How I Added Power Passenger Seat to a 2010 2SS

[el ess A]

I THOUGHT I had all the parts needed for a swap to a power passenger seat in my 2SS 2010 Camaro. Apparenlty there is something left off the list that isn't quite obvious. I'll get to that in a while.

Anyhoo, nice 85 degree day, ready to get r done. This is how I did it. You may do it differently.

I didn't post every pic to show every detail, but this thread shows some details as well.

http://www.moderncamaro.com/forum/do...t-upgrade.html

Here's more discussions on it:

http://www.camaro5.com/forums/showthread.php?t=166968

1) Pic 1 is what the wife was using necessitating the need to do something. Wedge foam.

2) Pic 2 is showing the headrest removed. Probably easier to lean the seat back to pop the headrest out. Raise it up all the way and then you press on both buttons to release the headrest from the seat.

3) Pic 3 shows the seat after headrest removed. Then you want to raise the back of the seat back up, probably straight or leaning a bit forward.

4) Pic 4 shows the Torx 50 bolt. Slide the seat all the way forward to access them. They're in there with a cage nut, so once they start to come loose, don't freak out as they'll wiggle some as you take them out.

5) Pic 5 shows what's underneath. Once the back two bolts are out, you can lift up the back of the seat and get to the cable connector in the floor. Slide the retainer out on the outboard side and the connector comes right off. Easy.

[el ess A]

6) You can lift out the seat by pulling it rearward freeing the "hooks" on the front of the rails. Be careful getting the seat out of the car. It's not real heavy, but it's bulky. You may want to put some towels down around the door opening for protection. Pic 6 shows something kinda cool underneath a "flap" of carpet.

7) Pic 7- There's two phillips screws, one on front and one on back of the outboard cover. You may want to take the time to pop off the recliner back power switch handle. It simply pops right off. You can save this for the new switch as it's the same. There's some friction clips and two push pins holding the side panel on. Just pop it off once the screws are out. Go ahead and uplug the switch and you can leave it in the side cover as you won't be using that switch or side cover anymore. There's two phillips screws to remove on the inboard mini-cover as well. Save the screws for the mini-cover. But you'll only reuse one if you reuse the cover.

8) Pic 8 shows the air bag sensor module. You'll need to unplug, unscrew and save the module/screws for reuse.

9) Pic 9 shows where the seat belt buckle plugs in (orange/light blue). Unplug it. The two blue wires go to some sort of switch. I don't have a clue what this does, but it MIGHT have something to do with moving the seat all the way forward. It's not on the new seat or harness. There's a metal plate the switch rides over when it's all the way up (air bag cutoff for children maybe?)

10) Pic 10 shows the 2 gray plugs. One's got 4 wires (2 pinks/green/blue), one's got two (pink/light blue). The 4-wire deal goes to the bottom seat heater. The 2-wire one goes to the seat back heater. Unplug them.

[el ess A]

11) You can loosen the sides of the bottom seat cover if you like at this point. Pic 11 shows it's fairly simple to do. Sides and front of seat bottom simply have fold over clip method.

12) The seat back wrapover fabric at the seat joint has a stretch band and clip on each side. They need to be unclipped. Here's one side under the seat bottom.

13) The other side clip

14) Pic 14 shows the seat belt buckle. You should have already unclipped the wire, but if you hadn't, now's a good time. Then remove a Torx 50 bolt and it comes right out. Set it aside.

15) Pic 15 shows a hogring holding on the rear side of the bottom seat cover. There's one on each side under the seat bottom. Carefully remove them as to not tear things up.

16) Pic 16 shows the wire conduits for the seat back motor and the air bag going up the seat back and how they're routed through the seat bottom fabric flap in the back. The new wire harness only has one conduit with both wires inside.

17) The bottom of the seat back clips together similar to the seat bottom sides. Pop the bottom seam loose and you can pull out the zippers.

[el ess A]

18) Pic 18 shows the zippers pulled out from under the seatback. No tabs, but they're easy to unzip.

19) Pic 19 shows what you see after unzipping the seat back. The seat is upside down here.

20) Aha, pic 20 shows the wire going to the seat airbag. Be careful in here.

21) Pic 21 shows the wiring to the power seat back motor located at the outboard side lower part of the seat back.

22) Pic 22 is of the air bag terminal. It's a yellow/black plug with an orange lock tab. You need to carefully pry this tab out like the pic shows in order to wiggle this plug off the air bag. I used a jewler's flatblade screwdriver to get in there to pop the orange lock tab up. Again, don't manhandle stuff here. The new harness has this same setup with the orange tab already in the up position.

23) Pic 23 shows the motor plugs. All the motor plugs are the same construction. I took a jeweler's flatblade screwdriver and pushed in the tabbie to unlock and remove the plug. There's a couple of push pins holding the wires to the seat back frame you'll need to pop loose in here as well. Remove the wires and carefully thread them through the seat bottom flap. At this point, you might as well remove all the harness push pins on the bottom of the seat.

24) Pic 24 shows the push clip tab that you need a phillips to remove. You can access the seat back bolts easier this way. Set it and the screw aside, you'll be using this again. Using a Torx 45, you can remove the 4 seat back bolts holding it to the seat bottom frame. They're gobbed with a locking type goo, and it's TOUGH to get them started out. Be careful not to strip out the torx head socket. I suggest a socket handle Torx bit and slow steady pressure to keep from slipping. PITA. This is why it's a good idea to get the 4 new screws.

[el ess A]

25) Pic 25 shows two push pins needing removed on the air bag sensor pad. You should have already unclipped this from the module. If not, do it now. It's a film with what looks like bubble wrap sandwiched inside, but in effect is a flexible circuit board it seems. Lift and set aside.

26) Pic 26 shows the clips needing bent up slightly to be able to remove and reuse the bottom seat spring. Just bend them up slightly and it'll come right out. If you hadn't loosened the old harness from the spring, you need to do that. Also, while you're on top here, you can get to the lock to unplug that mystery switch that was nearby the seat belt wire connector. While you're here, take a phillips screwdriver and remove the air bag module bracket from the front top of the seat bottom.

27) Pic 27 is on the new seat bottom frame. Install the bracket with the three saved screws from the old bracket.

28) You can start going in reverse order now. Install the old seat bottom spring set in the grooves. Bend the grooves down to secure the spring front. It just lays across the back bar.

29) Lay the air bag sensor pad back on top and push in the push pins in the front.

[el ess A]

30) Pic 30 - Here's the 4 bolts you SHOULD replace. Unless you got real lucky and didn't chew up any. Sealer comes pre-applied, but not nearly as much on there as the factory bolts.

31) Pic 31 shows the wires from the bottom of the seat toward the rear. You can see the gray plugs for the seat heaters, and the now single conduit for the seat back motor and air bag wires.

32) Pic 32 is the WTF I was talking about with the old mini hinge cover on the inboard side. Because of the way the bottom seat frame is made, the flange turns outboard. The old one was inboard. You can only attach it with the side screw as the other screw doesn't . So you'll have one screw left over. Probably have to buy a 2012 cover which so far, nobody has talked about.

A tip about installing the outboard side cover and switch. Plug the switch into the harness first, THEN clip the switch into the side of the side cover. Pop on the side cover and use the screws saved from the old cover. The front attaches from the inside underneath. You'll see.

33) Pic 33 shows the motor plugs. The motor on the right is the front tilt (green/blue), and the motor on the left is for the seat up/down (light blue/yellow). Not shown is the front/rear motor wire clip. It has a tan/green wire. Like I said, all the motor clips are exactly the same, so this should avoid confusion as to which goes where.

[el ess A]

I've got the 22780745 harness for the 2SS leather seat with heat. I don't know what the difference is with the 47 harness.

Anyway, the new harness wiring can be deciphered like this.

Gray clips- heaters. 4-wire (2 pink/gray/blue) to the seat bottom, 2 wire (pink/light blue) to the seat back.

Small black plug- (orange/light blue) goes to seat belt.

Motor plugs ---Main motor, Forward/Reverse (tan/green). Front bolster up/down motor (blue/green). Main up/down motor (light blue/yellow)

Yellow and black plug with orange lock- Goes to air bag on inside of seat back. While you're there, there's the seat back motor (green with yellow stripe/blue with yellow stripe)

Plug with air bag tag- goes to rear connection of air bag module mounted on bracket.

Heavy duty plug goes to operating switch has attached zip tie to attach to front cross rod.

It took about 3.5 hours of wrenching and picture taking from start to finish. Even stopped and grabbed something to eat during the job. Not bad.

The covers kinda bother me though. If you look at the new outer side cover, it has some push clips in the center area that aren't used. It's almost as if there's another bracket/panel or something that needs to be attached underneath. I could be wrong though. But that center push in clip has nothing to attach to. And it's for the same year as the bottom seat frame. The mini-hinge cover on the inboard side has to be a different part number for 2012. It's on there, but with a single screw. I doubt I'll change it out, but it kinda sucked going this far then finding out it won't bolt up correctly.

Hope this helps out someone trying to do theirs.

BTW, I now have an service air bag light on and the DIC shows it too. I didn't think to unplug the battery before starting the job and probably goofed something by unplugging the main harness from the floor. I hope. I guess I'll have to take it in now and see what's up. I hope it doesn't have anything to do with that stupid weird switch underneath.

[2SSRS@Gen5diy]

So start.

[el ess A]

I did start. Hope I didn't miss anything.

[el ess A]

Here's an exploded picture of the manual seat. Maybe this will help you get an idea of what needs to happen. If you look at part 23 on the list, this is the switch. The parts book shows the bracket but not the switch. It says it's for the air bag. I'm guessing since in the most-forward position, it hovers over a metal plate (number 19). So if I were to bet, I'm betting it's a normally closed switch, and "opens" the circuit for the air bag to keep it from activating. I'm guessing it may figure you have a child seat in there and you don't want the air bag at point-blank range? I dunno.

Interestingly, it's also on the driver's side too? Even with an electric driver seat. Is it required for 2010s? Is this why I have an air bag error? The driver's side harness is 92241760. I wonder if it needs to be retrofitted into the new harness?

[el ess A]

Ok, borrowing Ofer's harness plug pic, I took off the cover on the manual seat plug to see what goes where. So I marked it up as to what's in the manual seat plug. Interestingly, there's one pin that the new harness doesn't have, and it's blue. The same exact color as the two blue wires going to the mystery airbag switch. Problem is, there's a blue one right next to it. Is this the other color to the seat belt switch which has the same color blue and an orange one? Perhaps this missing pin is the missing link?

I'm probably going to dissect the tape and conduit on the old harness to see exactly how that switch is wired in. But likely tomorrow. I'm too tired to worry about it tonight.

[el ess A]

Just for fun, I peeled back some of the tape. Found one of the blue wires for the switch plug tapped into the blue wire for the seatbelt connector. The seat belt light does work properly in the car right now, so apparently the blue pinout for the seatbelt/mystery switch is there in the right spot. The other switch blue wire goes into the conduit.

This makes me suspect that this pinout is the missing one on the new harness (red circle above). Tomorrow I'm going to remove the switch wiring/plug, pop off the plug cover on the new harness and try to install the pinout where it would have gone on the old plug.

If it works, I'm probably just going to tape up the switch somewhere out of sight since I'll never have to use it, but I might take out the seat and install it right. Not sure yet. We'll see how tough it is to do.

If anyone has some better ideas, I'm willing to listen.

[el ess A]

Hmmm...

Looking closer, it IS the airbag wire that's missing on the new harness plug. I unwrapped the old harness and there it was.

First pic shows the two plugs from the old harness. The air bag at the bottom, the seat belt wire in the middle, and the mystery air bag switch wiring/plug to the right. As you can see, one of the blue wires junctions in with the seat belt blue wire and heads on down to the main plug right next to the other blue plug on the old harness.

Second pic is the closeup of the junction.

Third pic is of the pin I removed from the main harness floor plug. It's typical computer pinout removal. Stick a tiny tool in the plug end both under and over the flat pin and bend down the tangs. (there's on on top and one on bottom). Then you can remove the pin/wire. Just spread them back out and pop into the proper location on the main plug.

Last two pictures are updates to show where to cut the wire to separate the airbag slide switch wire/plug from the 2010 harness. And then take that cut wire and splice it to the NEW seatbelt switch blue wire.

Plan is to pull the seat out again, pop the cover off the main plug to the floor, insert the pin in the proper slot, then figure out how to retrofit the position switch on the new seat. I figure if I wire it in just like the old harness, what's it going to hurt as it was there before the "upgrade"?

We'll see how it goes.

IMPORTANT!! Plug pic - Forgot to add, before you pull any pins out of the plug, you MUST remove this purple retainer first. Simply run a small flatblade and gently pry it up along the length or push through with a tiny pin punch from the other side. With this installed, the pins are locked.

[el ess A]

It appears transferring the old switch and plate looks to be fairly straightforward. Amazingly there's a spot for it on the new seat. Probably a good idea to swap it when the bottom spring is removed. It'll be a bit easier. One phillips head screw for the bracket/switch and two rivets for the plate. Now I just have to get the right sized rivets and it should be good.

Other than using one different color wire for the actual air bag plug, the main floor plug is configured the same as the 2010 main floor plug, with the exception of that extra air bag switch wire used on the 2010.

Pics later if I can get this to work.