Heated Seats Do Not work.

[MontesCarlos]

I've had this car for about a year now, and I've never been able to make the front seats heat up. The switches are illuminated on both seats, passenger and driver. Is there a control unit, relay or anything that may be in common with both seats?
The seats electrically can be positioned and the switches are lit.

Thanks

[MontesCarlos]

I think I found the problem. When I looked under the seats I saw a blue connector which was tied and stowed and not connected to anything. Under the switch there's another blue connector with nothing connected to it either. Obviously this is the problem, I should just need to connect these back together. However, I'm having a heck of a time getting to the back of the switch to connect the connectors. Do I need to actually remove the seats? Is this a hard thing to do?

[Kalevera]

Blue is for lumbar support.

It'll need more diagnosis to figure out what's going on -- I've seen switches light but not work, usually not in TWOs, though. Get a multimeter on the elements themselves, check voltage to them from the seat harness side; work back from there.

Best, whit

[Jeff N.]

...I'm almost sure they are in the rear fuse panel under the back seat. I'd check to make sure there are fuses in place and good.


Blue is for lumbar support.

It'll need more diagnosis to figure out what's going on -- I've seen switches light but not work, usually not in TWOs, though. Get a multimeter on the elements themselves, check voltage to them from the seat harness side; work back from there.

Best, whit

[MontesCarlos]

...I'm almost sure they are in the rear fuse panel under the back seat. I'd check to make sure there are fuses in place and good.

I bought a Bentley manual, and it says the fuse is number 16 in the front left fuse box. The label in the box matches the manual. It's a 30A fuse and it checked good. I tested for 12VDC at the fuse and it is good.

I'm bummed out that the blue connector is for lumbar support.

I don't have good information regarding which connector to check for power on the seat for testing the heating element with DMM.

I checked with Bruno's website and couldn't find any info there.

Any ideas? I'm curious as to why both seats do not work. I have the MSRP sticker and it lists heated seats, so the seats should be the original ones.

[swenpro]

MontesCarlos-- 10 days since your last post, I've stumbled upon this thread. Have you found a solution to the problem? I have the exact same issue except I only have a heated seat on the driver's side. Thanks for help... winter's coming!

swenpro

[Kalevera]

During the end of the last century, when most of the asian imports had "modular" aircon (meaning that a blank was removed from the dash and a button or cluster was stuck in its place), I hear it was quite common for shady buyers at the auto auctions to remove said button and replace it with a blank so that, when going down the line, competing buyers would get the impression that it didn't have A/C and not bid as much.

Are you sure that you actually have a heated seat? They can be retrofitted onto the car, but it's a 5 second job to stick a switch in place of the blank that would otherwise be in the trim panel.

It's not a hard system to troubleshoot. Pull the switch, check the voltage with the key in position 1. Check continuity on the elements themselves, if everything is okay, start working backwards. Red is usually hot on the seat connectors, brown is always ground.

Edit: another thing to note is that the body side harness/connector should be hot at all times. On my own car, I've found some really convoluted **** happening around the seat connectors (inept mechanics). I discovered that someone had jumpered two leads in the connector in an attempt to get the seatback recline motor to work again. Instead of doing that (or anything productive, for that matter), the lead was connected to the CAN's receiving line. No wonder I couldn't get the car on diagnostics -- the RX line was being stuck with 12v/high amp current all the time.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v736/suzpectx/harness1.jpg

best, whit

[Qube]

Thanks Whit. The motors work but the heat doesn't on the passenger. Time to check it out

[Incantation]

there's also a heated seat fuse in the front fuse panel under the hood.. i think it's either #18 or #26. it's a 30 amp fuse

[Qube]

This is my scenario:

LIGHTS OFF:
Driver side, only HIGH works. Push high/low, it will light up accordingly.

Passenger side, nothing works, nothing lights up.

LIGHTS ON:
Driver side, only HIGH works. Push high/low, it will light up brighter whichever you select.

Passenger side, nothing works, you push high/low and the light will turn OFF for the selection you made (make sense?)