well there was a time where i thought my driver side heated seat was broke it kept blowing fuses and at one point started smelling like something was burning. but now one morning i dropped my son off at daycaare and let the car run. when i came back the seat was nice and hot. after a while it got cold...it seems heat up when ever i am not sitting on it. but from time to time it does randomly warm up.

 

Id suggest keeping the fuse out, sounds like an intermittent short, could create a fire hazard. Might be in the seat itself, which would explain why it doesnt work when there is pressure on the seat.

 

It sounds like your heating elements in the seats are doing the same thing as what the rest of us experienced.

When my driver seat heater stopped working, it was the element in the back rest that went bad. But if one goes bad, the entire seat stops heating. It's connected in series. My seat, like everyone elses, had the problem where the wire burns off of the connection to the heating element.

The heating element is sewn right onto the inside of the seat leather. It sounds like what might be happening in your seat is this: The wire to the heating element is burned off of the connection, and is sitting loose inside the seat. When you're not sitting on the seat, the wire just happens to make contact. When you sit down, the wire moves away from the contact, and no heat. This constant intermittent contact could definitely cause your fuse problem. And also cause a fire eventually too.

Fixing it requires removing the leather covering from the seat cusion. Sorry, there's no way around that. Then you can either repair and solder the connection yourself, or you can replace the leather covering with a new one. New ones from the factory are very expensive, and getting very low in supply. So you may run into a supply problem from GM anyway.

If your leather is in good condition, try repairing the electrical connection. And save yourself some money in the process. In my case, the leather on the driver seat was pretty worn and showing it's age, where the rest of my seats look brand new. So I opted to replace the backrest leather with new. But it was fairly expensive from GM because of the heating element sewn in from the factory.