Seat heater burned a hole in the seat!

While driving to work this morning my wife smelled something burning and notice the seat getting really warm. She pulled over and noticed a hole in the seat with a plume of smoke coming up from it. Seems the seat heater was burning a hole up through the seat.

Now my wife and I have always joked about how hot the seats got and how could anyone ever take the full setting. Also, I seem to remember a post here about someone else who complained about how hot the seats would get. Is there some problem with the seat heaters I don't know about? Has anyone else actually experienced a burn hole from them?
Is this something VW should know about, or just a wear and tear item? Something that would be expected to malfunction to the point of ignition?

Perplexed,


2003 Jetta Wagon TDI
150,000 miles
47 MPG on average
No other problems since we stopped taking it to the dealer two years ago.

Seat heater burned a hole-----

There WAS some kind of recall on the seat heater; wiring harness maybe? At least there was on my 2004. Talak to your dealer to see if the warranty recall applies to your vehicle. Glad nobody got their butt blistered! Nick In BC.

The same thing happened to my wife's '03 Jetta wagon. There was a recall regarding the seat heater on this model year. Transport Canada website has some info regarding this http://www.tc.gc.ca/roadsafety/recalls/recall_e.asp?recno=12807&
contact your dealer and find out if the campaign has been performed.

On my wifes car the campaign was performed and the heater failed (scorced the seat) after and was repaired by the dealer no charge. I don't remember if the car was still under warranty at the time. Even though you car is out of warranty Manufactuer's quite often cover this sort of thing under Goodwill. Ask me how I know.

Good luck, I'm glad your wife didn't get burnt by it... it can happen!

Thanks for the info guys.

I got back from the Dealer today, they replaced the passenger wiring harness and ordered a new seat for the driver's side and will replace that harness when they replace the seat.

Can't wait for the new TDIs to come in!

Thanks again

I think there might be something wrong with my seat heater in my 1997 b4 passat. Both of them only seem to warm up the lumbar area of the seat, but get really hot in that area. It wouldn't surprise me to learn there could be a wiring issue causing the system to concentrate all the energy to that area of the seat.