First thank you for all your extremely informative posts. I'm a retired racer used to working on my own cars and very recently purchased a new 2023 M3P (had to have that extra power). Like a lot of others and not unusual for me the driver seat cushion left bolster irritates a chronic issue. I'm 6ft 165lbs but the seat gets me because as you know the cushioning is soft and the supporting spring is weak. Step one for me is to wedge in some stiffeners from the underneath to keep me higher in the seat. I want to do this by removing the seats hold down bolts, leaving all electrical connected and just tilt the seat forward.
Will this trigger any faults? Breaking a ground connection? Or as others have said trigger an airbag (can see how)?
Lastly I understand seat bolts lactited in so heat gun needed?
Again, thanks
The four seat bolts are installed in the factory with their locktite on the threads. The first time you remove the bolts you simply need a long arm on the ratchet wrench or a "breaker bar" made for this purpose. Do not use heat of any kind.
Make sure you use the proper sized torx, which might be 45, and a good ratchet wrench or breaker bar attached.
The seat can be rocked backwards for access to the bottom after the four bolts are removed.
If you don't disconnect any wires, or open any connectors, there should be no issues. I've done it likely 30 times.
The wire length is short. So be careful not to yank wires hard. There may be harness attachments to the floor that might be removable to give more slack. Just go slow with good lighting.
The thing you must be aware of if you add anything between the seat bottom and the seat frame/ springs is the driver-in-seat-sensor and the wire going to it from underneath. The sensor is glued on top of the foam that the faux leather is attached to. The wire goes through a hole in the foam and passes through from the top of the foam to underneath where there's a connector, a very small one. Adding stuff blind you could disturb the wire, pull out the connector, or break the wires. This will cause erratic behavior of the car. It will think nobody is in the seat. All the automation that kicks off when you sit in the car, tap the brake, etc, will be confused at best.
I have never triggered the airbag.
The airbag is in the upper wing, facing the door. Don't mess with it.
If you are afraid, you can power down the car.
The challenge is having the seat in the correct position to expose all 4 bolts. I kept power on so I could move the seat forwards to access the rear bolts, and backwards to access the front 2 bolts.
I tried up to 5 iterations of design changes to the seat.
Finally I arrived at the only one that is now permanent for me and fixed the problems.
I removed and replaced the foam entirely with a more dense foam. Additionally I glued blocks of dense foam to the bottom of the foam that I used.
I custom attached the faux leather from original Tesla back on top of the foam.
I drilled a hole to pass the seat sensor from top to bottom to reattach the connector underneath.
If you do pull the seat bottom out of the car, like I do, you have to disconnect two connectors. You can visually trace the wires after 4 bolt removals and rocking the seat backwards.
One connector is gray and is for heating the seat bottom. You can trace the wire back to the rear then up into the bottom seat cover. The heater wiring is permanently sewn into the faux leather seat cover.
The other wire is a very small two wire, black, going to a black connector ( a simple one) held on the bottom of the springs by a clip.
I hope this helps.
If you need more help I can be found on YouTube
Sincerely,
George Borrelli