HOW TO: Add Leather (or power) seats to a KJ

Disclaimer: Links on this page pointing to Amazon, eBay and other sites may include affiliate code. If you click them and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission.

jezendee

New Member
Joined
Jan 14, 2010
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
Location
Wales. UK
All done!

It appears that Jeep have left all wiring as per the vehicle available in the United States. Following the earlier posts it made the job much easier than anticipated.
 

04Liberty

Full Access Member
Joined
Sep 14, 2006
Messages
1,303
Reaction score
89
Location
MD
Thanks for this write up, I just put 2002 power seat tracks in our 2004 and this was invaluable. Only problem I ran into was power wiring to the seat was in different order than the pigtail from the seat. Once I swapped the pins around all was well. :happy107:
 

CobraNutt

Full Access Member
Joined
Feb 5, 2012
Messages
219
Reaction score
1
Location
Salt Lake City, UT
Just the write-up I was looking for! Oldie but goodie!

Question that I didn't see answered in the bulk of this thread...are there certain years of seats that will NOT bolt in with various years of KJ's?

I'm dying to put leather in my '04 Renny...power is mandatory, heated is optional/preferred...just need to find the seats that will work best for me.
 

04Liberty

Full Access Member
Joined
Sep 14, 2006
Messages
1,303
Reaction score
89
Location
MD
The entire assembly itself will bolt in 02-07. The trick is wiring and if you try to mix and match seat tracks with the actual seats.
 

pikereen

Banned
Joined
Feb 27, 2012
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
Location
la
Hi,

I am pikereen.

This is definitely a fourm worth following. You’ve got a great deal to say about this subject, and so much knowledge. I think that you know how to make people listen to what you have to say, especially with an issue that’s so important. I am glad to see this fourm. Two big thumbs up, man.
 

racertracer

New Member
Joined
Nov 14, 2009
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
Location
DC
I finally got the power to the seats to work, but the heat part doesn't.. what do I need to do to get the heat to work?
 

04Liberty

Full Access Member
Joined
Sep 14, 2006
Messages
1,303
Reaction score
89
Location
MD
I finally got the power to the seats to work, but the heat part doesn't.. what do I need to do to get the heat to work?
Wiring...find where in your fuse center the spot is for heated seats. Make that active (fuse or CB) and then you just need harness and switches.
 

bmrrwolfe

Full Access Member
Joined
Jul 23, 2009
Messages
1,756
Reaction score
0
Location
North Olmsted, OH
After reading this post on adding the leather power/heated seats, I have noticed most people have a 4 wires running into there drivers seat, and they can jump power to the passenger seat. Well I just got a good deal on a set of power leather heater seats out of a 2006, for my 2006, but then found I only have two wires going into my drivers seat, and 5 wires going into my passenger seat?

Any ideas on why I would only have the two (green and black for the seat belt) and 5 wires going to the passenger? If so what do I need to do to get the power to the seat??

Thanks!!
 
Last edited:

kfingerlos

New Member
Joined
Nov 17, 2013
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
Location
Colorado
Thank you!

I want to thank all the contributors on this thread - expecially Mr. Blu, and cdnjeepin. I just completed my upgrade on a 2006 CRD sport with the power/heated seats from a 2005. Without the info in this forum I don't think I'd have made it.

It's all in and all works. Couldn't easily access the back of the fuse box, but a couple fuse taps to the factor fuses and all is good.

Many many thanks to cdnjeepin for posting the pin and connections. Knowing that pin 4 needed to be hot to both seats was the difference between success and failure!
 

DieselMatt

New Member
Joined
Jul 2, 2015
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
Location
Prosser, WA
seats installed

Thought I would share my experience for what it's worth.

My rig is a 2005 CRD
seat donor rig was a gasser of unknown year. I believe they said 2004.
Wiring donor rig was a 2003 because the seats came from a used parts place, not a U-pick yard and they weren't willing to let me butcher the factory harness. And the seats in the U-pick yard were trashed. Sigh.

I wanted to make the install as clean and factory looking as possible. Then the fun started.

The rear seat was pretty straight forward, except that the center seat belt was a different color, so I switched that out which required partially disassembling both rear seats.

The real bastard was the passenger seat. My Liberty has airbags with passenger classification, meaning that there is an air bladder under the cushion and a module that uses that information and a tension sensor on the seat belt anchor to control air bag deployment. The donor seat had none of this, only the switch on the seat belt latch which my original seat does not use. So, to make it work I had to completely tear down both seat bases and make a workable seat with airbag detection, heat, and power. Of course the electrical connections changed so I also had to re-pin connectors. Also discovered that DC in their infinite wisdom decided to change not only wire colors for the harnesses over the years, but ALSO pin locations. So every plug had to be repinned.

Driver's seat got power once the circuit breaker was installed (removing the large electrical junction that covers the breaker socket makes this much easier) so just had to build 2 harnesses to link the seats together and get power everywhere. Added a relay in the center console to provide power for the heaters triggered by the power window power feed. Found that seats also had an additional ground that didn't exist in my heater crossever harness--added that. All power supplies work as they should.

Installed seats. Power adjust works as it should (once driver's side plug was repinned to match harness, again they didn't line up). No heat yet however. There is a small wire in the driver's seat that didn't exist in the harness, might be a power supply or a ground or God knows what, and also there was 1 wire that was cut which I spliced but again this might be a power supply or something else. At any rate there's going to be a lot of wiring diagram study going on to sort this out.

And just to add insult to injury the Air Bag light went off. Probably due to the mis-pinning of the driver's seat connection which probably caused 12 volts to go to the airbag module and do something bad. The car no longer detects when the driver's belt is latched.

My point being, either make sure you buy used seats that are equipped the same as your truck as far as airbags and ideally year, and then make sure you get everything you need from the same vehicle, and even with that if you aren't very good electrically you might want to pass the project over and just buy seat covers with heat unless you really can't stand the cloth seats (which was the case with me. The cloth seats are horrible). I've done some doozies in my life and this was right up there with them.

But, at the end of the day, those leather seats are really nice.
 

antreaskc8

New Member
Joined
Jan 31, 2016
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
Location
NEW YORK
can somebody help me to install electrical seats on my jeep liberty 02. i dont know from where i can get the power 12+ .i try to follow other post and diagrams but it wont work
 

tommudd

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
Joined
Jul 14, 2005
Messages
22,450
Reaction score
3,650
Location
Southeastern Ohio
can somebody help me to install electrical seats on my jeep liberty 02. i dont know from where i can get the power 12+ .i try to follow other post and diagrams but it wont work

I just ran power from the fuse box, down and connected it in, well John did :icon_lol:Don't have butt warmers so didn't have to worry about that. Inline fuse, off of the fusebox, one hot wire, one ground, done
 

mespro

New Member
Joined
Aug 30, 2017
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
Location
New Mexico
Great Procedure

I followed your procedure to the tee and it all worked. Thanks a bunch, you saved me a lot of headache.

Mespro:winner_third_h4h:
 

djtimyd

Full Access Member
Joined
Aug 17, 2017
Messages
134
Reaction score
1
Location
Colorado
I have almost exactly the same scenario (gasser 05 instead of CRD) as the information on page 3 post 27 but my wires don't match up at all with his 2003.

I took the wiring harness from the donor vehicle with lots of spare wires, so I don't need to worry about the heating controls between the driver and passenger seats. I have identified 5 wires that went upto the fuse block on the donor vehicle and they are:

Red with WHITE stripe -------- larger gauge going to the heated seat plug
Red with LIGHT BLUE stripe -- larger gauge going to the power seat plug
green -------------------------- smaller gauge going to the power seat plug
blue ---------------------------- smaller gauge going to the power seat plug
brown with PINK stripe ------- smaller gauge going to the heated seat plug

these are the deductions that I have done thus far:

2005_______________-> 2003
green with tan stripe ----> light blue
green with grey stripe ---> dark green


red with blue stripe -----> 12v switched for power seat motor
red with white stripe ----> 12v switched for heated seat element -------> fuse 30 / 15 amp
brown with pink stripe ---> 12v switched for heated seat illumination --> fuse 25 / 10 amp

2003_______________-> 2005
red with blue stripe -----> pink with light blue stripe or red with light blue stripe
red with white stripe ----> red or red with white stripe
brown with pink stripe ---> grey with pink stripe or brown with pink stripe


I think this is right - if anyone can check this for me, I would be appreciative.

Also, I'd like to wire this up as close to original as possible. However, I do not have the power seat circuit breaker installed. I have seen people tap into the sun roof circuit, and I was also thinking about the rear power outlet circut. The sunroof I don't have, nor will I ever. As for the rear power outlet, I cant imagine using the power seat and the rear power outlet at the same time (unless I throw a 12v fridge back there, but unlikely)

I cant make heads or tales of the FSM information for the wires coming out of the fuse block. Can anyone tell me which connector (C1,2, or 3) has the sunroof (fuse 22) and the heated seats (fuse 25 and 30) and what color the wires are? I am fine with tapping into wires under the dash or even under the floor. I do not want to use a fuse tap that I can get at AZ or NAPA. If I ever sell this vehicle, I don't want that kind or workmanship visible in the fuse box - plus I'm OCD and I would rather take the time to do it right, rather than right now.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. I have found this thread to be quite valuable in my quest for the upgrade - and once I can get some wire sorting issues addressed, I don't foresee this being a hard task.

Thanks All!

Here are some pictures to help illustrate:

You must be registered for see images attach

power wires from '03 and green seat belt wires from '05 going to 4 pin plug

You must be registered for see images attach

plug on 03

You must be registered for see images attach

ACTUAL plug on '05 with the green seat belt wires

You must be registered for see images attach

The wires as they are in the '05

You must be registered for see images

The back side of the fuse block with the 3 large connectors

You must be registered for see images

The top right open spot is where the power seat circut breaker would go if I had the wiring for it... which I don't.
 
Last edited:

djtimyd

Full Access Member
Joined
Aug 17, 2017
Messages
134
Reaction score
1
Location
Colorado
The Sunroof fuse (22) has an Orange wire with TAN stripe and that is where I think I will tap into for switched 12v for the power seat motors. I have no idea if the wire is present, but the fuse is so now I just need to find the wire, or find the spot in the massive connector where it should go and add it. Anyone know that location?
 

Mjrose927

New Member
Joined
Sep 21, 2020
Messages
4
Reaction score
2
-----
08-Oct-2004

Sorry for the delay in getting the pix posted, been swamped here at work. Here are some detailed pictures from the installation. I'll turn this into a how-to at some point (once I get all the details for the heated seat bit down) but here are the basics for now.

Here is the circuit breaker that I had to get from Jeep. As I said, it's a 25 amp self resetting deally.
circ_breaker.jpg


And heres where it goes. The location is indicated in red. Its a tight fit to get your hand in there, given that big bundle of wires, but it's not too big of a deal. This junction box is located on the drivers side, way up there. Basically I had to remove the panel under the drivers side (3 screws in front) and install the breaker.
junction_box.jpg


Next, I moved on to getting the center console loose. There were a couple of steps missing from the factory service manual - regarding unplugging the connectors for the power windows. They are attached to the console with metal clips, so the whole assembly pops out. I had to pop the back-seat deal out entirely before I had enough room to disconnect the connector.
console_loose.jpg


Next, I moved on to the drivers seat. Removing the old seat was a matter of 3 bolts, one nut, removing the plastic cover on the side to remove the seat belt bolt, and disconnecting the wiring from underneath the seat.
drivers_seat_out_2.jpg


At this point in the install, I installed the Leather seat on the drivers side (basically just reversing the removal) and tested the power aspects. Everything worked great, so I thought I was home free. I then moved on to the passengers seat, same idea.
passenger_seat_out.jpg


Comments appreciated!

-Blu
I am not even sure if you are monitoring such an old post. My 2003 Jeep Liberty sport driverside seat reclining actuator has been broken for some time AND the cloth has split on outside edge of seat. So, before COVID hit last winter I found a wreck with a set of alloy wheel to replace my steel ones when I had new tires put on.

Anyway. The wreck 2002 has powered seat and my 2003 Sport has manual track. I was hoping that since the conectors were the same and the wiring looked same that I could just plug and play. Is your post what I need to do to get power? If so, is there a way I could get pictures. They are no longer showing in your post.

Otherwise, I may just put new seat on manual track if I can figure that out. I don't care about the power that much, but it would have been a nice to have.

Thanks,
Michael
 

Steve Gangi

New Member
Joined
Jan 1, 2021
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
Whoops! Forgot the best part!!

I think I've earned bragging rights :) Here are two pictures of the seats when completed.

You must be registered for see images attach


You must be registered for see images attach
 

Steve Gangi

New Member
Joined
Jan 1, 2021
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
you may like to know that 14 years later your info is right on the money! Thanks!
 
Top