Has anyone changed their front seats?

[gregc]

The only way to know for sure is to get a CTS-V rear sit and see if it does fit. You also might have to measure the seat track as well to see if the space between the tracks are the same.

I was going to swap out my front seats today with the G8 seats, but I ran into a conflict. The connectors on the Caprice harness are different from the G8 harness. The wire colors match on the harness side of the G8, so I'll just have to recycle the connector. Luckily the salvage yard just cut the harness and left the connectors intact. I might see a problem doing the passenger side because I'm not sure where the passenger sensor connects to on the Caprice harness. I'll wait to do this swap until I have enough funds to do the carpet. I'm not really liking the rubberized floor as everything slides all over the place when coming to a stop or turn.

A lot of the CTS-V interior trim looks very close to our designs if not identical. For instance the assist handles in the rear appear to be the same type design from casual glance. I took a good look at the non-Recaro seat, and they appear almost identical to our frames. I'd be willing to bet we could take a set of AQ9 seat skins and foams, remove our cloth and foams, and pop them right over and they'd fit (not sure about the police cutout though on our frames). I'd be willing to bet some of the base design for the 2009 & up car was sourced from Holden, or at least very strongly influenced by it. Probably in a desire to promote consistency between the parts line manufacturing operations I'd guess, one day they do Caprice seats, another day they do Holden seats, etc etc.... of course the Recaros are a completely separate line in the US plant.

We need to take a good look at CTS parts when sourcing seats and misc. interior for our cars, seems like at least on some items there could be interchange there. Here's a shot of the 2012 CTS rear seat, compare to ours and you see what I mean...

CTSVrear.jpg

[elc32955]

I'm driving tomorrow to Auburndale to look at a 2010 CTS rear seat in black leather. If it looks like a fit I'm going to do a Hail Mary and buy it. I might get stuck, but someone's got to take the plunge.... With all that back seat room passengers deserve cush.

EDIT 5/8 - 2:15 PM. Salvage yard called back, the car ws cut in half and the back end is gone. They deleted the seat listing on car-part.com. Darn. Have to scrounge for another one....

[elc32955]

Well, I just embarked on a path through unknown waters. I found a 2012 CTS-V Recaro seat set in black leather up in Michigan on Car-part.com last night. It was out of a wagon wreck, but the wagon uses the same seat set as the sedan. Called the business this morning, the vehicle took a right front hit so the bag was blown on the right seat and it was bent up, but the driver's seat was perfect. Good shape, no blown bag. Out of a 8,000 mile wreck for $750 plus freight ($207). So, I dropped the hammer on the driver's seat only. It's being pulled today, trucked in next week and will be dropped off at a friend's business in town. Could have had both seats for the additional freight, but for an experiment I didn't want to get stuck straightning out a seat that looks like a comma that also had a blown bag....

So it looks like I'll have another project to work on when I get back. This way we will know, 100% dead-nuts certain what the interchange will be on the CTS Recaros. Plus, I can resell the seat in the CTS community with absolutely no problem if it doesn't fit. If the driver's seat fits, I have a line on a passenger seat to match so I won't be stuck with a mis-matched seat set for long. At least the driver will be cushy

Gory picture follows....

CB0615_07a.jpg (156.1 KiB) Viewed 11442 times

Eric

[elc32955]

Just a little update, the seat will be on it's way next week. I had a heck of a problem with the salvage yard. After we agreed on a price AND they charged my credit card, they tried to back out of the sale. Claimed they didn't want to sell the seat without having a read on a repair for the second one. I pitched a fit naturally, and told them there would be repurcussions if they tried to double deal me on the sale. They finally agreed to ship the seat, but without the mate plugs from the body harness (claimed they sold the harness with the rear clip) AND without the good airbag in the seat. They claimed that a portion of their agreement with GM on GM factory vehicle salvage sales (where this one came from) was that they could not sell a seat with a used, intact airbag as GM wouldn't allow it under contract. So, although I strongly smelled BS here, it was either agree to let them pull the bag before the seat shipped or no deal. But, a three-ohm resistor and a SIR plug pigtail should take care of the car end "for testing use only" so it won't throw airbag alarms.

Right now I'm more worried about finding the mate to the seat plugs, maybe our plug set will work and I can just re-pin but somehow I'm not seeing that. After I get back from Dayton, I'll take a trip to the Cadillac dealership and see if I can get some schematics on the Recaro seat. I've downloaded some from one of the Cadi forums, but I'm not sure if the plug interface is the same without a correct manual to refer to. Good news is the seat module is in the seat, so "supposedly" all it needs to make things work is 12VDC and ground.

I have a distinct feeling this project is going to be very interesting....

[gregc]

I finally swapped out the driver's seat. I'm waiting for it to cool down so I can swap the connectors. I did encounter a "duh" moment though installing the G8 seat. The front of the tracks fit in the slots to the front, but the back of the track's holes did not line up with the floor holes of the car. I was just about to undo the base of my PPV seat and swap it out with the G8's. But then I thought, what if I slid the seat back, then maybe the holes will line up. Sure enough it did. I do lose the power recline and the power seat back inflation though. The only thing I retain is the up and down of the seat. I still have to do the passenger side too.

[elc32955]

OK, my driver's side Recaro arrived today! Overall the seat looks in excellent shape, it's got some dirt and all on it and needs to be throughly vacuumed and cleaned, but it could have been a lot worse. Pretty good condition for a seat with only 4,000 miles on it.

Also the info on the Recaro wiring is in as well, now I have to translate the pin-outs to the Caprice wiring and see what will work and figure out how to interface it all. And measure the seat rails and make sure those will fit, etc etc....

Eric

[Tom Slick]

They were full of shit on the airbags... they just wanted to be able to make more money...

We need some pictures...

Later,
Tom Slick

[elc32955]

Picture as ordered . I edited out a lot of the junk in my garage....lol... pretty full at the moment, but here's the seat after a little basic clean-up. Greg, how did you handle the electrical side on your G8 seat swap, after you installed the correct pigtail (remember u said the connector was different) did the electrical side work OK?



Thanks
Eric

[gregc]

Picture as ordered . I edited out a lot of the junk in my garage....lol... pretty full at the moment, but here's the seat after a little basic clean-up. Greg, how did you handle the electrical side on your G8 seat swap, after you installed the correct pigtail (remember u said the connector was different) did the electrical side work OK?

Thanks
Eric

Recaro1.jpg

Luckily for me, the salvage yard included the pigtail from the donor car. The wire colors match up on the caprice harness, so I was able to splice the g8 connector to the caprice harness. I did end up with extra wires on the drivers side because the G8 seats don't have lumbar inflation, and the caprice drivers seat is 8 way.

[elc32955]

Good deal on the wire codes matching. Game plan right now is to just order both the connectors I need and make a conductor swapover/adapter, this way I don't have to cut into any of the harnesses either on the Caprice or the CTS-V seat. I'll get the info. on what I need on the Caprice side this weekend out of the book, copy it, and go see the local dealer's parts department next week. I posted the project up on the G8 board as well and there's a LOT of interest in seeing how this one goes.

It's just hard as hell to get these seats, all in all I was very lucky in finding the one I ended up with. Just hoping the gyrations I'm going through are worth it...