Scorpio Lumbar Replacement?

[john keefe]

Yep, good stuff. Didn't think of it for auto seam sealing, but that's a great tip.

Stuff glues well to roof jacks and ABS vent pipes, so probably would be good for brokencase's application. Economy of scale aside, though, that would be a lot of sealant for such a small job

[DPDISXR4Ti]

Yep, good stuff. Didn't think of it for auto seam sealing, but that's a great tip.

It works about as well as the automotive specialty brands at about a third of the cost. I've also used it to glue in automotive glass. The Scorpio rear window is bonded/sealed in place with just S30.

Given the size of the tube I try to build up a list of things that I can use it for at one time. That said, because of it's slow cure rate it can stand to be open for a few months before totally drying out. I put a long sheetrock screw in the open end and then cap it. I just used the last of a tube yesterday that has been open at least 4 months.

[john keefe]

JOC on the rear hatch glass, how long did you feel safe to let it sit before driving? Or was that during a rebuild where you could let it sit for a few days?

[DPDISXR4Ti]

JOC on the rear hatch glass, how long did you feel safe to let it sit before driving? Or was that during a rebuild where you could let it sit for a few days?

Yeah, it sat for several days before I water-tested it. Unfortunately, it failed the initial water-proof test but it wasn't as tough as I thought it might be to inject some more into the leaking areas.

I also used it when creating shed windows using Ford Focus Coupe windows.

Shed-99.JPG

[john keefe]

That's pretty unique solution. Did you have to get a Title 24 fenestration report for the U-factors of the windows?
Love your wooded property.

[brokencase]

I think what I'm going to do here is make a little two piece clamp that straddles this joint. I'll either hand make it or 3d print it.
It will be slightly over sized and I will then slather jb-weld epoxy on either side and then clamp it over the joint.

BTW, I pumped up one of the lumbars and let it sit for a week. Still holding air. Been busy on the past few weekends. Think I'll take a few days off over the fourth and get this job done.

[brokencase]

One of the most appealing aspects of the Scorpio is the seats. I know in more recent vehicles seats have become much better. But the Scorpio seats were well ahead of their time...and I don't know of any vehicle who's back seats are so good.

So that is the motivation here. I want my fully functional Scorpio seats.

I am happy to report that the project is finished. I have many pictures to post, but before I do so I thought i would give a general summary of what occurred and what is involved. I took my time with this job. I started with the passenger seat and then I did the driver's seat. I did this over the course of 4 days. Not that it takes 4 days to do this job, but I had other things going on.

I wouldn't say this is an easy job. It is certainly no fun in 90 degree weather. One thing I can say with certainty is that I have newly found respect for the Connelly upholstery folks who originally put these seats together. They must have hands and forearms like that of a chimpanzee or gorilla.

Removal of the seats is pretty easy. There are just five 10mm bolts to remove. The rear ones are under plastic covers that are easy to remove. You will also have to find and release one connector under the passenger seat and two under the driver's seat. At least one of these connectors will have a zip tie holding it to the seats harness and you will have to cut this as well. Moving the seat forward on it's slides is mandatory to reach he rear bolts easily. Use swivel adapters on the ratchet. As you'll see from the pictures, you might want to consider pulling out your seats just to clean up underneath them and to lubricate at lead screws and tracks. So now you can see how the project expands. You're now into a "cleaning the carpets" job. In my case there was spilled coffee stains and many other 'organics" to be dealt with.

Once you have the seat out you will proceed to removing the covers on either side as well as the lumbar air pipe. I strongly recommend placing the hardware from each side into separate plastic bags to keep track of things. You will carefully pry the seat adjustment "knobs" off with a screw driver and once you pull the cover off, you will remove the adjustment switch from the cover and just let it hang. There is another connector to separate which goes to the recline motor.

There are two torx bolts on each side that can now be removed to separate the seat back from the seat bottom. Set the bottom aside and work on the seat back first.

Getting to the insides of the seat back is easy. There are five sheet metal "spikes" that are bent over the leather pieces the meet at the bottom of the seat. Just use a set of needle nose pliers to "unbend" the spikes. You can then pull the leather away and the center seat pad can now be flipped open to reveal the lumbar bladder. Likewise the opening between the leather and the central seat padding is easily accessed to insert the heated seat kit thermal pad.

The stock Scorpio lumbar bladders are well made. They are essentially truck tire inner tube material. Two sheets vulcanized together. My passenger bladder was fine. It turns out that the squeeze bulb was bad. So I decided to convert to the bulbs that came with the the new bladders.

The drivers side bladder had a pinhole puncture. I tried several methods to patch the hole to no avail. My final attempt was to adhere a patch to the bladder using the previously mentioned "shoe glue". This glue takes along time to cure, so i decided to put the new bladder in over the old bladder. If the patch failed, then I would just swap the tubes later and use the new bladder.

I'll discuss the seat bottoms and the heated seat kit in the next post. Getting tired...

[john keefe]

Thanks for the detailed update. Hope that shoe glue works! Have had XR seats apart, but not Scorpios. I was thinking while riding yesterday about how great these seats are, even from wear and tear before I got her.

Just occurred to me, as you mentioned that the bladder was good, that I oughta' test mine by just pulling off the pressurizing bulb, and pump it up with a Miti-Vac. See if it holds. If it does, I'm thinking any old blood pressure bulb, or even a new one from a cheapo bladder might do the trick?

[Ed Lijewski]

The stock Scorpio lumbar bladders are well made. They are essentially truck tire inner tube material. Two sheets vulcanized together. My passenger bladder was fine. It turns out that the squeeze bulb was bad. So I decided to convert to the bulbs that came with the the new bladders.

How are the bulbs removed?

YMMV

[brokencase]

Ed - You just yank them off...but they don't go easy!
John, don't put a motorized pump on the bladders, get a proper bulb. It's not so much as if they will inflate as it is about a leak down test.

Anyhow lets get back to where I left off....the seat bottoms, which are the hard part.

The bottoms are all about hog rings. You will be cutting away about 20 hog rings to disassemble the bottom seat enough that you can sneak the the heated seat pad into the leather. Of course. if you are only worried about the lumbar pillows you don't need to mess with the seat bottoms.

In anticipation of this project I bought a hog ring plier and ring kit off of ebay for about $10. It was a complete waste of money. Don't bother. As you will see in the photos I used zip ties and bailing wire for re-assembly.

So on the back underside of the seat bottom you will see two hog rings holding the "beading" of the leather on either side. Cut these with some decent sized dikes or side cutters. As you remove the hog rings you want to collect up all the bits of the hog rings. You don't want these pieces causing shorts in the heating pad you will later install nor do you want the bits falling into the seat adjustment mechanisms.

After cutting these two hog rings you will be able to pull the flap of leather under the strap and unfurl. This will then reveal three more hog rings.
Cut these off. There are also about 3-4 hog rings holding the sides to the base sheet metal, cut those off too. You will now be able to fold back the leather and dig a little deeper into the seat.

Now we get to the crease hog rings. The creases are molded into the seat foam. There are wire supports in the the bottom of the creases that are molded into the foam. Corresponding wires are sewed into seams in the bottom of the leather coverings. Hog rings go around these wires and pull everything together. So if we are going to slip in a heated seat pad we have to get these out of the way. More importantly we have to cut clearance slots in the heated seat pads to clear these hog ring areas.

With restrictions you are permitted to cut the heated seat pads. You can cut a whole section off the end away from the wired side. In the case of the seat back you have to cut about 4 inches off. You are allowed to cut a slot but you have to stay away from the sides that have the bus bars.
After you cut these slots you have to tape these areas as you will see in the photos later on. The kit comes with some tape, but I found that Gorilla Tape works much better. After cutting these slots the carbon conductors are revealed on the edges and the tape covers these to prevent shorting.

Once you have the pad prepared you can then shove it in between the leather and the foam. It will be difficult and you want to be careful not to stress or tear the element. You can now begin re-assembly with the zip ties replacing where the hog rings were. In some cases near the slots you will have to relocate the outer positions by using an awl to poke a new hole for the zip ties.

Installing the zip ties will be challenging. If you pre-curl the tip of the zip tie it will help you get it around the support wires in the seat foam.
Just put them in loose initially for each crease and after you get them all in place you can start tightening them down until they are the diameter of the hog rings. The final exterior hog ring positions are also done with zip ties. But on these i also added extra bailing wires that i twisted down for added strength.

Be mindful of the seat orientation when you route the heated pad wires out of the seat. You will want them directed toward the tunnel of the car.

There are four wires to deal with in the kit. A big red power wire, a little red "key on" wire, a little yellow "lights on" wire and finally a black ground wire. Basically the the key on wire activates a relay for the main power to the unit. If you have a Scorpio that had heated seats then you have a wiring harness that you could adapt this too and you could probably eliminate the relay in the kit.

I studied the EVTM and I noticed that there is a yellow and black wire in connector C1967 under the passenger seat. It said that this wire is hot only when key is on and it is 30 amp fused (fuse 23). So to simplify things I just soldered the little red and yellow wires to the big red wire and then spliced this into the yellow and black wired at C1967. I don't really care if the control switch illuminates all the time. I figure if I run into any issues I can always run the big power wire separately up to the battery and let the black/yellow wire switch the relay. I put some of that plastic wire loom shielding on these wires as they come out of the console and down to the connector. There is a screw into the chassis that I used to secure the ground wire near C1967.

The electrics can fit inside the center console, to the right side of the emergency brake mechanism. I had to dremel just a little bit to the console hole to fit the switch into the hole. Maybe about 1/32" on the top and bottom edges of the hole.

Pictures are comming...

[brokencase]

Start with the passenger side, mainly because of access to the harness under that seat...

removal.jpg

ick.jpg

[brokencase]

Removing the side covers. The connector goes to the recline motor, which surprisingly is located in the seat back, you also have to remove the bladder pipe.

[brokencase]

Working on the seat back...It is fairly easy to open up, just bend the pointy tabs.

seatback1.jpg

seatback2.jpg

seatback3.jpg

[brokencase]

It just flips open to reveal the lumbar bladder...

seatbackopened.jpg

Here I am laying out and cutting the heated pad to fit..

IMG_20200629_155308.jpg

IMG_20200626_145406.jpg

[brokencase]

More on the bladder...
Here it is inflated. This is the passenger side. It was OK...the hand pump was bad. Probably the valves inside are perished.

bladderinflated.jpg

But the drivers side had a hole..in the worst place. I tried several methods to stop the leak, including filling the bladder with slime stop leak.
I think I could have fixed it if I had one of those old time vulcanizing patches that has the attached tin and you light up with a match.
My final solution was to try the shoe glue previously mentioned and attach a bike patch. Not sure that that would hold I then placed the Chinese lumbar bladder over the existing one. I attached the new bladder by poking 4 tiny holes with a soldering iron along it's edge and attaching to the side wires with zip ties. I then ran the extra tube in parallel with the existing tube. If the patch failed I could then fall back to the Chinese bladder, which is eventually what happened. Sorry no picture of this.

IMG_20200629_154228.jpg

I connected the Chinese pump to test the bladders. I eventually decided to use the new pumps.

pumptest.jpg