chrisadams

Just thought I would post on a mod I completed a few days ago.
On our 'new to us' Uplander, we found the fixed seats a little too flat at the front, and the drivers seat didn't quite go back far enough for my comfort. I need a lot of leg room. 95% of people would be comfortable in these seats, but I like to be able to completely stretch my left leg out when driving.
I considered just mounting the driver seat back, and at an angle, but decided to go with power instead.
Not my first vehicle to convert to power seats (Grand Cherokee, F150, Malibu passenger seat, among others).
This one was a tiny bit harder.
The pedestals, or seat brackets, mount the same from power to non-power, however, they have plastic shields on each side on the power seats that are not needed on the mechanical adjust seats.
They looked like they would interfere in seat travel, but in actual use, these shields just slid right up under the stock seat plastic side covers.

I also found that you could use Venture power seat brackets if you wanted to. There is a difference in the drivers seat bracket though. The Uplander has a wider base. Bolts are the same, but the wider base may be there to improve the strength. So I used Buick Terraza brackets. They were identical.
I did however, cheat and use the smaller switches from a Venture van. They were similar to the ones my wife is used to, easy to install and virtually free.


Unlike vehicles like the Grand, the harness for both power seats is not hidden under the carpet on this Uplander. However, they did include the power and ground for power seats in the blind harness on the drivers side. I would assume so the dealer could upgrade to a power drivers seat quickly and cheaply.
So I used the existing power and ground wires, which allowed me to use the existing circuit protection.
I had to run another wire for the passenger side, but that was quite easy, using the factory channels.

The seats themselves are held onto the bracket by 4 bolts, exactly the same as a Venture. I tested my passenger seat on a Venture power bracket while waiting for my Buick brackets to arrive. It bolted in, and mounted to the passenger seat exactly the same way, same bolts, top and bottom, front and back.

One thing I noticed, while doing this job. The factory had incorrectly mounted the drivers seat, pinching the carpet sloppily, with a corner folded up. Seats had the factory Loctite substance and had never been touched. Just plain careless workmanship, easy to correct, but ludicrous that it hadn't been inspected or caught.

The factory black tape looks like it was done by a drunken chimpanzee, or a partially trained dog. Up down, diagonal. All the black electrical tape work on the vehicle is like that.
I previously noticed the under hood tape on all the Uplanders I looked at was almost haphazard, with loose tape, tape run backwards etc.
Have no clue why quality control on the electrical tape was so haphazard on these. I wonder if it contributes to the gremlins often attributed to this model.

Anyway, the power seats are in, work well, lots of travel. This modification doesn't have any effect on the seat weight sensor on the passenger side because it's the same seat... always a consideration on any vehicle with a front passenger seat airbag controller.

Papa Bear

Excellent info !! Thanks Chris.

niceguy88

I haven't had a chance to check out the under seat wiring on my '08 Cargo version though I did notice wiring looms under each front seat. Are you saying you had to add your own wire (as in buy copper stranded wire) to integrate the power seats or what exactly?

There's no harness that can be patched between the seat wiring connectors and the vehicle wiring?

I've been considering a seat swap from the first day I bought this van 1.5 yrs ago but just no time for much modding still. My biggest gripe are the cheap flimsy armrests which look and feel like something out of an '80s Chrysler K car or something.

My seats are the light grey and I was thinking of finding some black perhaps (leather or cloth) that I could get to bolt in with little modification and zero impact on durability and safety from another GM vehicle though I haven't even seen the seating options on the other Uplander type vehicles...

Congrats on the upgrade

Jeremy

chrisadams

Hi Jeremy, Yes, there is a harness under the seat, If you pull it loose, you will see on the cargo van (mine is a cargo van, 3 seats total), that there are a number of wires going into the plug, but only two are connected out of the plug.
The ground and the seat belt latch.
When power seats are added an alternate plug is used.
In my case, I just stripped back the factory wire just before the harness and spliced in 12 gauge AWG wire to the hot and ground. According to my schematics these are the wires the factory power seat uses. The power is hot at all times and is protected at 25 amps. Each seat draws about 6 amps maximum, that is, all three motors running at once.
If you bought Buick, Saturn, Pontiac or 'upscale' Uplander seats you should be able to plug straight into the drivers.
On the cargo van there was no power wires to the harness, just the safety wires, seat belt and seat sensor. So I just added about 3 feet of power wire, routed under the black mat. A very easy task with both seats out on the ground. Simple to route in front of the seat, there is a 'low spot' in the chassis just in front of the seat mounts for wiring to be routed.
I used a good quality of wire, protected it with crinkle tube, then black tape. I used better quality of wire than the factory.
I didn't use a wire tap or butcher the wires in any way, I do a lot of car electrical, mostly on vintage vehicles, and I always use use the strip back, spread the wire, insert and wrap the new wire method, then I always solder each connection.
Or why I never have comebacks on electrical stuff.

If you pick up premium seats for your Uplander, you will end up with side air bags in the seats, that will probably be difficult or impossible to add to the harness. I didn't want the 'dummy' airbags in mine or I would have picked up a set of leather seats. I've seen the complete seats for 300 bucks several times, but each one has the side bags in the seats.
Hooking the side bags up and correctly adding them to the air bag circuit would be a challenge.
Memory seats would also be a challenge, as the Body control module for the cargo van wouldn't have the correct wiring for the memory seats.
On mine, I used a memory seat, just wired it as a direct seat, six wires to solder, and pulled the memory module out. I don't need memory seats, just more leg room and a better angle.