190E electric, heated Cosworth seat transplant

[neilrr]

I've bought a full black leather Cosworth interior to put in my Arctic white 190E Sportline suspensioned car. Both the car & interior are in great nick and the leather seats will be a big plus for the car. I'm not HUGELY fond of white (bought the car on low mileage, condition, FMBSH, only 2 long term owners & S'line suspension), but with black leather I think it will look pretty good, especially with the Cosworth bucket seats.

The leather Sportline interior option cost a whopping £2,400 when new. The suspension & leather together were £4K+!!!

The car currently has standard black cloth seats (which are incidently like new - a testament to MB cloth). It SHOULD be a fairly straight forward in/out job as carpets etc are already the right colour, HOWEVER, the new seats are both heated and the driver's seat is electric.

I'm getting the door cards, seatbelts, switches, relays, wiring looms & everything else I should need to hook it all up to OE standard.

Has anyone any experience of doing this or does anyone know of a site which has diagrams, pictures, instructions or offers any guidence?

 

[LINDS HANSON]

Hi there, I have recently fitted heated, electric, memory leather seats to my wifes 190 sportline 2.6 manual, the jobs not too bad the main hassle is routing the harness correctly. The first thing is to remove the centre console and instrument cluster and preferably the wiper assembly to gain access to the bulkhead grommet on drivers side bulkhead. The heated seat harness comes over the tunnel from the passenger side picking up the two switches in the rear of the wood panel, then across to the drivers seat then it splits the length of wire with the large multi plug which connects to the control unit runs along the osr floor into thr rear seat base. The conrol unit is mounted onto the rhr seat base front panel, the other section of the harness travels forward along the osf floor and then goes through the hole in the inner sill near throttle pedal it now needs to be pulled right up the door pillar and out of the top hole inside the dash aperture. The easiest way to do this is to feed a thick wire down from the top hole removing the door switches so that you can see its progress down the pillar untill it appears at the access holes in the lower door pillar. You will have to move some of the sound deadening inside the dash apperture to gain access to the upper hole. The wire can now be attached to the heated seat harness to carefully pull the harness up into the dash apperture. The harness now splits again it will have one thin black and yellow wire this goes down the outside of the door pillar to the junction block above the throttle pedal. the junction block is yellow and as similar coluored wires already attached it should be only live when the ignition is turned on. The thick red wire now passes through the bulkhead grommet and down past the fuse box to the osf suspnsion tower, the fuse carrier now attaches to the bracket already welded to the tower you will need a good battery feed to the other side of the fuse block. The remaining wire should be grey/blue this needs to be attached to a panel light feed or similar colured wire, I found this wire easier to connect to the panel light feed on the electric window switches. If you only have the one electricly adjusted seat then the wiring is quite easy compared to my twin memory one, The wiring passes back from the front of the seat through the floor cross member
then along to the RHF footwell up the pillar again but this time the door trunking needs to be pulled away from the door pillar the section of harneess with several multiplugs which attach to the seat switches are now pulled through into the trunking and then very carefully into the door. The harness now needs to be pulled up to the cut out in the top of the door where the seat switch mounts,once all the connections are made secure the harness to the door away from any contact with the window regulator. The thick red white wire goes up the door pillar and into the dash along the same route as the heated seat harness, through the bulkhead grommet and to the auxillary relay box infront of the fuse box,. The seat relay and fuse block now fit into the aux relay box .This again as a battery live feed on the thick red wire, if you look at the front of the fuse box a small panel can be unclipped and ther is a connection point there. The remaining thin red/white wire now goes down inside the dash and upto the bottom of the fuse box the connector on this wire will have a letter on it the connector plugs into the matching letter on the fuse box. This allows the seats to work either with the doors open or the ignition turned on as per the electric windows. The brown earth connections for both harness should now be connected to the main earth point on the right of the instrument apperture just be carefull that non of the other earrth connections dont fall off whilst doing this! The front door internal handle surround is also different to house the seat switch bezel so make sure you get it with the other bits hope this helps, good luck, let me know if you need any further help Regards Linds

 

[neilrr]

Linds,

Thanks for that, I think.

It sounds like a long process and for me (mechanically stupid) quite daunting. How long did it take you to do the wiring.

 

[GrahamC230K]

What a great response.

I would take a trip to Cornwall Neil! Remember to take pics and write the uprgrade up this time!

 

[Ian B Walker]

I can only second what Graham has posted, utterly brilliant.

 

[LINDS HANSON]

Hi again, the jobs not too bad once you work out where everything needs to go, thers nothing worse than running the wires through only to find they wont reach or you cant get the trim back on! If you have already got a black interior( mine was grey originaly) it should be possible over a weekend. Did the seats come from a 2.3 or 2.5 as the rear bench is longer from front to back on the early pre 88 cars, it will fit but its a very tight fit in a later car. I would be happy to help if you want to come to Cornwall. Cheers Linds

 

[neilrr]

Linds,

Thank you very much for your kind offer, which you may live to regret! Whereabouts in Cornwall are you?

I had contemplated doing an interior change on an earlier car I had but as it involved everything from the carpets up I learned to love grey instead.

The donor is a 1990 2.5-16, same year as my car so hopefully everything will fit.

 

[LINDS HANSON]

Hi I am in Penzance which is about as far as you can go before you get wet feet! M5 and then A30 more or less to my door. Cheers Linds

 

[Howard]

Hi there, i have an arctic white CE with a black leather interior, and i can confirm it looks good....

You may want to consider when you get it all done, to have some mats made , i took the plunge and had jet black velour with white binding, which really works well with the exterior colour.....

Heres a piccy, excuse all the cr@p in the footwell......

Good luck

 

[Sp!ke]

Just found a diagram for heated seats in a W123... cant be too dissimilar for yours.

 

[LINDS HANSON]

The seats will fit fine they are from the same age/era body type, its worth connecting the elecric seat up out of the car the red and red white to a good 12v battery pos terminal and the brown to neg/earth terminal the seat should now operate. This just makes sure the seat is going to work before going into the car. Cheers Linds

 

[LINDS HANSON]

Just remembered something else about the rear seat! as your car got the long range fuel tank if it as it will have a large bulge in the rear bulkhead behind the rear seat. This is the ideal fit for the rear seat headrests, I presume you are fitting headrests the normal bulkhead i.e. flat no bulge in the middle as the headrest mounts further out towards the side of the car. They can be persauded to fit but are very tight, you will also need the seat belt stalks for the 2.5 16v to clear the seat side bolsters, note 2.3 16V stalks/buckles wont fit because the mounting point is different on post 88MY cars. Cheers Linds

 

[neilrr]

Linds,

I'm helping to remove the seats from the donor car next w/e in Bournemouth so I'm going to test everything while it's still in the wrecked 2.5-16.

I've run my car's VIN through the Russian VIN decoder & it doesn't say anything in the options about the fuel tank so I'm assuming it's the standard 60 litre. The new interior has headrests already fitted to the back seats. Will that be OK if I don't have the bigger fuel tank & an easy straight in fit?

Once again, many thanks for your help with this.

Neil

 

[neilrr]

Sp!ke,

Thanks for the map.

 

[LINDS HANSON]

Hi again, does your car have rear headrests at the moment? if not then you will need to get the four brackets that are riveted to the rear bulkhead. The seat and headrest will fit your bulkhead but as I said the fixing points for the brackets is about 20mm nearer to the outside of the car. The headrest will push in at an angle which rucks up the leather on the top of the rear seat, but this isnt too obvious once the headrest is pushed right down. If you have access to the rest of the car then I will give you a list of important parts you must get, heated seat relay/timer from under rear seat, both front door internal handles, auxillary fuse box from under bonnet near main fuse box, small aux fuse box screwed to top of RHF suspension tower and screws, obviously the wiring harness x 3 , wood center console panel and heated seat switches x2. The door switches are removed by carefully levering the 3x seat buttons off, then the face plate, then remove the door trim, the switch is now screwed to the door by 2x screws. Obviously but I'll say it anyway! be very carefull when removing the hrness from the door and bulkhead, it sometimes helps to tape the connections togeather so they dont snag on anything when being pulled through. Hope this helps? I dont suppose the 2.5's got A.C. or cruise ?these are my next cravings. Cheers Linds

 

[LINDS HANSON]

So how did it go at the weekend then?

 

[neilrr]

Hi Linds,

It didn't go.

I sent you a pm on 6.12.05 explaining the story I was told. Did you not receive it? Let me know one way or the other.

Neil

 

[LINDS HANSON]

Sorry mate I never saw the PM I just read it now, what a cockup! You must be well p***ed off. I dont think it adds up really but we will no doubt find out as time goes by. Hope something turns up soon , I cant beleive how many 16v are being broken! there wont be many left soon. If I see anything I will let you know. Cheers Linds

 

[neilrr]

Thanks. It doesn't really add up to me either. Did you have any luck with the bits you enquired about?

I agree about the disappearing 16 valves. They're weren't that many sold & at the rate we're losing them they are going to be v. rare in a few years.

 

[neilrr]

Hi Linds,

You have a pm.

Neil