(01-08-2016 10:16pm)J. Dub Wrote: Did u ever get an answer on this?
I have not. I will give you a brief of what is happening and the obstacles I face.
My biggest obstacle is that I purchased my Range Rover in Australia. Nothing against Australia, it is a great place to live in but the market for Range Rovers is overall pretty small, on top of that modifying them or any car is even smaller. I found this out during my initial research. I contacted an auto-place that provides Range Rover parts and specializes in modifications. Of course it was in the UK, where else and it is called SuperTweeks. This company was fantastic. In a matter of a few emails, they sorted out which control module I would need and after talking to one of their specialist could almost insure me that if I replaced it the rest of the hardware would be there and voila, I would have hot but. AMAZING !
However, verifying that this would work in Australia is the wall I am hitting. The country does some different things, and I cant confirm that even the standard seats that come factory equipped with heated pads are shipped in the seats to australia. You see they have a bunch of additional safety regulations here, and for some reason most of the cars they get here are changed to Australian standards. One example I discovered is seat belts. Every car shipped here has their seat belts installed here, otherwise they dont qualify to pass inspection.
I use this only to point out why its so hard to discover what exactly is in my car. Even with the vin number, and a parts specialist, the answers arent always there.
But thats is where I went. I discovered one of Australia best Range Rovers modification specialist , mostly through many message boards and articles written about who found what and who help them achieve it. This man, Paul at Lennock Range Rover, on the otherside of this huge country tried to help me out.
So I confirmed to him that the fuses for the heated seats are installed (although I dont know if they are active) and he went to the head office of Range Rover in Australia, with the intentions of installing them at his company. Now this is the interesting part. Paul confirms 90% of super tweeks initial research, specifically if this job was to happen I would need a different heater control panel. He also confirmed that this panel would have to come from the UK (In the USA we dont import the diesel..) So that was promising. But, and this is a big but, he can confirm that even if my car had the pads in place (my original question) and we installed the control panel that the car would actually turn on the heated seats.
Here is why. The cars all have a main computer that is coded and monitors everything. That computer has to be coded to make the heated seats work. So even if the parts are all in place, it may never be able to turn on.
Now this is coming from Range Rovers head office.
I now brought up the big question , how much would it cost to get a new ecu specifically made for my car programmed with the heated seats, and that number was around $1500. (with the control panel at $600 its looking like a $2100 project plus labor 4hours. ) But I also asked the reasonable dealer question, well I have a working control panel in my car, and it is updated each service, cant we just use the proprietary software to turn it on?
And that is where I am at. There is a chance that swapping the control module will work and that is about $600, I can have an upholsterer fit my car and an auto electrician wire up some lame switch for about $1000,
or I can go all out and see (once I get the answers) if I need a new ecu as well and we are looking at $2100.
I cant pull the trigger on any of this until I actually confirm what is possible. Even with the help of Paul leveraging his dealership for answers, we only got back "maybe it will work, or you may have to change out the ecu".
One other solution I have considered is to just get a certified electronics person to hard wire the new heater control unit button switches so they can operate the simple buttons an upholsterer would put in place. But since I have a life, I have'nt been able to put an estimate together for that result to happen.
I cant believe how difficult this is either, and my contacts in the Uk and USA cant believe it either.
So that is where I am at. Any help would be much appreciated.