In this blog, we discuss information about installing a new seat in your Subaru. This could include installing power or heated seats, race car seats, or the effects of switching your center console.
For all the cases below, there is one important thing to note:
Many cars have airbags and seat belt sensors built into the seats. When you switch seats, these added features mean you may end up with warning lights and disabled features. iWire HIGHLY recommends keeping the seats that match your chassis for safety reasons.
With the above in mind, we know customers will accept the risk of having upgraded seats with newer features, so we have a few examples of seat switches and what to watch out for.
Heated Seats or Power Seats in a chassis without those features:
The hard part about this swap is that the plug likely won't match between seats, and your chassis may not have the provisions needed in the bulkhead harness for these upgrades.
If your car doesn't have the power seats or heated seats, your wiring harness won't have the extra electrical components in the rear harness that connects to the seats that come with that feature. Getting the seats working would require pulling power from the bulkhead harness, where usually Subaru will provision the harness for all variations of seat type. Even in these cases, the wiring to the fuse for that accessory might not have terminals going to it, so components may need to be added to utilize the factory fusing. All this is to say, due to the surprising complexity of these changes and the variations between models and years, we don't have a way to make a plug-and-play harness for this type of modification.
If your chassis does have the power or heated seat feature, but you're looking to change seats, the plugs may not match. In this case you'll want to cut off the old plugs from the original seats and install them onto your new seats. Modifying the seat side is much easier than the car chassis side. That way, you know where to start troubleshooting if there is an issue. To install the old plugs on the new seat, you'll have to utilize the wiring diagrams that match the chassis and the seat and combine power, ground, and any sensor wiring there may be.
We sell many of the seat connectors and they can be found on our website.
Switching out your Center Console:
The most common example for this is if your installing an STi center console into a WRX to get the DCCD switches in the chassis. The seat heater switches change plug style. We make an adapter (seen below) to adjust for the plug changes. You can find more information about our Seat Heater Switch Adapter here.
Race Car Seat Install:
Sometimes, owners want to use a more racecar-style seat in their build. Our tip is to ensure the seat is installed properly and that you have an upgraded seatbelt harness for safety. As mentioned above, when you remove a seat, there may be an airbag or seatbelt sensor the ECU is looking for that may lead to warning lights and disabled features. You'll have to talk with your builder or tuner for a solution since iWire doesn't modify the airbag or seatbelt harnesses due to safety concerns.
