I have had a couple of people tell me that the delay in my shipment was due to Customs in Chicago. Apparently they regularly have backlogs. So if you are ordering from overseas be prepared for delays.
Didn’t have much going on today so decided to dive into installing the heater pads. Pulled the passenger seat and dug in. I am running NB2 seats so my disassembly relates to those. First you need to separate the back and bottom of the seat. First off you remove the recline lever by pulling it forward. It slides onto a metal lever and is only held on by a tab that provides a spring loaded function. Once that is off remove the small screw hiding behind that.
You next remove the trim piece. This is accomplished by sliding it back and upward to get it clear of the mechanism. You can see the half-moon shaped white piece that holds it on here:
Next I removed the small inside hinge bolt, and then pulled the black insert out of the trim piece before removing the trim piece:
Next you undo the two zippers at the bottom of the seat back to access the outside bolts:
Once all that is off the seat back is free. Now you start removing the hog rings. I used two needle nosed pliers and a flat blade screwdriver to pry if I had to.
After these first five you peel the cover back and remove the hog rings as you go. I counted 16 total for what I got to. Here is the seat cover pulled back:
I then laid one of the heater pads on the foam to see where I need to cut it. The pads have two areas with space between the heating coils, you cut across those areas to shorten them as needed. Take care not to cut through any of the coils. For my use I removed one of the sections. The instructions say to not have the heating coils lay across any gap in the foam (used for hog rings to secure the cover). I cut out the space between the two remaining sections of the pad. Once you have that all set you remove the backing from the double-sided tape running down either side of the pad and lay it in place.
One tip to make life easier, figure out where you need to remove the fabric of the pad for cover hog ring access before you tape the pad in place and cut it then. I used an X-Acto knife for this but for the second pad I started the cuts and then did the rest with scissors before taping the pad in place.
After that is done all you need to do is replace the hog rings so the cover is back in place. I have seen some folks say to use zip-ties instead of the hog rings, but I’m a masochist so put the hog rings back on.
Next up is the seat bottom. You will need to remove the sliders (total of six bolts). Once that is done the bottom will look like this:
Then it’s back to removing hog rings to pull the cover back so it looks like this:
I counted 21 hog rings removed for this one. Repeat the same steps for installing the heating pad. I made the same cuts as I did for the back pad for both length and hog ring access (no picture of that as I was on a roll and wanted to get it done). Once that’s done you just reverse the disassembly steps until it’s all back together. Be sure to route the wires for both pads to the inside of the seat. It took me about 2 ½ hours to complete this work.
I’ll continue once I start doing all the wiring hook-ups. One thing I did note is that the wiring connectors for the heating pads were not all the same. Three had a red wire on one side of the connector, the fourth had the red wire on the opposite side of the connector. I don’t know who made the connectors up but someone wasn’t paying attention.