After last years sub zero winter and as I spend quite a lot of my working day in car I have decided to get around to getting some heat back into the drivers seat of my car.

Car is Mini F/L Elite which was fitted with recaro leather seats from new but for as long as I can remember the drivers seat has failed to give any heat depsite checking all the usual culprits..fuse switch etc..Passenger side works ok but being leather it does take a while to get warm and on cold mornings its not great planting your rear end onto " cold cow".

I have invested in a set of Waeco heated seat mats as reading numerous posts the GM options are price and tend not to be greta so going down the route of a leather refurbisher stripping down the seat and fitting back and seat mats and then replacing the leather back.The splicing into the wiring seems quite simple so up to know all seems doable.

Questions I have is this:

When I remove the drivers seat I would like just to take the seat to the fabricator and leave it with him as that way the costs will be less as he has no car cluttering his workshop/driveway and he can then do work at his leisure which will be reflected in the bill.Due to my job and economics I will want to continue using the car whilst it is being repaired and I intended buying the cheapest drivers seat I could find and fitting it as a "stop gap" but how would this effect the air bag light or can I just bridge the connecters to stop it staying on when I refit battery.

Should I have less problems if I fit a seat with air bag and just replace the cars plug onto the spare seat.

Also has anybody else used the waeco kit before and offer any comments on its performance.

Thanks for offer ,Rob,but think it might get pricey with transportation costs.

Drop me a pm with price and will see how much carriage would be down south.

You need a 4 ohm resistor to fool the airbag ecu.

And shorting the airbag wires on the Omega setup wont cause the airbags to fire (discovered this when looking at a car where they had been shorted together by somebody replacing the seat with an earlier non side airbag unit)

Thanks for thechnical information ,guys.

To avoid any issue I intend buying a cheap Elite seat from the same model and fitting back inplace as a temporary measure for a week or so,that way the air bag and pre tensioners will all be connected and comply with Insurance requirements.

Get my leather sports seat refurbished and the swop back and re sell the surrogate seat on..job done ...I hope.!!

Any good reports or not on the Waeco retro heated seat pads.?

Waeco's have been good for me when I have retro-fitted them in various cars. 

Not yet tried the newer carbon element ones though.