Fitting electric leather into a Xantia.

[mirafioriman]

Well I'm now the proud owner of a set of electric black leather seats from a series 2 V reg Xantia

I bought the appropriate seatbelt buckles for the rear and the rear seats are now fitted and cleaned (photos tomorrow)

Now the fronts. How do I tell if they are heated? As my car has no airbags at all (very early one) all I want to connect is the power to the seats and seat heaters if they are fitted. Put simply does anyone know which multi plugs or coloured wires am I looking for?

[DickieG]

From memory the seat movement supply has the large wires and the heaters the smaller ones, are you fitting these seats to your S1 as in your avatar?

How much of the harness do you have with the seats?

[mirafioriman]

Hi,

Yes they are going into a series 1. One seat has some of the wiring loom on the 'other side' of the multi plug not sure about the other seat. If the seats are heated I don't have the switches.

[DickieG]

Bearing in mind that less than 50% of Xantia seat heaters actually work unless you've been told they work you may as well skip the heaters at this stage until you get the switches/additional loom (I believe the seat heater looms were fitted to most if not all S2's if you want to track down the loom).

I fitted similar seats to my VSX and sourced a 12v supply by soldering in a substantial wire to the ignition supply wire just prior to the ignition switch so that the well known weakness of the ignition switch isn't overloaded further, I also fitted the essential in-line fuse to this supply for obvious reasons. This means that unlike to original Citroen fitment that the seats can be adjusted with the ignition off, as for potentially overloading the ignition wiring well once you've adjusted the seats how often will you repeat that process? The seats have been in for what must be over 10 years now and no problem whatsoever.

[mirafioriman]

Thanks again. So really I just need to know which are the live and earth wires for the seat adjustments. I don't want to fiddle with any airbags that may be fitted for obvious reasons! I like your idea of just wiring into a fused permanent live so the seats can be adjusted whenever.

I'm itching to get the fronts fitted and working. The rear looks great with the black leather in! I have cleaned them with Liquid Leather cleaner and will hopefully get them conditioned tomorrow.

[mirafioriman]

Well they are now in and fully working including the lumbar support adjustment. Somebody before had chopped the wiring about on the drivers seat and a number of the motors were incorrectly wired up. This led me to get the main live and earth feeds the wrong way round hence all the problems. As soon as I swapped the main feeds round the lumbar started working correctly. I then just had to figure out which motor wire went where.

Now all the adjustments work correctly and I stand a chance of getting a comfortable driving position

[jgra1]

good stuff.. they are good seats for driving

dont forget there are 2 lumbars

[CitroJim]

I stand a chance of getting a comfortable driving position

Excellent

The only problem is that there's so many you can spend hours or even days finding the sweet-spot Once you do though, happiness...

I find the older the leather seat is the more comfy it is. The driver's seat in Rattiva has been sat on now for nearly 202,000 miles and it's just about perfect now bar a small hole in one bolster...

And good tips for repairing holes in leather anyone?

[mirafioriman]

2 lumbars? Tell me more

[jgra1]

should be a lower and middle lumbar .. rocking the switch top-to-front or bottom-to-front to inflate

[CitroJim]

should be a lower and middle lumbar .. rocking the switch top-to-front or bottom-to-front to inflate

That's absolutely right I never realised until I read this thread earlier and then had a play when I was out in Rattiva earlier! So thanks John!!!!

It's the rearmost switch you rock. Rock backwards top and bottom to deflate if necessary...

[mirafioriman]

Thanks, I've had a play too and I now understand

A few photos:

[f00lzz]

Nice job... If I had a choice I would take the series 1 leather over the series 2

[eskerman]

I was offered a 2000 Xantia HDI SX with full leather (electric) seats as a donor car - alloys and useful for lots of spare parts - will the seats transfer over to my other 2001 Xantia - non leather car without too much “surgery”

Thanks in advance

Paul

[admiral51]

If both cars are the same the seats will swap quite easy not sure if you will have the loom fitted for the front seats but you may have.
Estate rears do not fit in a saloon or vice versa i believe.
Door cards & dash trim will swap over nice and easy also.

Colin