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thanks for sharing that pic, the tan matches very well. I am going to look out for a set of tan seats now.
Yeah, the passenger seat is a no-brainer. I looked the empty space over quickly in the RX8 and it does look like very similar, if not identical, to our bolt patterns for the passenger rails. That and it being a manual seat, so no wiring to deal with.
It's odd they did such different bolt placement for the RX8 driver's and passenger seats. But, I've got a fabricator neighbor I'll be bringing it by to see if he can help cut and weld everything. Unfortunately, I didn't keep my old dismantled driver's seat base, so I'll have to wait till I find another one before moving ahead with it. I'd rather not destroy my good one and be unable to go back.
I wonder why the ones T2d2 has does not have the rotary thing in the headrest portion. looks better without it.
It's there, you just can't quite see it with the angle of the pic. It's fairly recessed, presumably so there's no chance of hitting something hard.
The rotary piece is just a little two-sided clip on thing that hides the seams of the leather or cloth, depending on which version of the seats you have. You're sort of stuck with the triangular shape, but it wouldn't be tough to build something else that serves the same purpose.
I will say, though, that rotary cutout is super useful for lifting the seat! That and the fairly light weight makes it easily maneuverable.
I pared down the RX8 wiring harness last night -- it's amazingly easy to de-pin both halves of the connector -- removing all the wires not needed for motor control and heater if I ever wire in a switch and relay for it. I removed the airbag wiring along with the airbag, and swapped over a black SC seat belt receptacle. Today, I think I'll hook it up to battery power and see if the motors function or if I followed an incorrect wiring chart... It's weird having the five "keep" wires include two +12V and two ground.
Edit: The wiring test was a success. I confirmed the rx7club.com thread stating the following wiring colors on the seat side of the connector:
It's like Mazda to be inconsistent with wiring colors...
And just for the heck of it, I tested combining the two +12v's and the two Grounds, respectively, and all the motor functions worked as expected. So, there are really only three inputs needed if wiring up the seat heater. Then there are the two outputs for the seat belt sensor, replacing the four outputs of the RX8.
I plan to use the seat-side SC harness to connect up to the car-side, and splice it to the car-side of the RX8 harness I clipped. That should be pretty clean and easy to disconnect if needed. The seat belt sensor is the one awkward piece of the puzzle. I'm thinking I'll either clip two wires off the RX8 seat belt and use those to connect the SC seat belt to the RX8 harness, or use two fresh wires/pins of the right size to hook it in that way.
Edit 2: After much searching, I found a thread with the wiring diagram for the SC driver's seat:
I haven't [re-]tested it yet with the SC-RX8 patch harness hooked up to battery power to confirm that the final stage has everything right, but here's what I came up with:
1. empty
2. black/red ... ???, de-pinned
3. red ... to seat ecu, de-pinned
4. white ... to seat ecu w/ black, both wrapped with grounding wire inside shrink wrap, de-pinned
5. empty
6. gray ... ???, de-pinned
7. blue/white (thick) ... 12V+ ... spliced to both green/whites on RX8
8. green/white ... ???, de-pinned
9. black ... to seat ecu w/ white, both wrapped with grounding wire inside shrink wrap, de-pinned
10. empty
11. black/blue ... seat belt (along w/ white/black teeing off main ground)
12. white/black (thick) ... Ground ... spliced to both black/reds on RX8
13. brown/black ... to ground junction ... left unused
14. empty
Edit 3: I wired it up as above and my educated guesses were correct.
Since I was able to follow the seat belt wires, I left their orange connector on the patch harness so I can plug it in directly to the seat belt stalk and not bother with another patch harness through the RX8 connector.
I can't remember, do cars with seat heaters have a separate connector for them? I figured they would be on the main seat connector, so one of those de-pinned wires above could be it.
thanks for sharing that pic, the tan matches very well. I am going to look out for a set of tan seats now.
I went back to look for a door sticker or VIN today (turns out it's on the suicide door in lieu of a true B-pillar; forgot to look for it last time) to figure out what year my seat came out of, in case looking for a different leather skin at some point. I was thinking it must be '09+, based on the zippered leather back, since all the '04-08's I've seen have the plastic clamshell. Turns out it's an '05, which must mean it's the Shinka special edition, with the purple actually being Black Cherry.
Edit: It is a Shinka, as confirmed by both the color code (28W) and VIN in the pdf of Shinka builds.
In 2005, Mazda introduced the first special edition RX-8 called "Sports Prestige Limited" in Japan and "Shinka" in North America. Shinka takes its name from the Japanese word meaning "transformation" or "evolution".[5] Billed as a more luxurious grand touring model, this Shinka came with Black Cherry exterior color and Parchment leather interior along with subtly chromed 18" wheels. Out of the total production of 2150 vehicles, 1357 were produced for North America market. The most significant mechanical change were slightly revised Bilstein shocks and suspension cross member injected with urethane foam to improve ride quality.
That means there aren't a whole lot of those seats to be found in the "parchment leather" color.
I cut the RX8 feet and mounting pegs off. The feet are just held on by the big rivets, no welding to grind through. I then had a neighbor help with welding spare SC feet and rail ends onto the RX8 rails. Doing it that way puts it close to the height of the SC seat -- just a tad lower, so probably about the height of the Supra seat -- as opposed to welding the SC feet directly onto the RX8 rails which would be very low.
The rails are nearly the same width, and the distance between the rails is within 1/16" on both seats, so you can center the rails on each other and have enough wiggle room in the bolt holes. Just center the SC rail front-back around the middle bolt that both seats contain for the track's slider mechanism. The SC rails are a bit shorter than the RX8's, so the feet will be mounted slightly in from the ends.
My neighbor had the front feet installed and a friend he had asked for tips stopped by while he was out and figured he'd hop in and do the rears... The alignment ended up inconsistent, but I was able to make it work. You can see the fabric that pulls the leather down around the bottom pan got burnt. It doesn't feel loose up top, but I'll probably need to do something about that at some point.
Driving impressions are very positive. There's no sloshing around in the seat, and the power adjustments are every bit as good as the SC's, probably better. The side bolsters provide enough support that it's ever so slightly difficult to get out.
Net weight savings after replacing mounting feet and removing all the unneeded stuff is right at 30 lbs. The SC seat is supposedly 71 lbs (I couldn't get a good reading on it, being right at the limit of my scale and difficult to stabilize; I got 69+ lbs one time), while the RX8 seat ended up at 41.0 lbs.
05-26-16, 10:48 PM
