Lseat.com seat skins / covers: Review, notes, modifying for heat + ventilation

[FABombjoy]

This will be a multi-headed thread, but to start, a basic review of the Lseat leather covers from https://www.lseat.com/

Project Goals
-Recover seats economically
-Integrate ventilation and heating pads
-Control heat/fans using some kind of modern control scheme


Product
Leather Color: S002 Dim Grey
Thread Color: L004 Silver Grey
Additional Option: Perforated Insert
Cost: $368 delivered ( February 2018 )


Background
I don't have any real background in upholstery. 9 times out of 10 I can't even spell it correctly. I can sew decently.

Philosophically I like a "little wear" on my car. Maybe the stainless grain isn't perfect, or the paint isn't quite right, or it's just dusty. I feel a little relieved about that first door ding as I can finally relax and enjoy the car.

I feel the same way about seats and once these seats have some mileage on them, I'll feel better about not spending $1000+. Plus I wasn't sure what kind of creative butchering it might take to make ventilation work (very little actually).


Initial Impression
Out of the box these covers really do look pretty good. Honestly when you consider the price they're remarkably good.

S002 Dim Grey is a super-duper close match to the original grey and the silver thread provides comparable contrast stitching. The leather itself seems fine but I don't know how to grade leather. There is a plush sew foam backing which is good and bad (more about this later).

The stitching isn't always perfect or parallel but you have to scrutinize closely to tell.

The Lseat covers are full leather, and include full leather covers for the backer board. The added bonus here is that I'll have two large panels of original grain vinyl to store for future spot repairs or projects.


Attachment reference photos
Seat bottom:
https://imgur.com/a/I3YcIKA

Seat back:
https://imgur.com/a/EpukLXL

[FABombjoy]

Installation
I'm just going to wholesale reference the "slip me some skin" PDF article that's floating around out there somewhere.
For the most part it's totally applicable here with a few exceptions, noted below.


Pre-install caveats
I've seen several of the current options installed on various seats. The first thing I tended to notice was that the bolsters seem to lose definition, and the little roll between the seat back and headrest might disappear almost entirely. Once I was finally putting the covers on I finally understood why.

The original covers have a simple backing fabric. The backer reinforces the stitching and seaming and most aftermarket covers appear to use a backing foam (called sew foam) that has a layer of foam.

Adding this sew foam makes the cover feel more plush, and likely less likely to tear along seams, but also seems to reduce the definition of the seat.


Seat form foam rehab
Steam treatment of the yellow seat foam will help to clean the schmutz and puff the foam up a bit back to its original shape. A basic garment steamer for wrinkles will not work well here. I used a pressure steam cleaner which provided results. It took a while as it only holds 1ike 300mL of water and several refills were required. Lots of youtube videos showing the process out there.

[FABombjoy]

Seat Back Notes
To give the back bolsters definition, the original covers have vertical metal bars that are hog ringed to the "bbq grill". This pulls the cover flush to the foam.

The Lseat covers have a thick heavy-duty plastic channel instead. This is nice as you don't have to keep the metal bars in place as you hog ring them. But they might be too long. Compare the backs to the original and trim as needed. You can see the ventilation holes I opened in the backer foam here. Ugly but effective.

61010

61009

[FABombjoy]

Seat Back Headrest Notes
Lots of tricks to get the seat back over the headrest. But you can also stuff the headrest into the cover first.

Two small cuts decapitates the foam from the seat. You might even notice that it was originally made in 2 parts and glued on.

Now just stuff it into the cover on the bench and slip the cover over the seat frame. Once the cover is attached to the seat frame that sucker ain't movin'
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Small headrest roll definition - I don't know what to call that part / feature
The thick sew foam robs you of definition here. That little roll is likely to disappear.

I cut a piece of random carpet foam that I have and slid it in over the original portion of the seat form. It actually worked well, not perfect, but I did retain some definition.

On the other seat I'm going to try and cut/shape/glue in a piece of half-round trim to give the cover its form. Yes I'm serious.
I might cut out the backing foam too. You'll never feel that part of the seat, so some kind of rigid insert should be fine.

61011

[FABombjoy]

Seat Bottom Notes
These are fairly identical in install approach to the stock covers.

I think the fabric for the metal ribs is too long. With the ribs pulled in to place the metal is right up against the lower rubber pad.
When I recover the other seat I might shorten them up first so they can be pulled tighter.

There was a missing cutout which causes things to bunch up around a spring. On the left is what happens, and on the right is the original cover w/ cutout
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Install the cover as provided. Once you can see the spot that needs help, just mark and cut a notch and things will fall in to place
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[FABombjoy]

Circulation Fans
There are some all-in-one seat circulation kits. They look pretty sketchy to me. The controls look cheap and the fans look cheap. It's a lot more intrusive than a heating kit so I didn't want a brand X fan.

I've never done this before but I followed several conventions used by these kits, along with an exam of OEM methods.
Keep in mind that I've never done this before.
Also this is my first time.

I settled on the Delta EFC0812DB-F00 fan. It's 80mm, was reviewed favorably on a Mercedes forum thread as a replacement for the OEM Mercedes fans.
Technically it tops out at 12.7v so I'll use a cheap "buck" regulator to drop 13-14v down to 12v.
These fans also have integrated driver transistors which allow for PWM control. Makes speed control easier.
More about these last two points later once I document the controls.


To have circulation, you need:
-Air in: Unobstructed access for the fan so it can do it's fan thing and move air from point A to B
-Air through: Air needs to be channeled through the seat and spread over a reasonable area
-Air out:
--you need perforated leather
--Either flow-through sew foam OR make your own perforations


The seat sandwich of materials looks like:
--Perforated seat cover--
--Flow through foam (Leather backing)--
--Flow through foam (to replace the dense seat foam & distribute air)
--Distribution channel--
--Fan--
--Hole through seat foam--


Bill of materials:
-Fans
-Metal fan grilles (top side of fan)
-Metal or plastic fan grilles (bottom side of fan)
-Hole saw
-Razor blades
-Some kind of dense but flow-through foam to replace the seat form foam

I found that dryfast foam, used in outdoor furniture, seemed to be about the best material to act as a distribution layer. An 18" square by 0.5" thick material will cover about one seat.

I was concerned that you might be able to see the areas where I modified the seats. That might be true if you had an OEM cover punched to add perforation, but the thick closed cell sew foam negates any changes in destiny. I mean density.
If you cut out the closed-cell sew foam and replaced it with flow-through, I think there would be a greater chance of the air channels being visible, so I just added holes to the closed-cell foam.


Bill of materials: Deleted Items
In these pics you'll see a black netting over top of the dryfast foam. I added this as an anti-chafe layer but after installation I don't think it's necessary.

[FABombjoy]

Installation: Seat Bottoms
For the seat bottoms I installed the fans toward the front, out of the "butt zone" if you will. The holes emerge in front of the big lower rubber seat bottom and can pretty freely draw air without obstruction.

Wiring is loomed and tied off along the edge of the frame. There is a full coil of wire inside of the channel through the seat foam. ALWAYS CONSIDER wire movement as people get in and out. There needs to be a lot of strategic slack to prevent wire breaks.

[FABombjoy]

Installation: Seat Upper
Seat uppers is a little more challenging.

It's easier to drill the holes, but with the back installed, that chamber is somewhat airtight if you're trying to move a large volume.

Lots of wire and fan blade pinch hazards being situated behind the seat BBQ grille.

The seat back also has a huge hole in the board as the guts of the seat move around quite a bit when someone is sitting in it. That needs to figure in to the positioning strategy.

I just took some wire mesh and mounted the fans to it. That made it easier to stay in place while the grill went back on and the seat skins were hog ring'd in place.

It seems that I never took a pic of the wire looming, but was all taped up and incorporates strategic S bends and zip ties to keep wire stress in check.

[FABombjoy]

Seat Back Modifications
Step one was to remove all of the staples and original vinyl from the seat back.

The vinyl has a foam layer that had turned into sticky dust.

Rob Grady posted a procedure for reinforcing the seat backs with aluminum bar and rivets, which I think I might have done correctly. It's easy to do with the vinyl removed. I steamed the backs, flattened them, and added support aluminum bars.

For the air inlet vent solution, I modeled up and 3D printed a vent in ABS plastic, then riveted it in to place. The backer leather has 2 small cuts but otherwise attached the same. It's subtle and should permit lots of airflow to the fans.

Staple trick for the new backer: 1/4" staples are slightly too long. Pick up a 6 pack of a good quality local beer and cut the cardboard into strips, then staple those in place. They add just enough space that you can use a T50 staple gun but not poke through the opposite side.

I went out of my way to reuse the holes for the backer board but that was a waste of effort and I should have just drilled 2 new mounting holes into the frame.

[Rich_NYS]

Super cool...nice write-up!

[jangell]

I’m in the need of new seat covers, and I have to replace the heated inserts I installed a decade plus ago as well. I thought about cooling, but was sure how to get perforated covers. That and I hadn’t actually figured out how to do the cooling until now. Looks like I have a fall project — this write up is going to be my template.

Any chance you can provide the gcode or mode for the vent you printed for the seat back?

— Joe

[FABombjoy]

I’m in the need of new seat covers, and I have to replace the heated inserts I installed a decade plus ago as well. I thought about cooling, but was sure how to get perforated covers. That and I hadn’t actually figured out how to do the cooling until now. Looks like I have a fall project — this write up is going to be my template.

Any chance you can provide the gcode or mode for the vent you printed for the seat back?

The STL? Maybe - let me get this setup to a full version 1.0 first :)
The vent does conflict a little with the battery cover so I'll have to revise it.

I hope to have both heating & cooling fully connected in the next few weeks before our fall Michigan driving tour. Based on previous years, both heat and cooling will be useful.

[jangell]

Yeah, the STL; I guess the gcode is a bit more machine specific (I’m just getting back into 3D printing and I’ve forgotten a few things). I mean, I could build my own model, but you’ve already done the hard work. :)

it’ll be a couple months before I do my seats, so I’ll just keep following what you’re doing until I’m ready. This thread has already been hugely helpful! I’m curious to see what you’ve decided to go with for the heaters, too.

— Joe

[FABombjoy]

I'm taking a labor day break, but in short:
-A cheap seat heater kit, cutting a million little holes in the heat pad fabric so air circulation can happen
-The heater kit switch and driver module goes in the dumpster where it belongs
-3D printer heat bed MOSFETs to drive the heaters instead (rated 30A continuous duty - total overkill which is perfect)

It would be pretty trivial to whip up a PCB for a pair of logic-level drive MOSFETs, but for $15 shipped a pair of 30A heat bed drivers is far too easy.

[jangell]

A cheap heating kit is what I have now, and what I was planning to do when going forward, so I guess I’m on the right track there.

I was wondering if drilling a couple big holes for the fans would be fine, rather than a lot of little holes. I guess it might sacrifice heating near the fans, though. I don’t actually know how the heat pads work so I was sure how amenable they’re be to having holes added to them, but it sounds like it’s fine.

I’m doing my own climate control UI so I’ll be doing the same thing with the included control hardware. Although I was just going to use MOSCETs in place of the switches; are you replacing everything downstream of the pads? My “I don’t actually know how heating pads work” thing has kept me from planning that far yet. I didn’t even know heat of drivers were a thing.

Have a good break! I’ll be spending part of mine finally installing A/C idle up on my MegaSquirt.

— Joe

[FABombjoy]

I was wondering if drilling a couple big holes for the fans would be fine, rather than a lot of little holes. I guess it might sacrifice heating near the fans, though. I don’t actually know how the heat pads work so I was sure how amenable they’re be to having holes added to them, but it sounds like it’s fine.
I have the style with carbon wires that criss cross. You can cut sections out of the middle but I just punched holes through the fabric that holds the wires in place.

If you cut only sections for the fans, the heat pad would have to go under a foam layer and they're too big for that.

You'll also see in the photos that the wires in the pad don't go totally to the edge, so I trimmed these pads a bit so they'd fit on the center sections of the seat foam form.


I’m doing my own climate control UI so I’ll be doing the same thing with the included control hardware. Although I was just going to use MOSCETs in place of the switches; are you replacing everything downstream of the pads? My “I don’t actually know how heating pads work” thing has kept me from planning that far yet. I didn’t even know heat of drivers were a thing.
I'm only using the pads. It came with a controller box and a control switch. The switch is chinsy and I don't like the look or feel of it. The driver box has 2x MOSFETs. I managed to find a datasheet for them and the specs are so good they're either made out of magic or the company is full of "it". The 30A MOSFET drivers I purchased will be super overrated for the task which should translate in to "probably shouldn't catch fire". I'll feed in a PWM control signal to set the heat level.


Have a good break! I’ll be spending part of mine finally installing A/C idle up on my MegaSquirt.
It's a nice feature to have!

[jangell]

When I take my seats apart I'll check to see what my heater pads are liked and what kind of shape they're in, but they're not terribly expensive on Amazon so I'll probably just buy a new set. My driver's side ones don't work at all right now, and the passenger one only works at one temperature, and I'm not quite sure where the failure is.

Punching holes between the crossing wires makes a lot of sense. I imagine it's just a bit tedious to do. :)

I take it the heaters are really simply, and applying power to them causes them to heat up? I'll get some high power MOSFETs and PWM like you're doing -- that does seem like the best solution. My touchscreen currently has four heat levels for the heated seats (including off), but I can change it into an arbitrary off-to-max scale easily enough, once I'm using PWM. Although I doubt you'd be able to tell the difference between three levels. PWM fewer components and pins not he Arduino, since I don't need to individually control the low/medium/high switch settings. Cool. I'm going to have to figure out how to modify my UI for seat coolers now, too.

As for A/C idle up, I have the MegaSquirt modification done and TunerStudio settings done, and it bench tests just fine -- I just have to hook it up between the mode switch and the low pressure switch tomorrow. I'm getting tired of stalling at lights.

-- Joe

[FABombjoy]

Even without AC idle-up you shouldn't stall like that. I know that came up in your build thread - did you post a log/MSQ of when it happens? If so send me a link and I can re-review your tune and log. That should be solvable on its own. AC idle-up shouldn't be needed to solve it.

[jangell]

It happens even without the A/C on, but the A/C makes it more extreme. I keep meaning to start a new thread about it. I was going to do that last week, but then I lost my oil vapor separator cap, which caused a huge vacuum leak and made my logging moot. Mark D was able to source a new cap for me at a junkyard, which I'm going to test drive tomorrow.

I can get the idle to drop pretty low by just shifting from R to N to D and back. When the engine has load, the idle drops down to the 600s. I have my idle at 900 RPM now just to reduce the chance of stalling, but if I'm pointing up a hill and take my foot off the gas quickly, I might stall out. I've significantly boosted the lower end of the ignition table to try to catch stalls, but with only moderate success. What I really want is a way to open the IAC more if the idle drops below 600 RPM or so, since I feel like that would be the most effective way to catch a stall (although I guess not as fast as adjusting the ignition timing), but I can't figure out how to do that. I'm running closed loop idle, but it seems like it just doesn't react fast enough at low RPMs. I'm also using the easy slider instead of manually setting the closed loop PID. I'll share the tune and some logs in a new thread later this weekend, rather than hijack this one any more than I already have. :) If you like I can record logs with the A/C on (and A/C idle up off) to show what happens under a heavier load (ie: make it more likely to stall).

Thanks!

-- Joe

[FABombjoy]

Sounds good!

To briefly tie ventilated seats with this megasquirt non sequitur, I briefly considered tying unused MS3X coil driver outputs to the seat fan PWM in and sending fan control commands over canbus, using the MS3 generic PWM output mapping option. I mapped it all out functionally and decided it was ludicrous to build megasquirt controlled seats [emoji23]

[jangell]

:D

I have an MS II, so I had to build a new input and output circuit (which is described in the hardware manual, and wasn't that difficult), and I decided to use the DB15 for the external connections. I'm also using one of those Arduino-friendly 5v relay boards instead of an automotive relay to keep the control circuit simple.

I was going to try to have MS automatically turn off the A/C on WOT, but it seems that I'm not allowed to have A/C Idle Up and a programmable output use the same pad. I could wire up a second output pin and another relay or some other logic in the A/C power circuit, but I realized I don't really care quite that much. :) My custom UI will also be reading a bunch of state from MS over CAN bus, so I can have that turn off the A/C instead if I like. A/C idle up also removed a relay from my custom UI plans, since I can just pass the 5v signal right from my Arduino to MegaSquirt's pin.

-- Joe

[FABombjoy]

Lets bump your MS thread and continue this there.

[Timeless]

Anyone have faux leather covers from lseat?

[JETS 81 DMC]

Anyone have faux leather covers from lseat?

There is a lot of input on them in these threads. Older not real recent but you may PM some of them with how they still like them and how they are holding up.

https://dmctalk.org/search.php?searchid=7090927

:cheers:

[Timeless]

Thanks. That link is working.

[JETS 81 DMC]

I think you meant the link is not working today. I tried just now to check and did not work????
So the link in my post #24 does not work. But you can type lseat in the search and will bring up all the threads on it.

I entered "lseat" in the search and came up with this link today. I tried this link several times and it did work just now. Don't know why the other one did not work.

https://dmctalk.org/search.php?searchid=7094542

Try this link above or just enter lseat in the search.

[Timeless]

Nada. It's ok I ordered the real leather kit from Lseat. To be installed with SS seat release bars and new hardware.

[JETS 81 DMC]

Nada. It's ok I ordered the real leather kit from Lseat. To be installed with SS seat release bars and new hardware.

I just tried the two links I posted and now neither one brings up anything either. Weird as I had tried both after posting and they did work.

I think I will email admin and ask why the links work and then quit working.

If you want to read a bunch of info on Lseat with lots of positive and good info about them and installation click on the link below and enter Lseat in the search on the top right of screen and that will bring up the links I was trying to post for you. There are about 12 postings there to read about.

Search link:
https://dmctalk.org/search.php?do=process

Let us know your experience you have with them. :cheers:

[Timeless]

Let us know your experience you have with them. :cheers:
Will do. Thanks.