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Headrest Mod!

16K views 43 replies 16 participants last post by  cdmccul 
#1 · (Edited)
Well, I've got a FEW mod projects going here all at once. My kitchen table is littered with car parts as I try to get a bunch of upgrades done to the car while my wife is away with her family... trying to make some Christmas Presents for her.

One of them is a headrest mod... It may also morph into a passenger side lumbar support mod, we'll see if it goes that far though.

First thing to do is to remove the headrests...


Yes, I see that I have something on the back to clean off, I think it is actually salt/dust transfered there by my 6 year old...

To do this, I found it easiest to sit in the back seat and look at the headrest...



Lift it to full height, where it won't go any higher, and then look for the two little holes in the sides of the small plastic pedistals that surround the head rest posts...



Here is a close up:



With the holes located, I un-twisted a small 'heart shaped' paper clip my wife had laying around... I knew it was a very hard/stiff wire, much stiffer than your run of the mill office paper clip.



When inserting the wire, you've got to hold it steady so it doesn't slip off downward at an angle. It takes some considerable force, but you can eventually push in with one hand, and lift just that side with the other hand... go to the other post and do that one too.

Here is a shot down the post hole after removing the post. you can clearly see the metal lock covering the left side of the hole, this catches the bottom detent in the rod.



And here it is, with the clip inserted and pushing the lock out of the way... the other rod has the same mechanism.


Yea, I also see the crap here in this shot, I don't know what that is... I obviously need to vac and detail the car...

I've got both head rests removed now... They are a little small, I'm installing bigger head rests...

Here is a preview shot of the next step in my little mod fest...



I've unhooked the J strip at the bottom of the seat back...

On a side note, what have people done to repair the rear seat location floor vents? In this recent cold snap, I reached into the back seat with my right hand, and barely clipped the fins with my thumb... snapped one of the bars right out of the vent... been trying to think of a way to replace those with a different design.

It was at this point I thought I'd investigate the possibility of adding the factory driver's side lumbar to the passenger seat... we'll see... I've got a spare driver's seat with lumbar that I may try to swap into this seat frame. But that's another project!
 
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#6 ·
Ack!!! No, not ornaments! Good idea for a New York Cabby mod, but no, not for me...

It may not be QUITE as interesting as you may hope, but it will be fun. There was a hint given in another thread I recently started...

Been working on a little How To, posting that next, then going out to work on the car.
 
#7 ·
Well, my time has been taken up with the http://www.dodgeintrepid.net/forums/t171673/, but this one has not stood still... Here are two more teaser photos...

As in the thread above, we find out I don't have Trac Control... so no button in that blank... I added a switch. I found while playing with a spare center vent assembly I had, that the snap in toggle switch fit perfectly in the width of the opening... I found out that the plastic is thick and tougher to cut than I had hoped, but it still was easier to cut there than any place else...

Sorry for the dark - it was dusk and I had to illuminate my switch with a flashlight...



closer....



There we go... I hope to have the rest of it completed tomorrow... I just hope the snow holds off.
 
#8 ·
Probably gonna be video players in the backs of the seats or something like that. Now watch me be totally wrong.
 
#10 ·
That would be kinda cool...if that is indeed what he's doing I'm going to have to steal his mod.
 
#15 ·
You are adding screens to the back of your headrest and the switch is to turn them off and on?
 
#18 ·
Now that's a good idea...

Unfortunately, it is not that cool...

It is the Video Monitors... I hope to drop them in tomorrow, I've got power wires run, and the wires fished now under the carpet to the underside of each seat. Now it is just the task of running the wires through the seat back and through the seat base, then plugging things in.

Look for more tomorrow!
 
#20 · (Edited)
The headrests are too small to put decent screens in, and since I needed a DVD player too, I just picked up a set I found cheap. They were the ones that Wal-Mart put on clearance around early November nation wide.

They are from a non-existant company called For-J. No place on the internet can I find them, and the web address that came in the box is also a dead end, www.forj-ent.com. My local Wal-Mart still has one set on clearance, but these I bought in Jamestown ND on my Thanksgiving trip. My wife and I saw them as an open box item in the clearance section, and we thought we'd look when we drove back through to see if they were available. Sure enough, over a week later, they were still there. So, I made them mine!

The only thing I could find about them on the internet was complaints about no sound from the second monitor. The second monitor is really kind of an after thought by the manufacturer, in other versions of this unit, they are selling it as a dual DVD player, where you can play DVD's on independantly, or together. I may pick up a second one of these sets to have dual DVD players just for the fact I can say it, but no, I doubt I will waist the money to do that. The main DVD unit has an FM transmitter in it, so the kids can use cheapy FM radio headphones for sound, or I can pipe it through the car stereo... I also plan on adapting a factory head unit to have audio inputs, and will hard wire the signal to the stereo if possible.

I need to snap some pictures, I didn't get a lot done today. I've got a seat I stripped down so I could see where my wires were going to go, and I've got some size comparisons of the two head rests. I've got my passenger side completely installed, wires fished, etc... I'll post up some hints about that too.

My hope to make the passenger side seat a 'lumbar' seat I'm probably going to just let go... I may save a whole upper seat frame from a drivers side and swap it onto a passenger side base to make it work, the lever will just be on the inboard side of the car, not the outboard side. We'll see. I've got other family issues coming to bear quicker than I like, but more about those later too.

More pics tomorrow for sure!
 
#25 · (Edited)
O.k... well, here's the end of my Headrest mod... Got it all buttoned up the way I wanted it, except for the audio signal being fed directly to the pre-amp in the stereo... but that's a whole other ball of wax...

So, here is the final stages...

Behind my switch on the dash, I ran two wires. One goes from the switch cavity to just behind the console shifter, and the other goes to the back of the lighter socket. Yea, they are the same color, I only had one spool of wire. I'm unemployeed and making do with what I already own.



Here is where the short wire terminates, and the other is fished under the vent tube on the driver's side.



To power the headrests on both sides, I first removed the seats (one at a time) and cut a slit in the carpet just below where the seat rail sits. It is cold out, and I couldn't get the coat hanger I was using as fish tape to go all the way to the factory "X" cut. I fished from the cut under the seat rail up to the top of the hump behind the shifter, then back down to the other seat to the other cut under the other seat rail.



I then fished the data cable across the hump. Just followed the power cable up and back down, just didn't leave a big loop in it.



Here is the final result... It is hard to see, but the data cable is down under the carpet going across, and the power cable has a loop, with the power supply wire coming to the loop. I cut the loop in the middle, and spliced them all together.



(yes, I know I need to shampoo my carpets, I plan on doing that in the spring)

So, power runs from the back of the lighter socket up to the switch, and back down to behind the shifter, to the underside of the each front seat.

While I had the dash apart as far as I did, I pulled the head light bezel, and switch, then pulled the two bottom and two top screws on the instrument cluster trim ring. Then pulled the two screws that hold the cluster in... figured out quickly there is a spring catch at the top of the cluster, and swapped it out for an AutoStick cluster. Went from a cluster with 149xxx miles to 152433... but that's o.k., the engine is going to have different miles than either the car or the cluster soon! While the center console was apart, I also swapped the shifter and ran my wires up to the TCM and power and ground for the switches. I stole power for the switches from my power for the screens, but that is temporary, I need to run a power line that is switched.

 
#27 ·
#26 · (Edited)
When I did mine first test fit of the head rests, I just followed the instructions from Mopar instruction sheet K6860670... it just says to fish the wires down and to the inboard end of the seats, then down through some holes in the bottom. But to do my final install, I butchered a SPARE front seat to see where I was going to run my wires. Here the seat covering is pulled up as far as I coudl get it, and some of the covering foam was lifted away. There was also some thin clear poly sheeting I tore away to get a good look. In this picture, just below the edge of the cover that is pulled up, you can see two black sticks pointing down. These are the plastic guide tubes for the headrest posts. The foam is cut such that as the wires are fed down, they will be guided down and to the back of the chair.



As you look down the chair back, you can see the lumbar device. The wires should be routed behind this. Between the lumbar device and the seat back is a heavy card stock panel, and the wires will go between the lumbar and this card stock. You can see there is a lot of room to the sides to fish the cables.



On a side note, my idea of putting lumbar on the passenger side will NOT happen at this time, perhaps in the future.

With the seat foam pulled all away, and looking down the frame to the seat base, you can easily see the hidden pathway to the bottom side of the seat. The wires will pass through here. Since I have seen where the wires will go, it wasn't too hard to push the wires where I wanted them to go.



I dropped a ball point pen through the hole, and took above and below shots.



From below here, to the left of the pen is the seat portion of the frame... to the right is the car portion of the frame. The wire will come down where the pen is, but turn and go along between the sections of seat frame. after passing a cross rail, the wires turn to the center of the underside of the seat.



Here are the wires collected under the seat. I have tied everything back as far up to the power seat wiring so it is hidden when the front seat is in the typical riding position.



When installing the head rests, the wires naturally fall directly to the bottom of the seat cavity. You have to unlock the J-strips at the bottom of the seat back to move the wires to the inboard side of the seat back. On one seat the wires were exposed and easy to move. On the other seat, the wires fell inside of the poly sheeting, so I had to tear the sheeting to move the wires to the inboard corner. It is easiest to fish the wiring through the seat base with the J-strip unlocked still.

Well, here is the finished product...



I think the color matches the seats better than it matches the original head rests...



From the front, here is a size comparison.



And from the back, here is the size difference... I would have a hard time installing a screen in the original head rests.



Interestingly, the head rests are not harder to see around. They are a little wider, taller, and slightly thicker than the originals, but fit the head well, do not look out of place on the seats (IMO), and do not block visibility when checking for lane changes.

And just for fun, here is a shot my camera decided to take for me while I was documenting the path of the wire... Since it was low light, the shutter time is delayed... I thought I heard it click, and this is the picture it actually got!

 
#28 ·
Looks good. What car did you get the bigger head rests from?
 
#30 ·
They were a pre-assembled universal unit from Wal-Mart. The posts adjust side to side and come with oversizing sleeves to make them a universal fit... I didn't need the sleeves, and the posts are spring loaded, they had to be spread by about an inch. to fit the LHS seats.

I'll get a picture of them to post here in a bit, they are model DVD72HR from "ForJ Enterprises, inc. Springfield, PA 19064" (notice the lowercase "i" in the word "inc."). The website listed is www.forj-ent.com, and the email contact is customercare@forj-ent.com, but the web address is dead end, I haven't e-mailed customer care, I'll do that some day maybe.
 
#37 ·
Well, I acquired the next part for this mod (too). I am going to add ports to the center console (either side, at the very back edge) so that my kids can install the plug-and-play hand held games, or so that I can easily add the Game Cube or Wii. The Wii would be challenging because of the sensor bar.

Anyway, here's the part



I'll install them stacked vertically, in the center console just ahead of the "rear plate" of the console. Hopefully there is room in there behind the center console cubby, so that all the wiring is concealed.

This mod happens to be at the bottom of my list of things to do, but the timing was right to buy the parts. Don't expect any action soon, but I'll update as I go.

As for the original mod, my wife loved it, and my kids now beg to watch movies, even if it is just a drive across the neighborhood... hehehe
 
#39 ·
man for a sec I thought you stole my idea for a headrest mod I wanna do (pascal knows and saw what I wanna do) but I have never been able to find the right ones! but it'll look awesome IMO wish I could find em!
 
#42 ·
Looking for the ones that are installed in the LX and 300c?

It's hard to find them ! I saw some "universal" on ebay, but they don't look that awesome IMO.
_that_ awesome... as awesome as what be_man wants, or as awesome as mine? I think mine work really well, and _are_ awesome *grins*

...even cooler, A sweet little mod would be a pull-down projection screen between front/rear with a projector on the reardeck. Sure you lose all visibility out the back window but WOW what an experience for the kids!
hehehhe, yea, but it removes so much of the practicality of the car itself... This isn't Pimp My Ride... *chuckles*

:deejay:
 
#41 ·
...even cooler, A sweet little mod would be a pull-down projection screen between front/rear with a projector on the reardeck. Sure you lose all visibility out the back window but WOW what an experience for the kids!
 
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