Driver side heated seat not working Gen 2

[NCBen]

By the way anyone tries this fix please do so responsibly. This is MY experience and if your not comfortable don’t attempt. Don’t want any backlash if you burn up your seat etc. thx all.

 

[Wfo]

My truck is going in for warranty work tomorrow, replacing rear window due to defrost not working, replacing scratched tailgate handle from tailgate recall. Hope they are able to fix my seat heater in my driver seat. It’s pretty cold in upstate ny.

 

[GCATX]

EDIT: So I just ohmed out the plug for the passenger seat and got .9 ohms, where the driver seat is 60 plus. I guess the element is damaged after all, or maybe a splice is bad at the wire/element. Anyway, this is an easy test I guess without disassembling anything other than unplugging the wires under the seat. I will go over it with a magnifying glass.

@NCBen I disassembled the lower seat cover and pulled apart the "envelope" that covers the wire connections. I ohmed the pins at the solid black wire and solid red wire, that go to the heating element and got around 65 ohms. The 2 striped wires go to some sort of sensor. I didn't see any obvious breaks in the wire. Any chance you can ohm the black and red wire and see what you come up with?

 

[GCATX]

Okay. I finally tracked down 2 spots where element/wire was suspect. I managed to get a dob of solder and connect things back up, had to take out about 6" of the element. And now, drivers seat is heated again! For how long, I don't know. But I have over 60k miles, hopefully, if it was gonna break in another area, it already would have.

Photo of one of the offenders. Hard to see the break when it's laying flat.

 

[NCBen]

Nice work! ya the straight black and straight red are the element the wires with a tracer color are the thermistor and tell the controller the seat "temperature" by a change in resistance. im pretty sure its in the front channel where yours was boogered. at least that is where mine was. I am curious though could you give me the solder type, gun, and temp you used to fix the element? i was skeptical as the wiring was so thin and then worried whether or not how to protect the joint after due to the fact it gets hot lol.

Glad your back working !

i believe the repair manual said the element should be anywhere from 5 ohms to 20 ohms if intact. the thermistor is in the "K" range and can be all over the place depending on how hot it is while your working on it. You could probably put it inbetween your fingers and get a significant change in that circuit.

 

[Wfo]

Glad I got into the dealer at 35892 miles on the odometer. They will be replacing the seat cushion and heating element, they said it was a $2k part.

 

[NCBen]

Ya I think the only current repelacement part is the whole cushion with the element installed. I doubt they fixed the issue with the design though. I would show the tech the thread and make sure he moves the element to one side or the other of the jclip or u will be in the same boat sooner than later.

 

[Wfo]

Ya I think the only current repelacement part is the whole cushion with the element installed. I doubt they fixed the issue with the design though. I would show the tech the thread and make sure he moves the element to one side or the other of the jclip or u will be in the same boat sooner than later.

I will definitely do that when the replacement parts arrives.

 

[GCATX]

No idea on solder type. A roll lasts me 20 years. Just a cheapo electric iron. I just pulled as much of the cotton thread, twisted them up. Made sure there was continuity and heat shrinked it.

I had to pull the wire out of a few of the "S"'s on the side with the breaks, so in the end I had a little extra slack. With a knife I whittled a little relief in the cushion where the cover clips in.

 

[WV_IngotBullet]

Are you guys checking the connection under the passenger seat? It powers the heat for both front seats. What happens is the ground wire connection will burn out after a while, it happened to my 2016 F150. I wasn't comfortable with doing the wire work myself and since my truck was out of warranty I ordered the new pigtail kit from Ford and took it to a local car stereo shop, they switched everything out for less than $100. I'll include some pics of the connector and part #