I'm like a lot of people here: I'd love the cooled seats on the '09 RL, but I'd rather have knitting needles stuck into my eyes than to look at the exterior styling every morning.

A kindly parts guy at a local Acura dealership printed out the diagrams for me of the '09 RL's front seat assemblies. (I have them at my other computer, just to head off the first wiseacre who posts "This thread is useless without pictures!".) The seat ventilators appeared to consist of ductwork that routes from the under-dash A/C system, plus two small fans, one for the seat bottom and one for the seatback.

In theory, it looked to me as if you could order the parts and retrofit this into any '05 or newer RL. The big if: whether the wiring harness in the console is there to accept switches for both heating and cooling and power it all up.

I know the 2nd-gen RL in Canada has come with cooled seats all along. This makes me strongly suspect that the two share a wiring harness (much like the base RL w/o nav has most of the nav parts), which presumably would clear the way for this mod. You can get the '09 seat cooler parts through a U.S. dealer, but you can't get the Canadian ones. As for the compatibility of the U.S. harness, the dealer parts guy told me in frustration that even Acura's national HQ is generally useless to answer questions of this kind; said they're basically just a marketing arm, and they seem generally not to know anything themselves about all sorts of functional product matters like this.

The moment before I'd buy a used one would presumably be the moment I'd have the leverage to make the dealer pursue this. The question is whether there's anything viable to pursue.

Anybody have any ideas?

 

The Canadian model came with Cooling seats since 05? Wow, didnt know that

 

I would test drive the 09 RL to see if the cooled seats are everything you think they are. I recently test drove the IS350 with cooled seats, I had them up on max and couldn't feel anything. I was quite disappointed. The CTS cooled seats were impressive though. I would definitely try them first, a retrofit wouldn't be easy IMO.

 

A member (Qatar) was supposedly pricing having the Canadian seats with cooling fitted to his RL. Haven't heard about that project in months, though. Might be worth a PM to him.

 

Are the seat body/cushions different to allow the air to flow through?

 

Entire seat assemblies are thousands of dollars, there is no way it is worth that cost, even if you could order them from a parts counter. You are better off retrofitting the parts, but realize that they could have very well changed the seats for '09 (I know the upper seatbacks are different due to the active headrestraints they added in '09). It's a neat idea but I think you will need '05-'08 parts to make this work, and that would mean calling a Canadian dealer and ordering.

If anyone dives into this further keep us updated, it's an intriguing mod!

Chris

 

If I were going to do this mod I'd be checking Canadian salvage yards for the parts rather than ordering everything at the Acura parts counter. The conversion would be cost effective this way. The leather seat parts from the existing seats probably can be be reused so beyond the wiring (and I have the Acura service manuals which include the wiring schematics) its just some mechanicals in the seat frame that are really needed (meaning you dont have to be too concerned about the condition of the seat leather or color of the donor parts).

As an FYI, I have a "base" RL which came with the plastic 'plood' dash, and I did a conversion over to the tech-package wood trim (dash and door panels) for $480 using donor parts from 2 salvage vehicles and a total of 2.5 hrs work. Ordering the same parts all new through Acura would have cost over $1900.

I'm just not really stoked about the concept of cooled seats or I'd do this mod and post a how-to guide. When I get into car thats hot, I blast the AC and cool everything down in a few minutes. I just dont really see the benefit of separate cooling for a seat ??

 

Ok, for the heck of it, I took out the service manual and looked up whats involved in the ventilated seats. For those of you with the book, it appears at pages 22-480 through 22-490. The ventilated seats consists of three small squirrel-type fans and a ventilation control unit thats mounted in each seat. One fan mounts in the seat back, and the other two mount perpendicular in the seat cushion. Then there are the two switches to turn the ventilation on and the center console panel where the switches mount would have to be changed out. The schematic diagram is pretty simple and there are very few hook ups needed to the car's electrical system. Thus a wiring harness would be simple enough to make.

If only I could get excited about ventilated seats, I'd do this mod.

 

I was real excited about ventilated seats...until I sat in a freinds new used Toyota Avalon...I could almost not even feel the air flow and it didn't seem to be more comfortable...its going to take a lot of work for almost no benefit.

 

Interesting information. So it looks like 3 fans, a control unit, I'm assuming some brackets, and of course the ever elusive wiring harness (which I'm guessing would be the hardest to get).

Well, who's got game here and wants to give it a shot?

 

Agreed. I really need to have someone explain me what the benefit of blowing car temperature air through the seat is. Its not like there are refrigerant lines running through it (and even then I still wouldnt understand the point of it)

 

The harness wouldnt been a likely find even at a salvage yard since the wires undoubtedly are run with a whole hank of other car wiring. Still, most of the wiring is between the module and the fans and that harness would be within the donor car seat, or you could otherwise make your own harnesses as you really only need to run power, ground, and a few wires to the console switches. The expensive parts are probably just the two control modules.

 

I test drove an '09 RL with cooled seats on a hot day this summer. The flow was pretty weak, though detectable. The salesman admitted some other cars were stronger (I had that impression when test driving an STS).

On the other hand, I also test drove Brand X with non-ventilated, non-perforated leather seats. I drove it for 5-10 minutes and got out with sweat sticking my shirt to my back, which ain't my idea of luxury (and no, I'm not obese). THIS, to me, is the benefit of the seat coolers.

 

My friend's 2003 BMW 7 series has a pretty good air flow. I have never tried any other car with cooled seats to compare.

 

My friend's 2003 BMW 7 series has a pretty good air flow....at double the price, I'll take 4.

 

I test drove an 09 RL today and liked the cooled seats. 'This is Texas boy' and I back sweat in cars easily, no, not obese. The RL did seem very weak tho.
I'd love this feature on any car. Don't understand how it works, isn't there padding/material under the leather?