Quick Heated seat repair. Anyone tried it?

The heated elements i both my front seats are open circuit but the lumbar one's are ok.

I have considered shorting out the broken element at the plug to get some heat from the lumbar element until I can repair them next summer.

Has anyone tried this?
Looked on another forum and they mention using a paper clip which is a bit Brunell but I have acces to plenty cable so I can use that, alternatively I was going to put in a high watage resistor.

Any comments anyone.

cheers

If both elements are in series then shorting out the duff one is just going to make the good one get tot hot and possibly catch fire. If you manage to get a high wattage resistor then that itself is going to get really hot too so you'd have to make sure it was not in contact with anything that could burn.

Can you not just find the break in the element and jump across that? I do not know what the heaters in these seats look like, but I need to investigate my own as they do not heat.

The resistance of the elements is that low that a short across one would not cause much of a difference in power.
The elements are burried inside the seat, and the seats need to be removed and stripped down to find the breaks and repair them, it's a job to do at the warmer times of year.
A high wattage resistor would not get hot if the resistance of it was sufficient to limit the current flow throught it hense limiting power and therefore heat.
There is a temperature switch within the seat which goes open circuit when the seat reaches a specified temperature, these are prone to stick open so this could aslo be at fault, but again the seat needs to be stripped down to get access.

I'm sure someone has tried the frig to get the working elements going.

I tried it, not with a paperclip but with wire taped up.
Worked a treat on both lumbars but the drivers no longer works, i may have burnt it out but the passenger still works fine.

micko2602 said:

There is a temperature switch within the seat which goes open circuit when the seat reaches a specified temperature, these are prone to stick open so this could aslo be at fault, but again the seat needs to be stripped down to get access.

Click to expand...

If you try the paper clip method it bypasses the bottom element as stated but then the top, lumbar element has no thermal cutout switch in it (well mine certainly don't). I found this out by doing using the paperclip and then activating the seat heater.

I then answered a phone call and was talking for around 2/3 mins and by the time I stuck my head back in the car the seat was red hot and making the foam smell a little burnt!! I immediately turned off the seat heater to save the back element.

I wouldn't recommend the paper clip trip, I would replace the lower heater element with a new pad which you can get online or from the dealer. I'm going to be doing this within the next two or three weeks as I'm not going through another winter with a frozen rear end, that and the fact that I like heated seats.

-Wills

I assume the replacement pad is the elemnt encapsulated in the foam base. What sort of price are these? I was going to put this off till next year and just wear an extra pair of kegs till I got this fixed.
If you get the chance take a couple of photos when you do it, I've got a good idea how its done but if you come across any problems I'd be interested to hear.