Installed leather seats with power lumbar, cannot get power lumbar working

Hi all, excuse the titular typos.

So i recently acquired leather seats with power lumbar support, swapping out my interlagos plaid seats that did not have this option. Immediately on install i noted the power lumbar did not work. I put in a fuse in the slot where power lumbar would be supported, as there was not a fuse in that spot. No dice. I looked around in VCDS and didnt find anything that seemed to require enabling.

I looked at the plug under the seat, making sure it was sitting right and was not kinked at the point where it meets the harness to plug in. Everything looked good there. Upon further examination it seems i have one more wire doing into this plug than i have coming out of the receiving harness, if you will:








So its reasonably obvious that I'll need to add a wire here (the one that is black/red is the "extra" one, by my count compared tot hat of the receiving harness wires) but I am unsure how to go about doing so. Anyone ever do this? searching didn't prove useful for this but maybe i missed something. What gauge wire is needed? I figure it might route to the fusebox next, but where does it go from there? Is there some kind of workaround?

Any help is appreciated.

You can just tap into that wire and run it to the 12V outlet in the ashtray. I did that in my MKV and it worked fine. The lumbar support is only going to be used a few moments at a time so it shouldn't cause any problems. You could always add an in-line fuse if you like.

hiimelvin said:

You can just tap into that wire and run it to the 12V outlet in the ashtray. I did that in my MKV and it worked fine. The lumbar support is only going to be used a few moments at a time so it shouldn't cause any problems. You could always add an in-line fuse if you like.

Click to expand...

fuse tapping is a good idea - ill look into that. what if i tapped into another wire in the bundle, if i can figure out what isn't the airbags, that is...

uglybastard said:

fuse tapping is a good idea - ill look into that. what if i tapped into another wire in the bundle, if i can figure out what isn't the airbags, that is...

Click to expand...

Did your previous seats have anything power previously? Reclining?

If not I wouldn't think there is another wire to use in that bundle.

hiimelvin said:

Did your previous seats have anything power previously? Reclining?

If not I wouldn't think there is another wire to use in that bundle.

Click to expand...

No, all manual. figured maybe my car, which was used, could have had them previously and someone swapped them out.