[urq] RE : Seat heater element for urQ/Coupe

[Steve Eiche]

FWIW, seat frames CANNOT be swapped from side to side and be functional 
due to the center fore/aft adjuster and seat belt latch bracket.  Also, 
while late CGT seat frames will fit on early ur quattros, the center 
fore/aft adjuster lever position was swapped (lever is on the inside of 
the center bracket), so you won't be able to use it.  (The adjusters 
were moved back outside of the center bracket on the RR ur quattros 
because of the humps for the twin cats, so if you are lucky enough to 
find a set of seats, or bases from an RR car, they will go right in an 
early ur quattro.) a Some people just pull the pin manually to adjust 
the seat.  In my '82 I got a new set of center seat brackets and welded 
them in to work with the '86 CGT seats that I have.

You can swap seat upholstery (bottoms at least) and padding from side to 
side.  That is an easy swap.  It is also easy to find hog ring pliers 
and hog rings.  Harbor Freight has a set of them (straight and angled) 
for $10 or so.  IMO, the correct tools make the job much easier than 
struggling with regular pliers.  I used to reuse the old hog rings, but 
now I found hog rings in two different sizes at a local hardware store.

As for heating elements, the (crappy) originals are NLA, but you can get 
sets of new elements with controls on ebay for ~$175 or less shipped.  I 
bought a set of these from heaterseats.com for my wife's car a couple of 
years ago and the quality was excellent.  Installation wasn't bad 
either.  I will be putting a set of the elements from the same place in 
my seats as well.  What is nice about these modern elements is that the 
elements are not just one wire, but rather a lot of parallel elements so 
you will not lose the whole thing if there is a break in the wire.  This 
configuration also makes it possible to cut sections out of the element 
without affecting operation, which was necessary on the seats in my 
wife's car.

HTH!

Steve