Time for another update…
So, here goes – I’ve managed to get my Recaro SPGs in the car!
I do like the M seats, but I am a real fan of Recaro SPG seats having used them in other cars both on the road and on track and I really wanted them in the Z as I felt after all the other mods that I was just hanging in there rather than concentrating on lines..
So, old seat out and good chance to have clean up under the seat after close to 10 years, with some VAC seat mounts shipped over fresh from Uncle Sam:
Now, of course, the issue with removing BMW seats is that they have an occupancy sensor and sensors for the seatbelt buckle as well. Here, ebay was my friend and so I bought a couple of gizmo’s to fool the car into thinking that everything was good:
Trouble is, that didn’t quite work out…
When I fitted the seats, the airbag light stayed on so I decided to investigate further – using INPA, I could see that 5 error codes were coming up that would not clear:
Driver seat belt buckle
Passenger seat belt buckle
Driver seat pretensioner
Passenger seat pretensioner
Passenger seat occupancy
Looking a bit deeper and using NCS Expert, I downloaded the file from the airbag ECU and using my (patchy) German and a bit of help from t’interweb, I *thought* I could code out these by changing a few parameters.
Bottom line? No joy.
I joined the BMW Coders forum and got no replies back to my problem. Quite understandably, I’m guessing no-one wants to put their neck on the line for what is a safety critical system…
So, time to think laterally – could I put the existing seat belt pre-tensioners onto the Recaro set up? I started by buying an M10 threaded bung and hole cutter:
And this was duly welded up and painted:
The holes are for holding the pre-tensioner body in place with a stainless steel tie wrap and a channel underneath for the wiring from the pretensioner. Here it is installed in the car:
And some shots of the final installation of the seats:
The eagle eyed amongst you will also spot I have installed the carbon trim I bought a while ago to replace the piano trim..
And as stated before, the seats are indeed a tight fit!!
And so, with the seats fitted in this configuration, the airbag light fault code could be cleared - fantastic!
I took the car to Spa with this set up and I have to say the seats are FANTASTIC…………! I really like this shot from Eau Rouge:
So what’s next?
Well, I *do* have 2 M seats to sell………! Expect an advert soon…
Plus, I need to work out how to wire in the heater elements I had fitted as part of the retrim