Heated Seat wiring

[Parrot356]

Does anybody happen to have a copy of Dennis Vogel's instructions (or another source) for wiring heated seats into our cars? His site (http://dennisvogel.com/heatedseats/index.html) was up as recently as this weekend, but as of a day or two ago his site is down. I am getting ready to do the install but never hit print thinking the site would still be up when I went to do the work this weekend.

[rick3000]

Parrot, send me a PM with your email address, a few years ago when a lot of the original Boxster websites that pioneered some of these hacks started to go down as people sold their cars, I downloaded ever DIY, picture, etc I could find (about 6GB's). I have a folder with heated seat info, it's a bit confusing to sort through, but it's all there.


Also, out of curiosity are you doing the OEM heated seat install or are you using an aftermarket kit. If you have found a way to use an aftermarket heated seat kit with the OEM heated seat switches I would love to know how.

[Trey T]

Does the boxster (I have 01 base model) have the heat pad already installed?

[KevinH1990]

Originally Posted by Trey T

Does the boxster (I have 01 base model) have the heat pad already installed?

I recently used Dennis Vogel's instructions to install heated seats in my 2000 Boxster. I swapped in seats from another car, so I only had to do the wiring.

I sold the seats that I took out of the car to other Boxster owners. One of the buyers wanted me to disassemble the seat to save shipping costs. During the dis-assembly process, I looked for signs that there was a heating pad in the seat. I did not find any. In his instructions, Dennis states that he didn't see a heating pad in his seats.

I think I saw a post from Pedro on his board stating that the seat bottoms had the heat pads installed. But I saw no evidence of them in my seats.

[KevinH1990]

Originally Posted by rick3000

Also, out of curiosity are you doing the OEM heated seat install or are you using an aftermarket kit. If you have found a way to use an aftermarket heated seat kit with the OEM heated seat switches I would love to know how.

These guys seem to think there is a way:
http://www.boxa.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=32978

However they did not post step-by-step instructions like Dennis Vogel's. They just make a cryptic remark, "Do you not have a friend who is reasonably competent with a multimeter? It really isn't hard. "

Based on that comment, I think that you will need to splice the wiring for the aftermarket kit into a wiring harness containing the Porsche relays and the Porsche switches. The key to this can probably be found on page 7 of Vogel's instructions in the step labeled "Installing Control Module (996.618.521.00) and Seat Harness (996.612.540.01)" If you can determine which pins on the relay are the power circuit and which are the control circuit, you should be able to figure out how to wire in the switches. I think the relays are fairly expensive, Dennis listed them at $52 each, but that was a few years ago so they are probably $75 or more now.

You might want to enlist the help of someone with an electronics background (like a smart technician at a car audio shop) to help you. A relay is just a switch controlled by another switch so if you can figure out which pin does what you should be able to do it.