Thanks Dave,
I haven't pulled the wire because I've been just using the LED light and it's worked out good. I haven't seen anyone say that pulling it affected anything else on here or in the comments in the video. I would think it would throw a code or some warning on the dash if it were connected to anything else. IIRC the 110v outlet is added as part of the 502A package?
I spoke with some guys from the seating division of my sub-group, and they spoke how one of the biggest challenges they encounter is fitting the huge motors required under the seat for 3-axis power adjustments.
That seems odd. My Ridgeline had them, my wife's CX5 has them, the F150 has them I think. Lots of vehicles have them. It's not like the Ranger seats are too small to fit them underneath right? You work at Ford? Thanks.
Australian top trim and lariat both described as "8 way power driver seat". I'd guess they didn't care about power recline in Australia and Ford just cheaped out and didn't redesign the seat for the US market.
Makes sense, they'll switch the frame to fully-boxed, but wont update any of the "must-have" amenities.
I dont know how much space/how easy it would be to fit the motors under the ranger's seat since i have no desire to take mine apart, but as is pointed out above, the seat was likely carried over from the AUS version, which did not have power recline. Dont work at Ford, just a Tier-1 auto supplier. Brought up the issue since thats what i had talked with some of the seating engineers about. They were interested in cutting the number of motors down to reduce packaging size even if the required extra mechanical bits to keep the same motions negated the cost.
If having power seatbacks meant losing rear seat legroom, then I'm good with the manual lever. Especially in my Super Cab.
Not to nitpick too much, but the lack of power recliner apparently negated Ford putting in memory seats. On occasion my wife drives my truck and I like getting my seat positions back to the exact position they were in. Without memory, I have to make adjustments for a bit.
Seat memory AFAIK is similar in issue to outside-mirror memory. Most systems on US vehicles use a door module (AKA a computer in the door) to control those functions, as well as typically being relied on to manage auto-fold (i'm not sure how the architecture of this all works, that's for the EEs & CEs to play with). But for memory systems, this is a key issue as most memory systems i know of make use of what is basically a potentiometer to report the position. Decoding this position requires an Analogue>digital conversion to read the voltage that was sent and compare that to the voltage that was received. One could just run this wiring all the way back to the ECU, but voltage drops with wire length, your risks of interference increase greatly, and vehicles are typically very noisy with EMI. To get consistent results the position has to be read from nearby -- plus the buttons for this are typically on the door so you dont have to route as much length of wire. For the OEM, this makes things simple as there's little communication that has to happen. With memory there might be no communication between the door module and the ECU, while something like auto-fold might be programed in so that the door module folds the mirrors when it receives the signal to also lock the doors.
That's the big one for me. I can get the seat adjusted (eventually), but I really miss "instantly recover from someone else driving my truck" as a feature.
