On New Year's eve I was bored and decided to take advantage of the 60 degree weather. I cleaned out and detailed the interior and trunk. I also decided to try and fix the driver's heated seat that's been broke for over a year. After a little research, it seemed like it would either be fairly easy and cost nothing, or really hard and expensive. Luckily it was the former. I put off fixing the seat because I'm lazy and was afraid I'd ruin my seat and have to sit on a lawn chair. From pulling out the seat to putting it back in took a little over an hour. I've gone so long without heated seats I forgot what it felt like. Here's a few pics to show what I did.

After pulling out the seat, removing the left side lever, **** and trim; I unclipped the cover that's held on by those white plastic things on the front and sides. The I slowly peeled the cover back by wedging my hand inside so I wouldn't ruin the red fuzzy stuff that was holding it on to the black velcro things. Be careful cus those are just glued to the foam base. On the bottom of the cover there's a label with the part number sewn to the cover. If my heating element was really screwed up I'd have to either buy a new aftermarket one for a whole new leather cover!


If you're looking at the seat, there's a white piece of rectangular fabric at the bottom right corner (in the above pic it's covered with black duct tape). That's where the thermal resistor and element wires all connect. Carefully peel it back to expose it. That blackish bare wire on the top is the bad wire that causes most of the problems with heated seats. You can see that it must've shorted out and singed the foam a little. Some people have had their seats catch on fire!


Next you have to remove the white fabric crap to separate the various wires. The round black thing is the thermal resistor. It shuts your seat off when it gets to a certain temp. Sometime those go bad too.


There about half a dozen wires in there that are spliced together using some sort of tape or shrink wrap. All along the bottom and the back of the seat there's a long thin bare wire that's putting out all the heat. It looks like thinner de-soldering braid but more fragile. What really pissed me off is how they're connected together. Who's bright idea was it to take a thin bare braided wire and tape it to a thin insulated wire? I foresee a 100% failure rate over the life of the vehicle with this method. How cheap of them.


After cutting out the bad section of wire and carefully pulling out some good wire from the cover, I soldered a piece of heavier gauge wire to splice it. Then I shrink-wrapped it to protect the connection.





Here's what it looks like with the new section spliced in


Seat all back together (not sure why it looks like it's lop-sided. looks fine in the car)


I was gonna spray some 3m glue on the white fabric wire cover so it looked factory, but I couldn't find the can. I used the next best thing.....duct tape.

Make sure you connected all your connectors. I almost cried after I hit the switch and it didn't work. Plugged in the heater connector and it works like new! My buns are nice and toasty again.

 

very nice write up.... thanks, I have a friend at work with an "Intimidator" and his is not working either!

 

Excellent post. Can we get a copy of this in the "How-To" section for sixth gens?

 

Helluva write up! Great info.

 

Thanks for the info. have to see if that will work on wife's 2005 impala ss heated seat.

 

Agreed, this would be a great sticky or something, somewhere!

 

Great write up, but I hope I don't have to go through this LOL!

 

Great info!!

 

Excelent write up man. I'll copy it over to the 6th Gen HOW TO and make it a sticky.

Also i will change the name to No Heated Seat: FIX


UPDATE:

done

https://montecarloforum.com/forum/sh...693#post284693

 

Looks like I might have to go through this. So weird. Just yesterday I read through this thread only to have my heated seat stop working this morning ._. I've checked the fuse, checked the connectors, so I guess it has to be this...