front seat question..
 

I was wondering if any one has swapped front seats out of other bmw's into the x5 without fabricating creative brackets... reason i ask is because my heated seat pad shorted and burned through the leather, my cost on the leather and pad is 900 bux, and i'm pretty sure i can get better than the standard seat for roughly the same money! TIA!

Pete

You can. You can find interiors out of e53 on Craigslist and eBay. Just try to get one that hasn't been in an accident, otherwise you will need to take your electronics out of your seats and swap over.

^yup!

Also, E46 seats have been successfully installed by a few here, with just a little bit of work as I recall. Those will be a more common and easier to find.

I've fitted E46 M3 front seats into mine.

Come on share some pictures to show the new seats being retrofitted in the X5

Interesting. The seat somehow knows if it's been in an accident? Pre-tensioner maybe? Assuming it's connected to the seat and not the floor/tunnel.

If I'm not mistaken, the non-comfort seats in my '03 sport pkg 4.4 and E46 sport seats are identical.

Am I incorrect?

E46 sport seats are different than non-comfort, non-sport E53 seats.

Here you go....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psdwihzltk.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psicof6ll2.jpg

I've also fitted a pair in my E46 330d.....suppose you could say I'm a fan of these seats!! :D

I've still got my old seats out the X5 that I need to sell on but probably not much use to anyone on here since the majority are based in the US.

Yes, the pretensioner has several wires going to it and knows when it has been deployed. Pretty easy to move the pretensioner from your seat to another one. Do disconnect the battery before unplugging anything or be prepared to clear airbag system faults (and/or accidentally deploy an airbag)