Our 2000 SSEi has heated seats, and the driver'* side won't stay on...the light on the switch comes on briefly and goes right back out. The pax side works fine. Any suggestions on where to start?
Thanks.

*** Moved from Lounge ~ Kevin ***

I had the same problem in my 2001 SSEi. Pulled the seat, removed the leather cover and the foam, and found the electrical feed wires are soldered to the heat element wiring at three locations. At two of the three locations there was a broken wire. I cut into the foam to expose a little more wire, resoldered the connection, buried the connection in a puddle of epoxy (if you take the seat apart you will see what I mean) and put it back together. Works fine. For now.

The threads in this forum recommend you purchase an after market set of heater elements, and install them on top of the old elements (between the white foam that is sewn to the back of the leather cover material and the yellow foam that is the seat cushion). That would certainly work, but like I said, I was able to repair mine.

How good are you with repairs? There is a small green connector under the seat that feeds power to the seat cushion, and another one between the cushion and the seat back. If you disconnect these two connectors and use an electric meter to check resistance, you can determine if the problem is a broken wire in the elements. I think the cushion zone should read around 3.2 ohms, and the seat back 2.4 ohms, but I am not completely sure.

If you decide to do this, make sure you know how to deactivate your seat airbag system first. don't be playing with the connectors under the seat without doing that.

Roy

Thanks, Roy- Were you able to get the leather back in place and have it look rght? I guess I didn't know you could just remove the leather. Good advice.
Thanks for your time,
Mike

Mike,

You can pull the seat cushion without removing the seat, but it is actually quite easy to pull the seat (4 bolts and 3 or 4 electrical connections). Either way, when you get the seat cushion separated from the seat you will see the leather cover is essentially a bag held on to the plastic seat frame with U-shaped strips of black plastic around the edges. You can pry those strips off the edges of the seat frame and the leather cover is easily removed. You will notice velcro strips on the back side of the leather cover that stick to strips on the foam seat cushion. This helps the leather cover conform to the shape of the seat cushion. When you put the leather cover back on make sure the strips line up, and push down along the strips to make sure the Velcro comes in contact.

I had never taken a seat apart before, and I had no difficulty doing this. There are no adverse affects (appearance, etc.) from my work.

By the way, when I took apart each wire connection between the seat and the car, and within the seat assembly, I took masking tape and labelled each connector so I knew which ones connected together.

Again, let me know if you want to get into this and I will explain more about how to determine which wires you need to examine. I am not sure what your technical level is, so I don't know how much detail you need.

Roy

Thanks for the encouragement and information guys. I just fixed mine using the soldering techniqe and it workes fine. 2 of the 5 elements were broken. Just don't pull the element wire out completely like I did on the first attempt. (had to sew it back in)