I thought I would just put a new thread covering some of the basics. Then I can just e-mail them a link to this thread.

Others that have done the swap may want to contribute.

First the basic seats are the same in all the trucks. Captain’s chairs and bench are the same seat.
Same four bolts hold them in, they are the same width, and same seat cover fits.
The SuperCab and regular Cab use a seat that seems to be the same. It has a belt integrated in it.
The other seat from the SuperCrew does not have the integrated seat belt.
Other variations in the seat include leather, vinyl, cloth, premium cloth and two tone cloth. These seat covers can be changed on any of the seats we have encountered. The hole in the top of the back for the integrated seat belt can be added to enable the use of SuperCrew seats in SuperCab and regular cab trucks.
If you wanted to swap the covers the other way you would need either a new seat back cover or have the square hole patched.
Which does not seem practical but is technically possible.

The passenger seats come with no power, power (called the deluxe seat usually) No lumbar or lumbar.
Drivers seat come with no power, power (deluxe) and premium with memory.

Swapping in power seats if the seats are a match color wise, and configuration wise would be a simple swap, and could be done in an hour or so.
XLT models on up seem to have the wiring harness under the seat. Most makes of cars/trucks I have worked on came with harness for the power seat option, you just had to reach under the carpet (a hole was always present in the carpet) and pull up the harness.
Unfortunately on the XL and STX trucks I have worked on, Ford saved a buck and didn’t put the harness under there. I believe it was because they mostly wish to use the STX to ‘lure the customer in’ then up sell them to the much more profitable XLT and up models.

So someone that wants to add the basic power seat to an XLT up can just find the harness and plug in the new power seat track.
So if you find a matching seat, deluxe power, from the same body style the swap would be a snap.

Sadly, the odds against you finding the same configuration in matching colors with power are pretty bad.

So what can you do? They will sell you the power track at places like Fordparts.com for 421 bucks plus shipping apiece.
This would be the easy way to do this.

If you find a seat that has the power option you want, but in the wrong color or configuration you can swap the pedestal over. There are some problems with this technique. The regular seat passenger side has child seat frame brackets welded in the seat. So if you put a non regular seat power pedestal in you may have to do a small bit of grinding with a Motto-tool or something similar to remove some sharp edges on the bracket. This in no way affects the safety or efficiency of the child seat. Ford just left the edges sharp. This would only come up if you are putting in a seat pedestal from a SuperCrew.
Swap the seat belt occupant sensor to the ‘new’ pedestal. Since you will be using your original cushions this is not a problem.
The SuperCrew seat pedestals do not tip forward to allow easy access to the back seat area. The regular cab seats do tip forward. So there is a small metal tab that needs to be bent to allow a Crew seat to function as a regular cab seat. While tipping the seat forward is not essential it is convenient.

The side panels (switch mounting plate) can be swapped if the color is wrong on the donor seat, but your side plate with the switch holes will of course not match. Those can be bought online, or you can buy the chrome side plate covers from eBay.
Not a first choice but the price is less for the chrome stick on type than for the correct piece. The chrome plates allow you to use the wrong color side plate.

My side plates were the correct color so I didn’t have to do either.

Memory seats can be used, but don’t count on ever getting the memory feature to work. There is no harness for the memory seat unless the truck was intended for memory. So you will find in most cases that you have either no power seat harness at all, or one for a regular deluxe power seat which will not match the memory plug.
It gets worse. The memory seat requires a connection to your BCM, and it must be programmed into your truck.
Since the XL-STX don’t even have the harness, much less the connections this is effectively impossible.


End of part 1

continued;

The memory seats won’t work without that connection. I tried a few times to ‘bypass’ or hack the memory but so far no luck. I lost interest in the project and have relegated the memory module to the leftover parts box.

So if you get a memory drivers seat and have a truck where it is/was and option you can plug it in, and then find a knowledgeable dealer to program the system to work with the seat. Don’t hold your breath while waiting for a dealership to figure this out. I couldn’t find a service writer that even understood the concept of what I was asking. If you try it, best of luck.

So if you have a memory seat as the only available seat/track you can still use it. Rather than waste time with the memory module and the elaborate wiring you can trim all of it away, leaving just the 8 wire power control switch with the wires routed to the 3 motors , two for each motor and one 12volt power (always hot) and a GOOD ground.

Power seat motors work like power window motors or power lock motors. Two wires to each motor. The switch does all the work. When you push it one way, power goes down one wire while the alternate wire is grounded. Move the switch back the other way and power goes down the second wire and the first wire is now grounded. This reverses the direction of the motor.


Here is a quick color match for removing the memory module and by passing the 50 or so foot of wire needed for the memory, but not needed for simple power seats;

Front up/down;
Yellow/Light Blue into Yellow
Red/Light Blue into Red/Yellow

Forward/rearward
Red/White into Gray/Orange
Yellow/White into Gray/White

Rear Up/Down
Yellow/Light Green into Gray/Light Blue
Red/Light Green into Gray/Yellow

With this you can bypass the entire memory module system, making the seat a standard power seat. The three switches on the side can be removed and by putting either a stock deluxe side plate or the chrome side plate. Or you can leave the switches. They are ‘contact ground’ switches thus can be used for seat warmers, or anything else you would control with a grounding contact switch.

Assuming you are putting power seats into a model that does not option power seats in any fashion, you will need to string power to the seat. You can ground it through one of the seat bolts or you can route the ground under the carpet and ground it there. The ground must be very good, very clean and preferably large. I wired my seats in with ten gauge wire, using a 20 amp fuse. Never forget to fuse the seats. You could use a circuit breaker as an alternative, but always fuse electrical components. You can access power directly in the cab under the steering column, or from the fuse box, or route it from the battery itself. Remember to protect the wire with sheathing where you route it under the carpet.

So the job of converting to power seats can be cheap or expensive, easy or hard mostly depending on the model truck you are working with and the parts you can find.
Doing a straight swap matching seats into a truck that optioned power seats is an hours work.
Alternately, doing a tan SuperCrew memory seat w base swap to a flint XL regular cab could easily take 4-6 hours and require removing wires, removing modules, adding side plates adding a wire harness, and modding the base for tilt forward.


Anyone else who has done this mod please feel free to contribute their input and corrections.
Thanks
Chris

ended up with the airbag light flashing
 

I did this mod today, haven't wired up the power but did do the (disconnect the battery) and disconnect and reconect the black airbag/seatbelt plug. now my air bag light flashes intermitenly 3 flashes then stays on. should I go have the airbags reset?

so I guess its code 33 for the pretensioner on the new seat
 

SO can I pull the pretensioner out of my old seat and install it into my new one?

Chris while i do admire your lengthy posts, i promise you will still get emails, and qustions... Usually about once a week i get an email asking about how to paint a grill, put in a second 40% seat, or install lowering suspension parts, even tho ive explained all of them in the threads i post....

Best of luck, and thanks for the great thread!
-Patrick

fixed it
 

I did a real thorough search found a lot of great info, turn out I had to use the seat belt pretensioner from my old seats, so guy if you r doing this model, make sure to add your existing pretensioner to your new seat, basically it's the female buckle part of your seatbelt with a cigar looking canister. If you fail to do soe you get the code 33 on your dash for the airbags.

I have a tan leather power seat that is done up for a conversion if any one is interested

Chris, I know this is old but thought it could use a bump to the top :). I have a 97 XL, with the bench seat and the vinyl flooring. I bought some buckets off a 2001 F-150 Supercrew. The drivers seat is power but the passenger is not. There was no harness to wire it up easily, as you described in your post. However, it isn't impossible as long as you know how to wire up 12volt accessories, its pretty much the same... I actually just wired mine into the cigarette lighter and it works just fine. I tapped into the wires of the seat without actually cutting off the end, gotta live wire taps :).
I did have to cut out some of the vinyl for the new bolts, but the holes were there, just had rubber plugs filling them. was able to reuse most of the bolts, and the ones I couldn't reuse because they didn't exist I pilfered from the donor truck (it was a rollover being scrapped).
Total time spent on the seat conversion, working by myself was about an hour and a half, and that included hte wiring.

Can anyone provide a little more detail on bypassing the memory module? Does it have to be done, you cannot just get power to the main green power line and the seats will adjust?

Seat Wiring Question?????
 

Great write up Chris. I have a 2007 s cab xlt with a manual drives seat. I checked the wiring underneath. There is a small bundled harness coming from the floor under the seat. It branches into two smaller groups of wires. One is connected to a large electric connection on the outside of the drivers seat and the other smaller bundle of wires is connected to a plug connected with a plastic piece to the metal frame. These wires do not appear to be connected to anything, it looks like they are plugged into a "dummy" connector. Are these the wires that would plug into the new electric seat?

I can take pics but I think you know what I am talking about.

power seat installation
 

This responce doesn't answer the questions posed, however it mearly tells of how my power seat install turned out.

I have a 33 ft, 2013 Forrest River, F 450 Leprochaun RV with a manual drivers seat.

I priced out the Ford dealer parts at a cost of $1200, and forget about dealer installation costs.

Went on Amazon and found the cheapest 1998 power track was $225 to $375 with no guarantee of fit, etc. Forget that.

Went to my local auto recycler who allowed me to check out Ford explorers in the yard and found an acceptable 6 position 2008 unit.

I removed the unit, paid $30, bench tested the three motor operation at home. I eliminated the heated seat function. No memory function was present as far as I can remember.

I choose to install the tracks atop of the existing pedistal to gain max lift. My intention was to gain as much seat height to view my fenders when parking the RV in close quarters, and then return to regular seat height for normal travel. The added height atop the pedestal added 4.5" of height when the seat is not lifted. Had the pedestal not been used, I would not have gained the exaggerated height I wanted to achieve for tight parking/manuevering.

The difficulty came in when it was necessary to straighten out the anchor legs from "L" shaped to angled and straight down to accomodate bolting the legs to the existing pedistal sides. The legs required me to cold straighten them, then reshape the legs. I wasn't able to use heat to accomplish this due to teflon bushings present on the tracks which would require extensive disassembly of the unit to remove the bushings.

I had power leads under the seat which was helpful.

I also obtained from the Explorer, the drivers side, plastic shroud track cover with the controls as well as the passenger seat track cover. Both were the same Beige color of my RV seats.

Even though the Explorer passenger seat was not power, it allowed me to install the shroud on my drivers seat, right side, to cover that side of the track and part of the existing pedistal. ( Which my wife would view from the passenger seat).

This was a major accomplishment for me to acheive, in order for me to eliminate the skeptable scruitiny of my wife's discerning eye, when she examined the finished product. She challenged me on why I needed to install this on a brand new vehicle, in the first place.

Some women just don't understand why men have the need to make things better, even when something is brand new! We just gotta do what we gotta do, right?

The end result was, I am extremely pleased how it turned out.
Won't know if it was worth the effort until we head down to Key West in March.
But you can be sure I'm going to let my wife know how super duper well the added feature is to have!

LOL, LOL
Hope you enjoyed my story!

2005 power seat conversion
 

I read all posts and none seem to help. 2005 XLT and swapping in just the power frame from a 2004 power drivers seat. Both the truck and the new seat wiring harnesses match wires and pin locations. The truck manual says both the power seat and pedals are on the same fuse. Pedals do move but no power to seat on any pin. Any suggestions?:usa:

i am doing this swap and have a question. going from cloth no power to mem htd power. will the heated seats work without getting the memory module functioning? will they have to bypass that just like the power seat function?

i know i need the digital climate center with the seat buttons and the different trim that fits it and i am ordering that tonight.

my dog decided that he hated all the tan cloth seats.... all of them hence the swap. i could only find a complete interior from a 08 lariat....

I don't think the heated seat function will work as it was optional. As the original poster said the memory function wasn't included as that was considered a unique option ( like heated seats ), they may need wired in.

I did this install. Got wiring (seat and dash)and fuse box from a wrecked truck . Replace the wires I needed for the seat heat and controls, installed the new fuse block and it all works great. Even installed heated mirrors with puddle lamps. Make sure you get heater control about your same year tho.