Heated Seats

[simple2me]

Does anyone have the schemetics for the heated seats. I know it's summer time and I don't need them but I just noticed that the drivers seat only stays on for about a minute and shuts off automatically. I hit the button again and it does the same thing. The passenger side stays on until you turn it off. I did have a problem with both of them turning on yesterday morning, as soon as I hit either button the relay clicked/light lit up and turned off immediately. The driver side does this every morning (Im OCD about things working on my car even if I don't use them) and the outside temp is about 70F. Weird thing is, when I get in my car to leave work in the afternoon and it's 98F degrees outside, the drivers side will stay on all the way home (hour drive) if I leave it on. My car is out of bumper-to-bumper warranty now so it's on my dime. I only have powertrain warranty left and that'll be gone soon.

 

[Natesriv]

If you're under bumper to bumper still, that's a dealer visit.

They should never go on without the button being pushed, and they should never go off, until you turn them off, or turn the car off.

However, out of curiosity, if you DON'T sit in the driver's seat, and turn it on, what happens?

 

[xsonicLTZx]

He stated "My car is (out) of bumper to bumper"

Sorry to hear of your issue, I dont have any diagrams, im old school and would start to tear into things before looking at anything....I rarely have ever seen a relay go bad, if there is independent relays for both seats id suggest switching them and see if the problem flips seats, if it does then that could be the issue. Could be a bad circuit or maybe one of the contacts is loose. Maybe there is a bad solder.... I know on my prelude I actually took the AC/Heater board out and used my soldering iron and hit all the contact points on the board and fixed my nonworking ac issue...maybe pop out the control switches and check to make sure everything is well....

 

[simple2me]

I've already swapped relays around. I'm leaning towards a BCM. Everything these days goes through one. I may just break down and buy a service manual. Everytime i get in the car I find myself hitting the button just to see what it does. My OCD is going to make me trade this thing in.

 

[Stew]

There's been a couple of threads about heated seats shutting off like you're describing and I believe the resolution was to replace the seat. These were cars still within warranty though so you probably wouldn't want to do that.

Looking at gmpartsdirect the heated upright seatback pad which includes the heating pad is $53.92 and the bottom seat cushion which includes the heating pad is $50.72. The heating pads do not appear to be available separately.

It would be nice to have some diagnostic info available from GM for the heating pads like resistance, ohms or something so people can troubleshoot before replacing them.

 

[simple2me]

Thanks for the info. That's not much money for the replacement pads and elements. I can install them myself.

 

[ShadowRS]

Maybe there's some kind of "auto shutdown" or so that if the seats are too hot, they shut off?

I mean, it sounds stupid... but just throwing ideas out

 

[ShadowRS]

You could go point to point and test voltages and compare it to the other seat.

 

[Scot]

Hope this helps!

If you can somehow get your BCM scanned (dealer only, I suspect) here are a listing of the codes: