EU Spec fully electric rear seats retrofit...

[IT]

A small update from yesterday as I was mainly working on other mini projects on the car that I've yet to document....

Passenger seat memory is something I confess I wasn't massively familiar with as its a pretty rare option, only available in the last 2 years of D2 production. We only ever saw one car in the flesh with this option and it wasnt drivable so didnt spend much time getting familiar.....

We just assumed that it would move the passenger seat when you pushed the memory buttons in the door, fair enough. I was a bit dissapointed when it became clear that it wouldnt adjust the passenger seatbelt height, but I'm getting over that....

Now, what I didnt realise was that it comes with a different memory button :



Somehow, we removed this part from the donor car, completely overlooked it and put it in a box several months ago.

Last week, David found it and excitedly told me he'd found the missing passenger side memory buttons i'd been looking for, and it has a * button on it... how cool....

But when i got it, it isnt a passenger side trim.... Its a drivers side trim...

So, a quick double check with a 2002 owners manual and a lot of pieces fall into place.

The passenger side memory buttons are normal, 1,2,3,4 buttons just like you normally get on the drivers side. The drivers side however has 3 positions, 1,2,3 and * - The * on the drivers side module (wait for it) moves the passenger seat into its position 4, so if you've had someone lounging in the back who has pushed the front seat all the way forward, the driver can simply press a button in his door to move the seat back to a sensible position.

How utterly fab is that.....

This also explains why I ran that white/green wire all the way from the passenger side memory buttons all over to the drivers side memory buttons.... I thought it was odd, but did it anyway because i couldnt explain what it did and Im so glad as I will now have this feature when I refit the seats.....

[Singh]

Very very cool, a feature I would use. Everyone that is a passenger in my car always moves my seat around, and I have to move it back leaning over to the passenger side stretching is not that fun.

[PsYcHe]

The D3 has similar options in the MMI...

Seat Symmetry and Convenience View to move the passenger seat about so it's not in the way. Used it a whole once

[Oli18]

Hi Ian,

How much would your A/S8 have cost new with all the options you have/will-have on there by the time you finish? Just interested to see what kind of cost it would have been

Oli

[CliveH]

Also utterly gobsmacked here and totally in awe! What an amazing and thoroughly unique accomplishment this will be, and quite a transformation along with the RNS-E retrofit.

Nice work Ian

[IT]

Originally Posted by Oli18

Hi Ian,

How much would your A/S8 have cost new with all the options you have/will-have on there by the time you finish? Just interested to see what kind of cost it would have been

Oli

I'll have a tot up at the end, but as the inidividual reat seats wern't even on UK price lists, I'm not sure how I'll tackle that !!

[IT]

Originally Posted by CliveH

Also utterly gobsmacked here and totally in awe! What an amazing and thoroughly unique accomplishment this will be, and quite a transformation along with the RNS-E retrofit.

Nice work Ian

Thanks Clive for you kind words and those from others further up the thread - They do mean something as otherwise i'd just sit here with my car in a million pieces, not having driven it for a month wondering what possesed me to start this project, and to do so many projects side by side was also a little nuts but seemed to have some logic originally.....

By way of a status update:

Some more door cardclips arrived yesterday (part 4D0 867 299 D) - They are about 20p each, and there are 9 per door. If you are ever thinking of taking a door card off, I recommend for < £2 you get a set because then when you're done, you can put the door back on *properly*

This is especially true of the drivers door for 2 reason:

1) It is most likely to have been on/off as it has the most electrickery in there, and you would need to take it off to attend to the O/S door mirror which is statistically the most likely to get knocked off

2) Its right next to the driver, so any knocks/rattles/squeaks will annoy the chuff out of you very quickly !

I've also got a set of late model TV aerial in yesterday so I can retrofit them to parcelshelf (part of the RNS-E fit) before commiting to bolting the rear seats in.

I've sorted a few other niggles. Here is a photo of the original armrest from the donor car with individual rear seats on the left. In the circle are 3 annoying dings which are common to the armrest section as it is hard and doesnt suffer knocks well. I had a much better armrest in my original back seats so decided to swop them over....



Of course it wasnt straight forward though as the whole bracket (seen on the right) is completely different for the individual seats. For a starters, the center headrest doesnt pop up like normal FL D2's because there is no center seat, and the shape differs to protrude further to allow for the seats sliding out. So, I then had to dismantle the whole assembly on the right, which is typically german overengineered combination of levers and c-clips but in the process managed to break a plastic retaining bracket



Plastic? seriously... anyway, a good session with superglue seems to have sorted it out, and its now all re-assembled and looking good as seen on the right...

I have changed my wood from the standard walnut to 'birds eye maple' which makes a refreshing change, and in doing so I've also got rid of the ghastly walnut door trims, but this presents a new problem as I have to replace them....

This is the state of the drivers one from the donor car:



The 'wood' trims wear far better, but the plastic colour coded ones generally look less old-manish as the wood isnt overpowering, and it simplifies the process of changing wood at a later date.

What a lot of people dont realise is that wood trims on the door have a wood top, but the insert round the handle is coloured to your interior. There are 8 or so interior colours, and 5/6 wood trims, plus rhd, lhd and then whether you have auto-mirror folding so thats 80+ different rhd trims alone. The chances of getting a match if you want to change wood over is sometimes very slim, so by sticking to a colour-coded switch trim, you can avoid this problem later on.... So, I've order some brand spanking new ones to finish my motor off properly, and leave me options for changing the birds eye later if i get bored...

[IT]

Well, the sun is shining. I've got a day off work. I *need* my car for a journey to Birmingham Monday/Tuesday so I really must get it back together today/tomorrow

Lets hope it all comes together....

[CliveH]

Sounds like a busman's holiday to me Ian

Hope it all goes to plan, and just remember that 'installation is the reverse of removal'...

[IT]

Originally Posted by CliveH

just remember that 'installation is the reverse of removal'...

Ah, but this is only true if you are refitting what you first removed...