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My half leather interior finally arrived yesterday. A little disappointed with a couple of things though.

Firstly, they''re not from an SRi (which I foolishly assumed) but from an SE which means I get the black ash wood trims (woohoo) & electric front seats (doh). Fortunately though, they aren't memory seats so don't have an ECU & as far as I'm aware only need a +ve & -ve feed to get them working (woohoo).

Secondly though, there are a few patches of mould on them & the metal base under one of the back seat squabs has a very large bubbly patch where it looks like it has started to rust. Hopefully that won't be too bad a job to fix as some elbow grease & scrubbing should get rid of the mould & a wire brush, kurust & gloss black spray should sort out the manky metal, but this has lead me to worry about something else.
If the interior has been exposed to the elements enough to cause the rust & mould, does this mean I could also have some non-functioning seat motors &/or corroded wiring? Ideally I need to make sure all is working before I degut my interior (& before the 14 day return period is up) so I was wondering if there was an easy way to test the motors & controls. Haven't got any spare car batteries, but I do have a spare battery from the wife's 50cc Neos scooter sat in the shed. If I connected a couple of wires from this battery to the seats, would there be enough juice to test the motors & which way round would I need to connect them?

As far as installation goes, I was planning on taking a live feed from the cigarette lighter for the seats in the car & possibly running another live to the boot in readiness for an amp at a later date. Does that sound sensible enough or would it be asking for trouble?

You'll need to power them up to fit them anyway. If there's no electronics to fry would it matter if you powered them backwards? Presumably the switches will be on the +ve feed, so you need to find which feed goes to the seat switches.

The seat fuses are 20 amps each, so the real consumption should be near this which might be a bit ott if both seats are running at the same time. I don't think I'll be able to pick up the feed from the fuses in mine, I guess there won't even be connectors for the wires in the plug, so I'm thinking of running my own live in from the battery and putting this via a relay powered off the radio (or something switched) with a nice fuse in there too.

I'll have a look at my pass. seat and see if I can spot what's what.

stealthe

Personally I think if you did connect them up the wrong way, then the motors would simply run in the opposite direction to that indicated on the switches?

I wouldn't run off the cig lighter, think you'll be overloading it, but i'm no electrician.

I took my feed from the small fuse box on the nearside rear of the engine compartment, fitted an inline fuse holder, and then the wiring goes from there to the 'famous' grommet in the passenger footwell and into the car.
I would use the grounding point under the centre console as it's very substantial

Plus if you run a feed from that fuse box, and fit a distribution block within the car, then feed off that, you would have a very adequate source for running an amp/s as well.

What did you use to take a feed from the fusebox? I've only ever done it using those little blue piggyback connectors on an existing live before now. What do you mean by distribution block too? Never seen one of those.

Now for the bad news. Just taken a good look at the rusty rear seat base & the metal is actually starting to crumble. The way I see it, I have 2 options. Option 1 would be to get somebody to weld a plate onto it, but might be expensive. Option 2 would be to strip the seat base & transfer the cushioning etc. onto another base. Unfortunately mine is no good as my rear seat doesn't split & the replacement does. So, would the seat base from a saloon be the same as on an estate? If it is, I may be able to get another base fairly easily.

On the plus side, the breaker has confirmed that the electric motors all work & that I won't even have to change the pretensioners as the airbags hadn't fired on the car.

Breaker's? I think if I didn't know what happened to the car I'd swap them anyway. If they're the same that is...

Seat base from a s'loon would be useless. How bad is it? I'm not sure how structurally sound they need to be as the seat belt mountings are all on the car body, but I don't thik it would be nice to sit on if half the cushion's squeezing through onto the floor of the car. If you could find one with a screwed up interior in the breaker's perhaps they might let you take parts without chargning silly money

Alternatively, if you could wait a few months...

It's quite bad. Don't want to risk fitting it as is. Partly down to the risk of it collapsing, but also because it will come into contact with metal on the car too.

Regarding power for the motors, if they don't have heating elements, the supply for the seat heaters would probably be the safest bet.

If you haven't got the supply either, it should be relatively simple to take it for the right connections in the fusebox & fit a fuse or two.

How do you take a supply from the fusebox then? Sorry if it sounds dopey, but I've only ever piggybacked from existing wiring. Do you use spade connectors, bullet connectors etc?

I'll be quite chuffed if I have got the supply for the seat heating though because that will make life a lot easier.

Don't suppose there's any chance that I'll have the wiring in the doors for those little courtesy lights is there?

My LX saloon had no wiring for puddle lights, but your LX estate might (Peugeot consistency!)

Only one way to find out ...

Doubtful that I'll have that either then. Not sure how easy they'll be to wire in either, so may end up replacing the door cards with Rapier ones. It would just annoy me to have lights fitted that weren't working.

Can anyone give me an idea on what these distribution blocks are that Plod mentioned? Never seen one before.

I was thinking of perhaps something like this: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/4-Way-Blade-Fuse- ... 1c16ced9e6

Ah, that looks quite handy. Got that saved & will probably end up getting one. Is that what you're going to use when you get the leather Steve?

Incidentally, are you planning to rewire or get one of those modified ECUs?

Modified ecus? I'mm be wiring it up hopefully.

That was just the first box I came across on the bay, not sure if it's the right thing. It really needs to have a common on one side, otherwise you'll need to split the supply up 3 ways somehow before you get to it.