im wanting to a set of 2002 explorer sport heated power leather seats in my 2006 ranger. i need to know what are the wires for on the explorer seats and how to wire them in my 06.

 

Your best bet is to search online for the wiring schematic.

As far as I'm aware, the Ranger never came with any special seating like the explorer did. Therefor there's no wiring in the Ranger to accommodate these seats.

I would also find a PDF for the owner's manual (easy to do), and therefor fuse the seat appropriately, depending on how it's wired.

Depending on how many wires need 12+, it may be in your best interest to install a secondary fuse box. Do note that for something like power seats will likely be heavy on current. I can't say for a fact, but I would expect 15 to 20 amps. This is where that owners manual from before comes in handy. If Ford fused the seat to 30 amps, fuse it to 30 amps.

Given this is a seat that requires power and not a simple turn signal we're dealing with, it's wise to figure out what gauge wire you need instead of grabbing any old length of wire. If the wire is too small for the current being pulled over it, it will melt. That fuse won't save you either until it's far too late. Rule of thumb: find the size you need, then get one size bigger. Safety margin. The power wires should be able to comfortably handle what the fuse is rated for.

It's also a wise idea to allow the seat to be 'key hot', meaning it won't do anything until the ignition switch is either in 'run' or 'accessory'. Again, how you go about this depends on how the seat itself is wired in the first place. The relay that allows the seat to work with the key may need to bear a fair bit of current.

Other than that, I can't tell you how to wire it into the truck without knowing what the seats themselves need to have. Although I don't think it's much more than power going in then ground.

One thing I'll note; if you're not one to mess with wires and all that on a fairly regular basis (or seasoned, if you prefer) you may want to hold off and try something less 'demanding'. The more complicated something is, or the more current it needs (above 25 amps is when it gets tricky), the harder it makes it on you. Not to mention the cost of the supplies.

I don't say that to be a condescending douche, I say that only to try and prevent someone from burning their truck (or car, I suppose) to the ground. So, please, don't think I'm trying to be all high and mighty sitting atop my trusty steed. That's not me at all.

 

Wow! If your not trying to be a douche with that response hard to tell. WTF!

Anyway, I have some explorer power seats to install as well. Passenger should be a piece of cake but the Driver not so much! I accidently thought that it was as simple as getting power to the seats but that doesn't seem to be the case. There are more plugs down there than I originally noticed. Anyone have any advice on this who has hooked these up. I will check for schematic online for the seats! I believe that they are 96 or 97 Sport power seats!

 

Well, like I said, if you don't do it right then you'll destroy something, most likely. Hence why I mentioned these nuances here and there. Dont' do it right, you kill something. If you're lucky, it's just a .50 fuse. If you're really unlucky, you've lost your entire truck in a ball of fire.

If I come off that way, sorry, but it's the truth. There's no real way to sugar coat something like that. I leave that type of disclaimer in there not only because of the aforementioned fire, but because he himself could be injured (or worst case scenario, killed) in that fire. After all there is a gas tank under the bed.

After all, if that were a possibility, even worst case, I'd still appreciate it if someone warned me about it.

 

When I originally wired up my mountaineer seats, there was just a hot and ground. Tested them to a battery and ran fused and relayed power to them via the power saver relay in the truck that turns everything off after like 10 minutes. My escape seats wired up the same way too. I have no idea about the 02 explorer heated ones though. I do know they had something that would turn the heater off after like 10 minutes. So you may want to take that into account. The shut off may have been internal to the heater, or part of the HVAC unit since I do know that it had an icon that lit up to inform you when the heater was on. Good luck on your install.

 

All Good thanks for the heads up. Don't wanna burn up my truck for sure even if it did only cost 500! LOL! In any case I looked at the schematic and I will figure it out!

Thanks for the input and nice work on the build you did! Looks good! Gonna take another stab at figuring out the seats tonight after work. For some reason I think that my seat may be out of a 2 Door vs a 4 Door that the original owner is not telling me. The seatbelt is mounted on a sort of sliding track that the 4 doors don't have I believe. there may be some welding tonight as well to take the mount off the old ranger and put it on the explorer if possible!

 

the seats i want to install came out an explorer sport they have 7 way power heat and power lumbar. i cant find any diagrams that match the color of wires that are my seats

 

Honestly not sure of what you have! If they don't have the memory you are one step ahead of things for sure. As for the heated portion, I would think that there is probably a separate power supply for that!

Figure out the year of the seats and just google the different years till you come up with a matching diagram!

The power supply for the main part of the seat is Black White for the positive and Black for the negative! As for the heated part, not sure!

There are three plugs that should all stay connected under there. One for the seatbelt which you will wire back into the ranger and the other two for the motors on the seat.

Figure out the seat and go from there. I tested mine with a 12V battery from a Rigid drill to see what was what. Could probably figure out the heated portion from that as well and then wire it all up accordingly. The heated portion I am honestly not sure about but would be nice to have! I do believe that they had different levels of heat. Warm, Hot, etc.

As for the draw of the seats, I started off with a 20amp fuse and burned that up pretty quick. Went up to a 25 amp and it has been fine. I am pretty sure that I went with 12ga or 14ga wire directly off battery with a fuse between for safety!

The seats are Awesome and worth the effort! Good Luck! Hopefully this helps a little!

 

my seats have 1 plug its an 8 pin connector rectangle shape gray in color it has 5 wires in the plug red/black, green, black, gray/yellow, blue/white. i got the seats from the salvage yard i work they cam out of a ford explorer sport i want to say a 2001 model. could not say for sure if they have memory the doors were already removed when the explorer came into my bay for dismantling. thanks for the input

 

Here is a pic of the plugs on the bottom of my seat! and the plug i used to power them up! Hopefully you grabbed the other plug off of the floor of the explorer and left some slack to wire into! Hopefully this helps a little.

 

The two wire plug I'm fairly sure is for the belt minder sensor, IE the device that tells the GEM when to ding at you when your belt isn't buckled.

The brown plug on the other hand I would think would be power for the seat itself.

If the above is accurate, then a guy ought to be able to use some of the stock harness, if only for the belt minder.



The black wire in the plug you mention, black06xlt, should be ground. Gray with yellow should be key hot power. Green and blue/white I don't know though. Black is almost always ground, and grey with yellow seems to consistantly be key hot on rangers/expos.

 

In my case, the Grey plug in the middle of the seat in back is for the power to the seat! You can't see it in the first pic because I probably have the seat belt removed but there is another grey plug attached to the seat belt itself that tells the truck if the seat belt is engaged or not that also needs to be wired in or you get the annoying ring. There are two other plugs under the seat which should have their own connections. In my case, it was only 4 connections that had to be made to get the seats to work. For your situation it may be six connections I am guessing! I will try and look after work. Another option is go to the service counter at your local ford and ask them for the wiring schematic for the seats you are trying to install im sure they would be will ing to help!

 

That's a surprise. Those wires look awful thin.

I wonder how many people plugged those two in backwards.

 

the seats i have came out of a 2002 explorer sport. yes i have the other end of the with about 8" of wire

 

Yeah! The wires to power up the seats aren't very heavy at all! I would guess they are no heavier than 12 to 14 ga. Now having said that they are a heavy stranded wire which I don't know if it makes a difference or not but I always was under the assumption that more strands are more efficient!

 

Try googleing: 2002 explorer sport power heated seat wiring diagram
That should get you some wiring diagrams to look at!

 

......it's a balancing act, really. Several thick strands in one cable makes for a lot of current capability. However, obtain the same overall diameter with several thin strands, and you have a very flexible cable that can carry the same current.

As far as I'm aware, gauge is gauge. The only real difference the individual strand size makes is how flexible the wire is. However this really only comes to play when we get into stranded 6 gauge, 4 gauge, 2 gauge, 0 gauge and beyond.

 

thanks for the advice its greatly appreciated. im going to tear into these seats this weekend. hopefully it goes good. ill keep you posted of the progress

 

Best of Luck! The seats are totally worth the effort and if you run into any snags let us know and im sure we can maybe point you in the right direction. Like I mentioned with mine, they were pretty much a bolt in affair as far as the mounting tracks but there were some differences that I had to figure out. I started a build thread in the general ranger discussion forum called Building Rusty and I tried to show and document as much of the mods I did on there! Good Luck!

 

Best of luck to you! Remember, be careful! No one wants a pile of ash in their driveway, lol

 

i have been reading on here that the explorer seat belt will not work? i latched the expo buckle in my truck and it latched

 

I don't see any reason why the expo belt wouldn't work. The only thing that comes to mind would be the type of switch used in the buckle itself, but considering that the ranger and explorer are sister vehicles, or were at one point, I believe they'll work fine interchangably. And if for some reason it doesn't, swap the part and be done with it.

 

black was ground green was constant power blue/white was switched power for heated seat gray/yellow goes to the dash lights for the illumination of the heater switch and the red/black gets power from the seat heater module to light up the indicator light on the heater switch to let you know the heater is on. your input on this was a huge help and i thank you

 

expo buckles will work in a ranger just fine only problem is the seat belt light on the dash will stay on and the air bag light will flash. the ranger buckles have to be used to aviod this problem

 

You're welcome. I wish I could have given you a diagram from the get go, but unfortunately one wasn't availible that I could find.

Happy you've gotten it wired, though! Enjoy your new seats