[FirebirdFanatic]

Hello, thought I would share my experiences swapping seats.



My 1SS came with the standard black cloth seats with the grey stripes. I think they were comfortable but didn't look very good. I have swapped seats in my 78 Trans Am, 87 Formula Firebird, and 06 BMW 3 series without any trouble.



I wanted to do a red theme for my 16 1SS in Nightfall Grey - I replaced the hard plastic knee pads with the Adrenaline Red padded ones, and I found a full set of leather seats with Adrenaline Red inserts on ebay. The donor car had been in an accident. The front drivers seat had side airbag deployment - the passenger seat did not.



I swapped in the back seats without using tools. The passenger seat was plug and play - two bolts, unplug the connector, drop in the seat and hook it up. Everything worked after the swap.



Due to the airbag being deployed on the driver's seat, I did not replace it for a while - probably about 6 months. I found a great auto trim guy in town and finally took the seat to him to get it sorted. We decided to just take the airbag out of my cloth seat and put it in the replacement. Then he sewed everything up and it looks great. He also re-sewed the cloth seat in case I want to use it in another project. Total cost was $150.


I dropped the seat in and none of the seat controls worked. I was surprised since the passenger seat worked great. The wiring on the bottom of the 2SS seat had more motors and a "black box" that the 1SS did not (see attached pictures). I do not know if the donor car's accident triggered something in the seat to disable it, or if my 1SS could not properly talk to the 2SS seat.



To work around it, I stripped the wiring harness off of the 1SS seat and moved it to the 2SS seat. There was one extra motor to control the front area of the seat that I had to leave off, and obviously the seat heater and ventilation fan had to remain disconnected. There were a series of wires heading into the back rest area - about half the wires in that bundle matched color and stripes of the 1SS seat wiring harness. I assume some of these are for the airbag. With the seat disconnected, I cut the wires and spliced them into the 1SS harness.



This took about 45 minutes and when I put the seat back in everything works. No airbag light (or any other lights).


Hope this helps someone. Cheers.