One of the sticking points for those of us swapping out the manual seats in an 05 and later KJ, for a set of power leather seats from an earlier 02 to 04 KJ (before the bean counters made them as comfortable as the bench seat on a schoolbus), is dealing with the electronic module and weight sensing bladder that DC incorporated into the passenger seat from about 05 on, for controlling the passenger side airbag - ie, such that you wouldn't screw something up and the airbag not work at all, throw some sort of code and make the vehicle undriveable or not pass inspection, or worse one day just decide to go off on it's own.
Seems I've found a simple solution to that. Taking apart both my 02 power pass seat, and the 05 manual pass seat out of my CRD, everything are the same dimensions, as far as height,width, length, attachment points, bolt holes, etc.
What I did was unbolt the seat cushion assembly - frame, wiring harness, module and bladder, and cushion - from the 05 manual seat. I undid the four clips holding on the foam cushion and cloth cover and removed it from the frame. I then took the leather seat cover and foam cushion from the 02 power seat, and just slid it onto the 05 seat cushion frame and attached the clips to hold it into place. This hybrid 02/05 seat cushion assembly then bolted up to the 02 power seat perfectly.
To keep all the power functions on the 02 seat, I'd ordered the wiring harness for an 05 power pass seat, which has all the wiring and connectors for the airbag module and weight bladder built in. I removed the 05 airbag-only wiring harness from the seat frame and installed the 05 power seat w/airbag harness in it's place, and conneted everything up.
I installed the 02 pass seat in the CRD, hooked up the seatbelt tension sensor and the airbag module connector (haven't run any of the power wiring yet), reconnected the vehicle battery, and tested it out - pass airbag and electronics still work as they should.
Another option for those that don't want to bother with rigging up a power seat, but would like something more comfortable than the buckboards they gave us, would be to get a set of leather seats, swap out the foam cushion and cover on the seat cushion frame as I did above and reinstall on the manual frame, and then simply unbolt and swap out the entire seat back - you'd end up with a comfy manual leather seat and all the electronics still working as intended.
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