E46 seat fitting
- Thread starter Timmyboybunter
- Start date
Update time....
Had the seat in for 2 weeks. Love the look, far nicer than standard. On a short trip, the additional support from the inflatable bolsters is excellent - completely solves the issue of sliding around when driving enthusiastically.
On a long journey however, they're too uncomfortable - if I'm completely honest, that's because I'm 6 feet 2 inches and chunky with it
and the bolsters, in their lowest state of deflation, are just too tight. If I shed some chunk, I'd slip further in between them and I think they'd be perfect but it's a backward step comfort wise at the moment. I'd like to try the Z4 M-sport seats for comparison but I'll probably find the same result.
There's a 2nd minor reason for the U-turn too. I have a dodgy right knee and due to my height, the only way of entering and exiting the car without causing pain is how a skirt wearing lady would i.e. arse first, then swing both legs around into the car (as opposed to left leg first, then arse down on seat, then right leg to follow). In the standard seats this is fine, but in the M3 seats there is a pronounced ridge on the right hand side of the seat base - so I think this would get worn out very quickly with my weight crunching and swiveling around on it all the time.
So, removed the seat today and re-installed my original drivers seat - all back to normal, except for the airbag light I have triggered which remains on.
For reference, and for any future thread readers: The cheap and cheerful B800 tool does not work on the E85 Z4 - at least on mine, bearing in mind mine is an 03 reg and the tool is advertised to work with vehicles 'up to 2003'. Doesn't matter, it was worth a £11.50 gamble (it plugs in, powers up, but detects no faults).
Carly BMW app: identifies what I believe to be the fault (attached), attempts to clear all outstanding faults on the car and reports success, but the light is still on.
So, I'm assuming at this point all is fine on the car and I just have to get this light turned off, rather than there being a persistent fault which needs sorting before Carly will clear it - so INPA lead here we come.
Thanks again anyone who chipped in on this thread - seats will be in the for sale section shortly.
Had the seat in for 2 weeks. Love the look, far nicer than standard. On a short trip, the additional support from the inflatable bolsters is excellent - completely solves the issue of sliding around when driving enthusiastically.
On a long journey however, they're too uncomfortable - if I'm completely honest, that's because I'm 6 feet 2 inches and chunky with it
and the bolsters, in their lowest state of deflation, are just too tight. If I shed some chunk, I'd slip further in between them and I think they'd be perfect but it's a backward step comfort wise at the moment. I'd like to try the Z4 M-sport seats for comparison but I'll probably find the same result.There's a 2nd minor reason for the U-turn too. I have a dodgy right knee and due to my height, the only way of entering and exiting the car without causing pain is how a skirt wearing lady would i.e. arse first, then swing both legs around into the car (as opposed to left leg first, then arse down on seat, then right leg to follow). In the standard seats this is fine, but in the M3 seats there is a pronounced ridge on the right hand side of the seat base - so I think this would get worn out very quickly with my weight crunching and swiveling around on it all the time.
So, removed the seat today and re-installed my original drivers seat - all back to normal, except for the airbag light I have triggered which remains on.
For reference, and for any future thread readers: The cheap and cheerful B800 tool does not work on the E85 Z4 - at least on mine, bearing in mind mine is an 03 reg and the tool is advertised to work with vehicles 'up to 2003'. Doesn't matter, it was worth a £11.50 gamble (it plugs in, powers up, but detects no faults).
Carly BMW app: identifies what I believe to be the fault (attached), attempts to clear all outstanding faults on the car and reports success, but the light is still on.
So, I'm assuming at this point all is fine on the car and I just have to get this light turned off, rather than there being a persistent fault which needs sorting before Carly will clear it - so INPA lead here we come.
Thanks again anyone who chipped in on this thread - seats will be in the for sale section shortly.
Attachments
The saga continues.
INPA installed using the one-click install over at E46 fanatics. All went smoothly, except the driver installation failed. COM port updated from COM3 to COM1, had some strange error messages reporting a USB port power surge but eventually did manage to communicate with the Zed so the default Win 10 drivers seem to be suitable (unless this driver failure is actually tripping me up).
INPA picks up a few errors - attempted to clear them, but unable to communicate with any of the modules in the car. Various posts around the internet suggest the cheapy cables on Ebay need two pins soldering together for earlier cars - so I concluded this was why Carly forced me to buy some kind of odd adapter which needs to plug in between their bluetooth unit and the car.
Sure enough, if I use this intermediate Carly adapter with my cheapy cable, INPA has a go at clearing the codes. The airbag light did flicker very briefly during the clearing process, but remains on. The clearing process reported an error, something like "ERROR ECU CONDITIONS NOT CORRECT OR REQUEST SEQUENCE ERROR" but I'm not sure it was related to the airbag error or not - it's very late and freezing cold outside so I'll have another go at the weekend when I'm not half asleep.
Anything obvious I'm doing wrong? Or is this proof that I have genuinely disturbed something while removing/replacing the drivers seat? Grrr.
INPA installed using the one-click install over at E46 fanatics. All went smoothly, except the driver installation failed. COM port updated from COM3 to COM1, had some strange error messages reporting a USB port power surge but eventually did manage to communicate with the Zed so the default Win 10 drivers seem to be suitable (unless this driver failure is actually tripping me up).
INPA picks up a few errors - attempted to clear them, but unable to communicate with any of the modules in the car. Various posts around the internet suggest the cheapy cables on Ebay need two pins soldering together for earlier cars - so I concluded this was why Carly forced me to buy some kind of odd adapter which needs to plug in between their bluetooth unit and the car.
Sure enough, if I use this intermediate Carly adapter with my cheapy cable, INPA has a go at clearing the codes. The airbag light did flicker very briefly during the clearing process, but remains on. The clearing process reported an error, something like "ERROR ECU CONDITIONS NOT CORRECT OR REQUEST SEQUENCE ERROR" but I'm not sure it was related to the airbag error or not - it's very late and freezing cold outside so I'll have another go at the weekend when I'm not half asleep.
Anything obvious I'm doing wrong? Or is this proof that I have genuinely disturbed something while removing/replacing the drivers seat? Grrr.
For anyone still reading this boring thread 
I can now bring it to a close. After wasting a chunk more time, the airbag light is now OFF 
So today, tried Carly again with engine running and not (as per some online posts) - no joy.
INPA, as above, still joy - as I found the other night, the airbag light did flash but remained on.
Removed the driver seat, inspected and cleaned all connections I disturbed fitting the E46 seat - same result.
Up to this point, in INPA I've been selecting the E85 option in the first menu, then ignoring the individual modules shown in the pop up but selecting the option on the right of the popup - which I assumed selected everything, rather than individual modules (the scan/clear results it presented suggested this anyway).
I then instead went into each individual module, scanned for faults, found one in something like 'rear satellite left side', cleared it and the light turned off.
So very pleased, but confused as to the purpose of the first menu option I've been using.
I can now bring it to a close. After wasting a chunk more time, the airbag light is now OFF So today, tried Carly again with engine running and not (as per some online posts) - no joy.
INPA, as above, still joy - as I found the other night, the airbag light did flash but remained on.
Removed the driver seat, inspected and cleaned all connections I disturbed fitting the E46 seat - same result.
Up to this point, in INPA I've been selecting the E85 option in the first menu, then ignoring the individual modules shown in the pop up but selecting the option on the right of the popup - which I assumed selected everything, rather than individual modules (the scan/clear results it presented suggested this anyway).
I then instead went into each individual module, scanned for faults, found one in something like 'rear satellite left side', cleared it and the light turned off.
So very pleased, but confused as to the purpose of the first menu option I've been using.
