Driver Side Seat Heater Problem

[mvansant]

Driver side will only heat up when I have been in the car for at least 30 minutes. Upto that point no heat. The light comes on and the passenger seat heater works fine. Any ideas? Seems that it would not be an element since the bottom and back are two different elements and neither heats up until the car has been running a while. Let me know your thoughts.

[joegr]

Originally Posted by mvansant

Driver side will only heat up when I have been in the car for at least 30 minutes. Upto that point no heat. The light comes on and the passenger seat heater works fine. Any ideas? Seems that it would not be an element since the bottom and back are two different elements and neither heats up until the car has been running a while. Let me know your thoughts.

What year is your car? Different years have very different seat heating/cooling systems.

[mvansant]

Sorry. 2002 v8 sport.

[joegr]

Originally Posted by mvansant

Sorry. 2002 v8 sport.

Okay, then it's electric elements. The wires break apart and break the circuit so that the heat doesn't work. I think that the elements are cheap, but there's a lot of work involved in changing them.
I don't have the gen I wiring diagrams, but it seems to be common for the entire seat to fail at once. Maybe the seat bottom and seat back elements are wired in series.

[shorod]

I'm away from my PC that has the Gen 1 service manual. My 2004 Mountaineer was wired in series so the small break in the element of the seat bottom caused the seat back to not heat either. You're right, it's a lot of work to get to the heating element and repair/replace it. Last year I performed a "temporary" repair on the seat bottom element and it's still working great this year as well.

The Mountaineer also has a thermal breaker in series with the element in the seat bottom so when the temperature reaches 104 degrees F the breaker goes open circuit and doesn't burn anything (you or the element). It seems something like that may be coming in to play here, but I'll need to take a look at the wiring diagrams. Since you have Hi and Low settings the thermal breaker wouldn't work. The Mountaineer is On or Off, only one temperature setting.

-Rod

[ice2626]

I have the exact same problem with my 02 LS... if anyone has any instructions/tips on this repair I would appreciate it