987 seats in a 986 - 986 Forum - The Community for Porsche Boxster & Cayman Owners

I just put 987 seats in my 986. The seats bolted right in..... in case you wondered about that. Of course, the seat slide and up/ down features of the seat work since they are manual..... but, the seat heater, and the seat back does not work since it is powered. The seats use different plugs, so now I have to do some wiring. Has anyone done this? I also have another issue..... the air bag light is now on. I read later that I should have disconnected the battery to the car before removing the seats to avoid the light coming on. But, of course I want the seats to work properly with the air bag anyway. The 986 seats did not have side air bags, they had air bags in the doors. The 987 seats have air bags in the sides of the seats..... I really don't want to use them anyway, since the airbag is int he doors. But, I do need the the electrical portion to work int he seatbelt to have the air bag work. HELP!

Is there a difference in how high you sit in the 987 seats?

I didn't have the up/ down feature working right on my 986 seats, or I didn't use it right- one or the other. I can say the 987 seats can adjust both too low and too high, so there is a ton of adjustment. I have it set fairly low and at 5'10", I have about 5" or more of headroom. The same as my Mazda cx7 daily driver. I can set it low enough that I can't see over the hood, but I have it a bit higher than that. Fit seems good too. I made the change only to get seats in near new condition.

Dude, We want details! Where did you buy seats and for how much? More importantly, pics, pics and more pics. Congrats, on a pretty OG modification. I must say; I thought about putting a 987 steering wheel on my 986 but didn't think about seats. Good stuff!

If you haven't seen this thread check it out (unfortunately I can no longer see the pictures). A fellow forum member put 997 seats in his 986. He didn't specifically address your issues with the seat heaters and powered seat backs but he may be of some help if you send him a PM. Best of luck, ddb http://www.986forum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24185

I'll check out the link..... Thanks. I'll post pics and update when all this is done. Btw- if I'm right, aren't the 987, cayman, and 997 seats all the same? The leather is stiffer than the 986 seats, but holds shape more and then there are less wrinkles over time. That was the look I was going for.

are your seats memory or just standard electric? my driver seat was memory and was a real ******************** to sort out! the passenger side was just a standard electric so was very easy. I can't remember off hand but it did take me 6 months to find out how to do the memory seat! The seats WILL sit below the rollbars just nicely but I have mine high in the pic because my wife is under 5 feet tall. I lost most of my pics when my HD went down I'll take a few pics if i get a chance but i have the hardtop on at the moment

ahhh! you have standard sliders!! (just read all the post ) Thats a great start, mine were out of a turbo so they even had air side bolsters?!?! I did'nt wire up the air or the heat, just the basic movements, I think you would just have to find which wires on the seat are live and earth, cut off the plug and wire them into the wire and earth on your cars plug, don't cut the car plug incase you want your standard seats back in. also dont forget the seatbelt, I used the original seat belt harness off the old seat.

Here is a solution for installing 987 memory seats in a 986 with minimal re-wiring. Works great and I’ve run it for the last year. Note that a manual 987 seat can be installed more easily, but the comfort seat won’t work without the approach below (simple microcontroller for CAN commands) which is very straight forward or a more invasive full re-wire of the seat motors. This GitHub article covers the full build. Works for 987 memory seats in a non memory seat 987. Also works for 987 seats in a 986. 997 and 987 are interchangeable, so are 986 and 996 wiring. All 4 have the same bolt pattern. https://github.com/trudant/987-997-Comfort-Seat-Hack/