Porsche 981 Seat Swap???

[moose09876]

I know I'm crazy, but if my 135 had ventilated seats, it'd be my forever car. Anybody have any practical knowledge about swapping in a seat from a Porsche? I can do any wiring / bracket changes / modifications but custom coding is beyond what I have time to learn. Ideas?

[ShocknAwe]

Originally Posted by moose09876

I know I'm crazy, but if my 135 had ventilated seats, it'd be my forever car. Anybody have any practical knowledge about swapping in a seat from a Porsche? I can do any wiring / bracket changes / modifications but custom coding is beyond what I have time to learn. Ideas?

I looked into this as I love Porsche seats. Wasn't worth the squeeze for me and went with custom recaros instead.

Custom bracket to floor mounts of your choice then need to power it and buttons to control your seat functions like heat/blower etc. you'd have to get an emulator for the seat occupancy sensor.

After all that it would be quite heavy.

[moose09876]

I'm not really concerned about the extra weight, I have this car for the experience, not the lap time. Ventilated seats would vastly improve it for me.

Finding a way to wire up the heat / vent on the seat shouldn't be difficult, but anybody have info on spoofing the CAN signal so it stays powered on? Some things I've found say for BMW seat modules it's 1khz. Still hesitant to drop $2k+ on these if they for sure won't work.

[ShocknAwe]

Originally Posted by moose09876

I'm not really concerned about the extra weight, I have this car for the experience, not the lap time. Ventilated seats would vastly improve it for me.

Finding a way to wire up the heat / vent on the seat shouldn't be difficult, but anybody have info on spoofing the CAN signal so it stays powered on? Some things I've found say for BMW seat modules it's 1khz. Still hesitant to drop $2k+ on these if they for sure won't work.

It can be done. Wire the switches up as an independent toggle on the side of the seat. Should just need power. Run full blast or off?

You can get a seat occupancy sensor emulator NBD.

I would recommend looking into Porsche sport seats. Comfort seats still rival BMWs sport seats but the P-car folding sport seats are on another level. Not sure how available vented sport seats are though.

[moose09876]

Well, I rolled the dice. Turns out that the connector to the seat is identical. Same part number. Different wiring though. I hooked up the female end of the seatbelt / SRS in the main connector, just have to figure out the side now and the occupancy sensor.

The 981 seat doesn't time out like the BMW's without can. Just give it power and you can do all the adjustments.

The blue connector is the one from the fan in the seat. Red and black are obvious, but white I believe is PWM for speed. If you connect white and black, the fan spins at 100%. I think I'm just going to put this on a toggle unless anybody has a better idea of how to control via PWM.

I'm not hooking up the heated seats since I don't drive this in winter. Would love a heated steering wheel though...

To do:
Switch for fan (pwm? idk)
Side air bag re-pinning
Occupancy sensor?
Adapter bracket / modification abd seatbelt bracket.

[moose09876]

Update, side air bag re-pinned, ocupancy sensor coded out, seatbelt bracket / bolt fabricated, mounts made out of steel fabricated. Only thing left (for the passenger side) is to make the switch for the seat fan and try to find connectors to get rid of the jumper wire to the seat position sensor. Then rinse and repeat.

BMW sport seat - 65lbs
Porsche seat - 61lbs - I'm sure the adapter pieces I made are less than 1lb.

Also, I guess this should be in a different category - if the mods see this, move it wherever it's appropriate.

[ShocknAwe]

Nice! I already know you're gonna love them.

Side note heated steering wheels feel bad in a gross way. Have one in our X5 and even if it's single digits outside it makes me feel like I'm fevering, I wear gloves instead until it's warm enough with the heater on.

[moose09876]

DONE!!!! Fully installed with ventilation and airbag function - no seat heating. Can't test function yet because now it's cool and stormy.

Besides the mounts, you'll need to:
machine a custom shoulder bolt to mount the seat buckle
fabricate a bracket to position the buckle
re-pin the side air bag connector
make a jumper wire for the seat position sensor (this is polarity specific)
switch the main ground to the last pin in the seat connector coming off the car
wire in the spare 3 wire connector to ground and power (I have no idea what originally connected to it)
wire a switch to short ground to white for the fan
code out the occupancy sensor - I'm not good at it, claude was a disaster, chatgpt was way better.

Seats definitely can sit way lower than stock powered BMW sport seats.

Here are the rest of the pics - https://photos.app.goo.gl/8b3LTeF3MjSZdY9E8

Leaving this spot for the video clips I took -

[moose09876]

First downside. The seats sit so much lower ( YAAAY!) except the seatbelt then hits you way higher and it digs into your side. I could raise the seat, but I don't wanna!!