R172 SLK250 OEM heated seat upgrade help

[dvb247]

Hoping someone can help??
bought an SLK250 2014, love the car but it has no heated seats and UK winters are cold!!
I can buy the head unit with heated seat/air scarf buttons for £100 and the heat seats with air scarf for £350 from a breakers.
Is it a plug and go fix or do I need to do something else? Do I need more parts? Maybe for the air scarf, not sure how the heat is generated for the air scarf??

Hope you guys can help, thank you in advance!

[psychoR1]

I have heated seats and air scarf in mine.
For the air scarf it’s basically a hair drier in the seat. I think you will need so parts of the wiring loom and relays etc - there are threads online from people who have done it.
Personally I would go for just the heated seats and see how you get on first. Maybe worth trying a retrofit heated seat kit - elements and switch only depending on how handy you are?

[Mikebentley]

My mums just got an R172 with the scarf and heated seats. The one seat heater doesn’t work and our Indy Mercedes specialist advised against trying to repair it as it seldom works. Maybe him but he is very good and really didn’t want to do the job as felt he couldn’t offer any guarantees.

[dvb247]

Years ago I stripped the seat base in an ML to replace the heater element, never again, rather buy a 2nd hand OEM seat.

[Dog Star]

I’ve both repaired a few heated seat bases (it’s always the base) and replaced with the carbon heated mats (wired into the existing Merc loom). Not difficult, just a bit time consuming. Just spend an evening and take a bottle of wine into the garage.

The broken bit of the element in the base is always very easy to spot. Loads of info online.

Airscarf - can’t help you on that one as I’ve never had to fix one. Back in the day - on this very forum - I used to Pooh Pooh the airscarf as a pointless gimmick, but no! Wouldn’t spec new or buy used without it now. Interestingly Mrs DS SLK airscarf is MILES better than my SL airscarf, despite the SL having these big trick looking fans in the back of the head restraints.

[dvb247]

Thanks for the info, my SLK came without heated seats, so I don’t have the switches either, hence the request for info, I’ve replaced a heated seat base on an ML years ago when it broke and left a little burn mark on the leather, but this SLK wasn’t factory spec’ed with them, so it now seems easier and cheaper to just buy 2nd hand switch unit and seats that have them already?

[Dog Star]

The problem is that those switches just won’t work - the whole thing will be done n the canbus, need coding etc.

You’d be best off asking on one the bigger Benz forums.