Butts In Seats

 

Swapping Older Beetle Sport Seats Into A 06 Beetle TDI

In my quest to build a better Daily Driver New Beetle, I decided to add something to my TDI Beetle, “better” seats.

My Wife has a 02 Beetle Sport Turbo that has some very nice leather Sport Seats, that I wanted for my car.

Sadly my car has the Plain Jane Vinyl Seats, which are in excellent condition, but lacking in comfort and support.

However, my lovely Wife already nixed the idea of robbing the seats out of her car, and swapping mine in for hers.

Rude.

So I started checking FB Marketplace for a set.

After a few false starts, I located someone selling a 01 Sport Beetle with Black Leather Sport seats for cheap. Told him I just wanted the seats, he told me he didn’t care what I wanted, and wanted the whole car gone.

So I bought a running, barely driveable Beetle, just for the seats in it.

Yup. I did that. That was me.

Got the car to my buddy’s shop and proceeded to swap out the seats, when I discovered that VW added a “Passenger Occupancy Detection System” in the 06 up Beetle.

Great.

Seats physically fit in the car, but my Passenger Airbag Warning Light on the center dash blinked constantly, another warning light in the Gauge Cluster, and the Seat Belt dinger wouldn’t shut up until you buckled the Passenger Seatbelt.

At this point I could buy a PODS Emulator from someone online or experiment with resistors installed in the plug to fix it, but I decided, “Hey. Let me overthink this.”

And here we are.

After looking at both Passenger seats, it didn’t look like swapping the PODS sensors, wiring and seat pad would be that hard.

It wasn’t, but there was some modifications and additions required for the Sport Seats to go into my car.

I’ll try to document those details here.

Remove seats from the car. (Duh)

Disconnect the Positive Battery Terminal before you go and start unplugging Airbag connectors. Supposedly the Airbag circuit isn’t “HOT” unless the Ignition is switched on, but why take the chance if you don’t have to?

Removal of the PODS equipment from the 06 Seats wasn’t that hard. There are three studs with nuts installed, holding the PODS Control Box/Bracket and another Plastic Bracket for the various connectors under the car.

The PODS harness connector, Seat Belt Indicator connector, and Side Airbag connector clip to the plastic bracket and can be released from the bracket using a scribe or small flat tip screwdriver to release the plugs from the plastic bracket.

You’ll also need to swap the Seat Belt Buckles between the two seats, as the 06 Seat Belt Buckle has wiring for the PODS integrated with it.

With the Seatbelt Buckle, PODS Module, Brackets and Wiring Harness removed the only thing left is the Pressure Mat under the Passenger Seat Cushion. There are 4 plastic friction pegs holding the Pressure Mat in place after you loosen the seat cover to access the cushion.

So with everything removed from the 06 Seat, go ahead get the older Sport Seat prepped.

It looks like VW didn’t change the wiring for the Side Airbags from the 01 model to 06.

All the connectors for the Airbags are the same and the wiring is pinned out the same in all the connectors, with some possible differences in the wire colors.

To make it short, I didn’t swap Airbags between seats and just plugged everything in like before. I’m not throwing any errors or Fault Codes when scanned with VCDS, so I’m thinking as far as the new Beetles go, it’s Plug and Play if you’re swapping different year New Beetle seats in.

This may not apply if you’re installing seats from a different model VW car. In that case, you might need to rewire the plugs or run a jumper harness.

The Sport Seat bottom pan will need a small section of the pan removed to accommodate the hose and sensor from the pressure mat. There should be a picture that shows the area to be removed in white paint. I cut out the area with a cutoff wheel, cleaned it up with a metal burr tool and dressed the edges with a small file. Hit it with some black spray paint to cover up the bare metal.

White Paint Marks The Spot

Almost Looks Factory

The Sport Seats didn’t have studs to mount the PODS Control Box and the plastic Connector Bracket, so I ground down the heads on 3 bolts with the same thread pitch as the mounting nuts, and installed the Control Box and plastic Connector Bracket in place while the bottom Seat Cushion was accessible. If you want to go the extra mile, you could tack weld the bolts in place or use some JB Weld to hold them in place.

I Need To Clean The Garage Up

Install the Pressure Mat in the Sport Seat bottom pan with the 4 friction pegs, and run the Hose/Wiring for the Mat under the seat. Go ahead and route all your wiring and make any connections you need to.

I was worried I might have to shave the bottom of the Sport Seat cushion because of the Pressure Mat, but everything seems to be working fine in my car.

The Seat Cover reinstalled easily enough with some extra pressure during reinstall and the Sensor Mat seems to be working fine. I imagine someone might need to remove some material on a case by case basis.

After I reinstalled the seat, hooked up the connectors and reconnected the battery, it was time to see if it worked.

My Passenger Airbag Warning stopped blinking like it was having an epileptic fit, and it stopped beeping until you plugged the Passenger Seat Belt in.

Neat. Well that was certainly worth it.

Captain Overachiever Strikes Again!

 I Hate Cars.

Actually this is all my own fault.

I've been working on the 06 TDI Beetle I picked up recently and managed to knock out a lot of work on it.

Timing Belt/Water Pump

Oil Changed

Replaced the Head Unit with a modern Single DIN Android Auto Head Unit (Power Akoustic CP71W)

Repaired The Inner Door Handles (DieselGeek Beetle Brace)

Fancy GTI/GLI Pedal Set

Fixed Both Cooling Fans 

A/C Works Again After Fixing The Fans (Wooh!!)

Polished/Cerakoted Headlights

Along with other things here and there.   Took the car on a couple of trips around town and it runs great.  The car isn't as much fun as my Wife's 02 Beetle Turbo, definitely slower but rides a lot softer.

Who cares about slow when I'm getting 45 mpg, right!

I'm almost ready to start using it to get to work, which was going to require just a few more things before I was comfortable using it for that.

A few years ago the shift linkage on my Wife's Beetle failed on me while I was using it on a shopping run.  Had to get it towed out of the WalMart parking lot to get it home.

Flatbed Ballin'

One of the bushings in the shift linkage disintegrated and basically left the car stuck where it was.  VW designed the shifter and shift cables as a assembly (Because of course, VW 😏), so most people have to get the assembly replaced.  

Being a cheap ass, I bought a Mk4 Bushing Kit from DieselGeek to replace all the problem areas and got them installed to get the car back on the road.  

So if I did it once, you'd think it would be easy to do it again, right?

You would think so, but you'd be wrong.

I Totally Fucked This Thing Up By The Numbers.

Since VW designed the Shifter Box as a sealed unit, getting at the parts with it installed in the car is difficult, but not impossible.  

You can drop the Shifter Box and Cables out from the car, and crack it open to change out the bushings on the workbench.  Which is what I should have done, this time.

With it still installed in the car, you have to use a 1 1/4in hole saw to drill a access hole in the housing to allow you to remove one of the bushings and install a new one.

This is where I "screwed the pooch". 

Since I've done it in the car before, and nothing bad happened I took a rather cavalier attitude towards drilling my access hole on my 06.

"Measure Twice, Cut Once", springs to mind.

Needless to say things did not go well, and it's boogered up but good.  I had to use a carbide burr to open up the hole where it was SUPPOSED to be.  

Behold The Fuckery!!

During the process  of opening up the hole even more, the burr kicked back and ended up breaking off part of the top of the shifter box, making my hack job around ten times worse. Probably structurally compromised.

So, I'm going to get another Shift Box with Cables and do it on the bench to avoid such ham handed fuckery in the future.

The worst part about it is, the majority of the bushings were FINE, aside from one that was easily accessible from the top.  So this whole debacle could have been avoided.  

Perfectly Fine, Besides The Easily Replaceable Bushing

Like I said, Captain Overachiever strikes again and this shitshow was all my fault.

I suck.

Round 2: Beetle TDI

 Seriously?

Yeah, I got another one. It's a 2006 VW Beetle TDI with a 5 Speed.  After my experience with the TDI Beetle I had a few years ago, you'd think I learned my lesson and wouldn't do this to myself again.  But, here we are.  Round 2 it would seem.

Hello!

Why?

 I mostly blame my wife.  (Oh yeah, I got married last year.  True story.)

My wife is most of the way through her Graduate degree and recently started her clinicals.  Since then she's been using the Passat TDI to make the commute into town and I've been driving her Volvo C30 to get to work.

Which isn't really a problem because I like driving it, but I'm worried about hitting a deer or some other critter on my way home from literally the middle of a Kansas cornfield at o' dark thirty. I was told she wouldn't be upset if something happened to it, but I know she really likes it and would in fact, be very upset if I brought it home with a deer shaped dent in it..  

So, I figured maybe another car might be in order.

I wanted a TDI Wagon, like a Jetta/Golf Sportwagen or an Audi Wagon, but I was shot down by my wife.

"Absolutely not.  Station Wagons are hideous." 

"What about a diesel Bug", I shot back.

"Okay, that's fine." (Wait, what?)

So, I picked up another Bug from a coworker of mine.  Same color, and interior as the Oil Leaking 2005 I had before, and it's even straight piped like my old one.

So, we're off to a good start here. 😶

It's got a tick over 152K miles.  Pretty low for a TDI.  It's got a BEW "Pump Duse" engine, which means no CP4 HPFP shenanigans like on the newer Common Rail TDIs.  It runs and drives like it's supposed to and is a  solid 10 footer.

What's Wrong With It?

Typical Mk4 things.

The interior of the New Beetles is quite honestly a plastic, creaky mess.  There are a few things that are loose or missing, that need replacement or repair.

Broken Door Handles, Loose Glove Box, Missing D/S "Oh Shit" Handle and Non Existent Headliner will need to be addressed.

PO couldn't confirm if he knew definitively if the Timing Belt/Water Pump had been replaced, so that's first on the list.

Shift Linkage feels a little loose, so a DieselGeek Mk4 Shifter Bushing Kit will go on along with a fresh Oil/Filter Change to appropriate VW Spec Oil to try and mitigate the notorious Cam Wear the BEW engines are known for.

The Defrost was non existent on the drive home, so I suspect the HVAC Blend Doors are missing their foam, so I ordered a Blend Door Plug Kit off of Ebay to take care of that.  The Dash needs to come out to access the Blend Dorrs, so I can take car of the loose interior panels as well.  Or induce new creaks and noise, putting it back together, but trying to stay positive here.

Plans?

Reliability.

I want to get it tuned, and delete the immobilizer at the same time.  Clean out/Replace the Intake Manifold.

I picked up some 2 Piece BBS Wheels from a Wolfsburg Jetta, that I'm going to refurbish with polished lips for it.  Definitely plan on cleaning up the Exterior, Interior and other things as time allows.

Removed the Panasonic Head Unit for a Single DIN Power Akoustic Android Auto Head Unit. So, it'll get dragged kicking and screaming into this part of the 21st Century.

Maybe Smyth UTE Kit for it?  I dunno.  The idea of small diesel powered trucklet does have a certain appeal to me.

I'm just glad that I have an older TDI again, with a 5 Speed like the car gods intended.