What am I looking at here? Is my car gonna be wired for heated seats?

wiring will not be there. i think it's only in legacy's of this vintage, i don't believe my 97 OBS had it, the connector will be under the carpet/seat somewhere. you can wire them in yourself.

 

the heated seats are weak. novelty and bad back are what they're good for, they have little functional value outside of that. the most disappointing trait is that they degrade quickly. most used seats don't have working heat or it doesn't work very well and will get worse.

 

the car is warm and blowing hot heat by the time you feel the heated seats.

 

the OBS seats aren't all that great, i'd consider the comfort upgrade, electrically adjustable feature far more functional and desirable than the heat.

 

i have a complete under seat wiring harness from a legacy with heated seats already pulled that will plug and play into a non-heated seat legacy harness. if you want to try it on you impreza, PM me. got heated seats too.

Well its either heated cloth in excellent shape or unheated leather in excellent shape besides normal wear on the drivers seat. I guess I could always add aftermarket heat to the leather.

Well its either heated cloth in excellent shape or unheated leather in excellent shape besides normal wear on the drivers seat. I guess I could always add aftermarket heat to the leather.

 

It's not that hard to retro in heaters, and VW seat heaters are the way to go. I had a 99 beetle that I had remote start in. I'd start it, go take one more run, and would have those seats hot enough to thaw my frozen butt after snowboarding all day. I'd actually have to turn them down after I was warm b/c they got so warm.

The heated cloth seats are actually really nice. On the high setting they will get toasty enough to be uncomforable if you don't have buns of steel, so they aren't weak.

 

There is no plug for heated seats on legacys. Their wiring is integrated with the full rear wiring harness that plugs in at the passenger kickpanel and spreads out and back from there.

 

Simplest way of doing it is to chop the harness of the donor car on either side of the two seat connectors, leaving the part that goes over the tranny hump and plugs into the switches together.

 

Strip that harness down when you get it home, and isolate it down to the two seat plugs and wires, the switch plugs and wires, a main power, main ground, and the illumination input. I skipped the illumination of the switches. The lights showing that it's on will work, the illumination just lights up the icon at night. I tapped the main power into the cigarette lighter subharness in the dash with a vampire connector and the ground to one of the center console bracket screws. Works great.

 

The main issue with heated seats is people kneeling on them. That will break the heater grid on the seat bottom, so that only the back heater will work, and only on high. The grids are run in series on low, and parallel on high. Check the 3 pin connectors going to the seats with an ohm meter, there should be continuity between all the pins.

Will the center console out of the 96 legacy outback work in my obs? Besides the heater switches it also has a nice armrest/storage.