Hot buns

We've got new Recaros in the project Monza, but the ones in the Monza we're restoring are at least 100,000 miles old because we bought them used and the car's done that distance with us. We got them in England so the driver's seat was pretty good (it was the UK passenger seat, right?), but after a pair of averagely hefty Californians had used them for 10 years they're sagging nicely.

While we've got a great guy in the UK to do our upholstery (Darren at Suffolk County Mantas), we've not had any luck with auto upholsterers in this country. There was one guy in Redwood City but he couldn't even finish a steering wheel recover in 9 months (we just gave up on him), so we just soldiered on with the seats the way they were.

I few weeks ago I went looking for a local Recaro agent as I remember someone telling me a while back there was one in the Bay Area. I finally found Sid's Custom Upholstery. It sounded an awful lot like Gabe's Custom Upholstery of American Hot Rod fame, but I thought I'd give him a try anyway.

Sid (real name Hugo Sanchez - go figure) gave us a warm fuzzy feeling so we dropped the seats off with him a couple of weeks ago for a re-cushioning and new strapping under the seat. I also remembered to ask for seat heaters to be added as the Monza's original leather armchairs had them and I've preserved the wiring. It's not really cold enough in California to warrant it, but they did come in useful when we drove the car up to Lake Tahoe in a snowstorm so you never know.

We got the seats back last week, complete with seat heaters, and a nice job it seems to be. It was fun trying to get Jo out of them while I had her checking them out for height! Then the problem of how to finish them off began. Opel just put in simple heating mats that take 12V and convert to a nice warm feeling. These mats were a little more flash, with a built-in thermostat and two temperature settings (38C and 41C). The question was where to put the bloody temperature switches...

Seat base showing the wiring. The block of wiring at the top is the thermostat controller

First idea was the centre console, but it's getting so busy there now that we didn't really have the space. I thought of the side of the console (either side of the gear lever) but Jo said that was a little funky and I have to agree. We discounted the door / armrest (way too much wiring to squeeze through the door) and finally settled on the seat console. Pretty obvious when you think about it - it affects the seat so why not put the switch on the seat?

So I've done one seat so far, and you can see it below. The dash mounted switch turns heating on and off as per Opel's original design, but now the switch on the console chooses heating level I or II for each occupant individually.

View of the seat console with the switch mounted in it. We thought it might be a stretch to reach down to it but it actually worked out OK.

I should start a pool to bet on the final weight of the car with all these bloody options in! It actually does matter - allowable California emissions is calculated using the weight of the car as a factor. The heavier the car the lower the allowable emissions... :-)

We tried them out the other night and you could definitely feel heat coming through, but it wasn't earth shattering heat with either setting. I'm running the car off the battery only at the moment (of course) so it might be that it's not that impressive with just on 12 of the 14 Volts the controller is expecting. I'll put it on the charger at the weekend and try it again.