How to (how not to) swap 996 seats for 997

[rheasman]

How to, how not to swap 996 seats for 997

A small guide of how I swapped my 996 seats for 997 seats, but with a plea for help, because despite reading every post on the forum, I done something wrong! (Attachment has pictures)

The problem

The car doesn’t register that the seat belt is locked in. The dash displays a seat belt sign warning message and I need to OK to clear it from the display. However the seat belt icon on the dash stays on regardless. I have wired in the 997 belt lock (see below) but maybe they are not the same – I’ve not got a 996 wiring diagram showing the belt lock.

The Swap

Getting the seat out

First off the bolt pattern between the 997 and 966 is identical. The bolts are E12 torx MA LE and you need a female socket set and small extension bar to undo them (thanks to Loren on his many posts about this - I got the right tools before starting the job).

Before accessing the bolts there were covers on the rails on my drivers seat – a flat bladed screw driver lifting the clip allowed them to slide off easily (I haven’t been able to re-fit on the 997 rails yet)

Then undo the rear bolts, then move the seats back and undo the front bolts.

Tip the seat back and access the connector. To separate the connectors there’s a section on the side that slides out and forces the two apart (or locks them together when closed).

The seat is now ready to be removed; I found it easiest to ease the base out first and then the top.

TIP: Place a towel over the sill of the car to avoid the rails scratching the car!

Connectors

The connectors on the 997 seat and the 996 seat are completely different. However they perform the same job. I chose to take the connector block off the old 996 seat and graft it onto the 997 seat.

This meant cutting both and ensuring I knew what wires did what (again other posts on the forum helped greatly – thanks).

The 997 connector comes apart into 3 blocks. One provides the power, one controls the airbag and the last is the seat belt lock connection.

The airbags in my 997 seats had already gone off, however I still didn’t fancy wiring them up by accident, so having identified the pins (16, 17) which is the middle block I tucked it to one side and never touched it again.

Both sets of my seats were power back only. So I only had the main power and the belt lock to wire up.

I cut the old connector off the 996 seat and for the belt lock I soldered the connector on to the new 997 belt lock wires. (This might be where I went wrong – I’m not sure that the wiring within the 997 and 996 belt locks is identical).

For the power (red and brown wires) I used a block connector and screwed them together. This was because the wire was thick and not much to spare to be able to provide a well soldered joint.

Re-fitting

As they usually say, re-fitting is the reverse of the removal. A couple of points though.

• The rails seemed to need a little encouragement to align and I had to hold one while fitting the bolt in.
  
• It’s well worth ensuring that the new seat is aligned equally on its rails. Otherwise the seat is squint and is even more problematic to fit. (Count the number of holes up from the rear of the rail to where the pins have engaged)
  

Child seat deactivation switch and bar

I had a right ‘mare getting the passenger seat in. A previous owner had had the child seat airbag deactivation switch fitted. Again, having ready the posts on here I didn’t wan to go messing with this, but luckily the switch is not wired through the seat connector. However the bar that the buckle is fitted too proved too much for me. No matter how I tried to fit the bar and the seat, whether rear bolts first, front bolts first or half and half or any combination, I just could not get all four bolts in with the child seat bar. So I removed the bar and the seat slipped in easy as 1+1. The buckle (still wired) now just lies in front of the seat)

Note: My passenger seat had no seat belt lock wiring, making the connection job a lot easier.

How_to_put_997_seats_in_a_996.pdf

Edited January 3, 2010 by Loren
Converted .doc to PDF

[andymac]

Did you sort out the seat belt problem ?