BMW E90 E92 E93 front seat wiring

[badolds]

I am installing E93 convertible seats in my Cutlass. The problem is that they will time out and become unresponsive after a few seconds. If you disconnect the power or ground wires they work again for a few seconds and then time out again. I have tried wiring them different ways but no luck. I have done tons of research on this site and others but cannot find the solution. In other threads here people have had success by reducing voltage to 5v on one of the power wires. I did this but it makes no difference, same thing. Is there somebody here who has figured this out? I am about to just install them like they are with a toggle switch to interrupt the power supply but I would like to wire them correctly.

Thanks

Dan

[andrewb70]

I am installing E93 convertible seats in my Cutlass. The problem is that they will time out and become unresponsive after a few seconds. If you disconnect the power or ground wires they work again for a few seconds and then time out again. I have tried wiring them different ways but no luck. I have done tons of research on this site and others but cannot find the solution. In other threads here people have had success by reducing voltage to 5v on one of the power wires. I did this but it makes no difference, same thing. Is there somebody here who has figured this out? I am about to just install them like they are with a toggle switch to interrupt the power supply but I would like to wire them correctly.

Thanks

Dan

Dan,

My buddy Brian runs these seats in his car. He never mentioned anything about funky wiring. Is it possible that the seat electronics are somehow shorting out?

Andrew

[raustinss]

I was going to say hit up the local dealer ...run some jumper wires right to the motors and see if the issue was the switches or the motors

[badolds]

check out page five of the thread called "new front seats" its a couple of threads down in the interior section. Thanks guys.

[jetmech442]

Hey badolds,
I've been working on a set of E60 M5 seats into my cutlass for about two years now(on and off depending on life). your seats will wake up when 12V is applied, but unless they receive a "Can awake" message every second or so they will go back to sleep. The CAN message is {0x130, 5, 45, 40, 21, 8F, FE}.This will tell the components on the bus to stay awake. I'm guessing your seats will adjust without CAN communication, so perhaps the easiest solution is an arduino that is on with ignition power, but cycles the seat power on/off every couple seconds.

The "right" way to do it would be to use something like a CANBUS shield/arduino to communicate on your CANBus, but since it's just for keeping them awake, that is a LOT of extra work. In my M5 seats, just trying to recline the seat(or any adjustment) sends a signal out of the seat over K-Bus, then the M computer says, "sure go ahead and recline" and it sends that message back to the seat over CANBus. But since you don't have to deal with any of that, I'd probly just cycle it with an interrupter that you could forget about IMO. Hope this helps you out some man, good luck with it.

[CutLS442]

Hi,

I have just bought a 2008 E92 Interior and these seats also require a "stay awake" signal from the K-bus.
I did two tests and in my case test two was a sucess and the seats was alive and stayed alive during the whole periode I was testing them.

Test 1:
GND to the 2 brown wires
12VDC to big red and red/white wire
Result: working, but timed out after a few seconds when not operating the buttons.

Test 2:
Same as above, but this time with a power supply set at 5VDC
positive to pin 2 (CAN_H)
negative to pin 3 (CAN_L)
12VDC to pin 7 (Lumbar support)

Test time was 7 hrs.
Turned off the PS and they went stb after 10 sec. Turnd on the PS and everything is functional again.

Im not shure if this works for the other late model BMW seats, but it might be worth a try

Morten

[jetmech442]

Hi,

I have just bought a 2008 E92 Interior and these seats also require a "stay awake" signal from the K-bus.
I did two tests and in my case test two was a sucess and the seats was alive and stayed alive during the whole periode I was testing them.

Test 1:
GND to the 2 brown wires
12VDC to big red and red/white wire
Result: working, but timed out after a few seconds when not operating the buttons.

Test 2:
Same as above, but this time with a power supply set at 5VDC
positive to pin 2 (CAN_H)
negative to pin 3 (CAN_L)
12VDC to pin 7 (Lumbar support)

Test time was 7 hrs.
Turned off the PS and they went stb after 10 sec. Turnd on the PS and everything is functional again.

Im not shure if this works for the other late model BMW seats, but it might be worth a try

Morten

Hey Morten, just to clarify, you're saying you don't actually have to send a legit CAN message to stay awake? Just putting 5V to the CAN-High pin is enough? If that's what your saying, then that's awesome. I'll try that in the next couple nights with my own seats to see if that helps me out. Also seems like a much easier way to help the OP. thanks man.

Also, do you have any pics of the seats installed?

[CutLS442]

Yes, 5VDC to Can-H and 0vdc/negative to Can-L.
I just bought the interior out of a 08 M3 last weekend, but will post when i get to installing them

Morten

[carManNJ]

@Cut442
Did you ever get those seats to work out. I have e92 seats that I am trying to install and trying to figure this all out. Powering the wires directly only works for a few minutes or so. So Iam reading elsewhere and here that I need to send 5VDC into some pins. Finding wiring diagrams has been hard so far. Can you provide more information ? Wiring diagrams? I am using coupe seats from a 2008 328i.

[jetmech442]

http://www.bmw-planet.net/diagrams/release/en/
... Is where all the wiring diagrams are. It's an awesome site. The 5v(as I understand), goes to canH and ground to canL

Scratch that. BMW planet requires an old version of Firefox or Java or something. Supposedly https://www.newtis.info had the wds, but I can't find your seat diagrams. I'm in a meeting right now, I'll try a bit later on a desktop.

[jetmech442]

Okay, sorry for double post. (having a slow day at work). My desktop has outdated Java and can access bmw planet.

12v power from a30 amp source will connect to pin 4 on connector x275(pretty sure that's the big yellow guy). CanH is pin 2,canL is 3.ground is pin8.145694

The pin out for connector x275 looks like :
145695

Color scheme translating is:
145696

[carManNJ]

http://www.bmw-planet.net/diagrams/release/en/
... Is where all the wiring diagrams are. It's an awesome site. The 5v(as I understand), goes to canH and ground to canL

Scratch that. BMW planet requires an old version of Firefox or Java or something. Supposedly https://www.newtis.info had the wds, but I can't find your seat diagrams. I'm in a meeting right now, I'll try a bit later on a desktop.


Thats awesome!!! Placing 5 vdc at what amperage? 1 amp, 3 amps or what?

[jetmech442]

5v applied with a 3 amp fuse. My e60 seats I have require an active canbus and k-bus, so I haven't tried the 5v constant thing, but it looks like the guys above were successful.

[carManNJ]

5v applied with a 3 amp fuse. My e60 seats I have require an active canbus and k-bus, so I haven't tried the 5v constant thing, but it looks like the guys above were successful.

I don't have a BUS either. My plan was to use a voltage regulator with 12v input from the car battery and outputting 5vdc, include your 3amp fuse and attach to 2/3 pin on the seat connector. But I don't want to blow anything, if i push too many amps into the connectors what would happen?

There are voltage regulators that push out 3amps and 1 amps.. so I want to be careful. What did you do to generate the voltage? How and from what? Did you use something like the attached pic?

I am summarizing based on the 3amp fuse, your generating something similar.

[jetmech442]

The connectors will only draw whatever current they need. The canbus (and other circuits in the seats) have a fixed resistance, so they do only draw whatever amps are required. The fuse I assume is to protect other branches in the circuit if there is a short.

The regulators you are looking at don't "push" 1 or 3 amps,they are "capable of supplying" those amps if the circuit asks for it. The one you have shown looks like a good choice.

Just to be clear I think pin 2 (canH) gets 5v,pin 3 and 8 get ground.

Disclaimer:I have a newborn who is uncomfortable with the idea of letting me sleep. Please look at the diagrams and make sure you agree...

[badolds]

OP here, I could never get this figured out so I just wired the seats through a switch I installed in the console. When the seats time out I just flip the switch off then back on and it works just fine. If you keep adjusting the seats they will work indefinitely, its only when you stop for more than ten seconds or so they become unresponsive.

Dan

[carManNJ]

OP here, I could never get this figured out so I just wired the seats through a switch I installed in the console. When the seats time out I just flip the switch off then back on and it works just fine. If you keep adjusting the seats they will work indefinitely, its only when you stop for more than ten seconds or so they become unresponsive.

Dan

@badolds, thanks for your response, thats confirmed: When the seats are on, they work indefinitely until you stop for a few seconds, then turning off for a few min and back on again will put the seats into play.
I am putting a toggle switch that will eliminate the K-CAN need completely.

Sometimes, its just as simple to do the simple things to make things work.

Thanks

[cdrod]

I posted a simple 555 timer circuit in badolds thread about installing these seats into his '70 Cutlass convertible. Here is a link to his thread, look at post #23 for the circuit details and a link to more info about timer circuits. With this timer circuit, you won't need a toggle switch to wake-up the seats, the timer will periodically pulse the seats to keep them awake. Hope this helps out!

Rodney

https://www.pro-touring.com/threads/124852-1970-Cutlass-convertible-updates/page2?p=1229513&highlight=#post1229513

[pabCanada]

The 555 Timer worked great. I set it up for close to a 1 second period ( 1 hz). Fired right up and works like a charm.

One thing I did find out was that seats from different years have different wire colors so I had to buss them out to find the right bus wired. Not hard, just took a little time. That said, the big Red and Brown wire were consistently +12V and Ground. The Lumbar circuit was a smaller red wire and did not need the timer circuit to run. I used seats from a 2013 series 3.

[Towbex]

I don't have a BUS either. My plan was to use a voltage regulator with 12v input from the car battery and outputting 5vdc, include your 3amp fuse and attach to 2/3 pin on the seat connector. But I don't want to blow anything, if i push too many amps into the connectors what would happen?

There are voltage regulators that push out 3amps and 1 amps.. so I want to be careful. What did you do to generate the voltage? How and from what? Did you use something like the attached pic?

I am summarizing based on the 3amp fuse, your generating something similar.

Hi
Did this work ok as would like to follow this fix