My first bit of VW weirdness.....driver's side seat heate is stuck on

dmarsingill said:

I would have driven the tech around. Obviously, his weight is greater than yours.

I would also suggest that they measure amp draw accross the hot wire while you are driving it. They can tap into it, run leads over to the passenger side, and monitor it from there. If it is on, it will show amp draw.

Donald

Click to expand...

We did the problem was the ambient temp of the seats inside the car was already pretty high, earlier they had tested it by letting it idle in the parking lot on a 95 degree day and feeling both seats and thinking they were equally hot.

I think what is going on is the seat is not fully "on" to the first setting but on enough to be noticeable, but it's not going to take the seat past the ambient temp just sitting in the sun.

I plan on testing it at night this weekend, we are supposed to get some 60ish degree weather at night and that should make a difference.

As far as my body heat warming it up to 100 degrees, 98.7 is your INTERNAL temp, your skin is not that warm plus sitting on a car seat wearing clothes, with air space, etc. a body is not going to warm a seat up to the kind of level I am talking about.

The one day I went out with my wife in the car, her sitting in it for 10 - 15 minutes took the seat temp up barely 4 degrees (ambient was in the upper 70's, it was 82 when she got out of the car), well below 100 degrees.

The other thing going on is you know the space between your thighs? Where you don't have your legs sitting on the seat?

That part of the seat gets as hot as the rest of the seat I am sitting on.

Analogeezer

Take 2 identical containers/small bottles fill with water, freeze,
and place on on each seat. See if one has a faster melting rate....if nothing is different, maybe your body is going through changes.....manopause. Just trying to add a little humor....

Or sit on the seat with the key in your pocket, and record the temperature in the same spot every minute. Graph the temperatures right away (time to the right, temperature on the vertical). You should see a leveling off pretty soon, after maybe ten minutes. If it is still steadily rising, you need to measure longer until the temperature is pretty steady.

Then you turn the car on, and keep recording the temperature every minute for another five to ten minutes. Is there a step after you turn the car on? That should be pretty convincing evidence.

Were you able to find a green plug under your seat?

Also you could try the same test in the passenger seat and compare the readings...

Analogeezer said:

We did the problem was the ambient temp of the seats inside the car was already pretty high, earlier they had tested it by letting it idle in the parking lot on a 95 degree day and feeling both seats and thinking they were equally hot.

I think what is going on is the seat is not fully "on" to the first setting but on enough to be noticeable, but it's not going to take the seat past the ambient temp just sitting in the sun.

I plan on testing it at night this weekend, we are supposed to get some 60ish degree weather at night and that should make a difference.

As far as my body heat warming it up to 100 degrees, 98.7 is your INTERNAL temp, your skin is not that warm plus sitting on a car seat wearing clothes, with air space, etc. a body is not going to warm a seat up to the kind of level I am talking about.

The one day I went out with my wife in the car, her sitting in it for 10 - 15 minutes took the seat temp up barely 4 degrees (ambient was in the upper 70's, it was 82 when she got out of the car), well below 100 degrees.

The other thing going on is you know the space between your thighs? Where you don't have your legs sitting on the seat?

That part of the seat gets as hot as the rest of the seat I am sitting on.

Analogeezer

Click to expand...

You missed the important part of the post......measuring amp draw in the wires going to the seat. If any amount of amp draw is going on, you will see it.

Donald

Analogeezer said:

We did the problem was the ambient temp of the seats inside the car was already pretty high, earlier they had tested it by letting it idle in the parking lot on a 95 degree day and feeling both seats and thinking they were equally hot.

I think what is going on is the seat is not fully "on" to the first setting but on enough to be noticeable, but it's not going to take the seat past the ambient temp just sitting in the sun.

I plan on testing it at night this weekend, we are supposed to get some 60ish degree weather at night and that should make a difference.

As far as my body heat warming it up to 100 degrees, 98.7 is your INTERNAL temp, your skin is not that warm plus sitting on a car seat wearing clothes, with air space, etc. a body is not going to warm a seat up to the kind of level I am talking about.

The one day I went out with my wife in the car, her sitting in it for 10 - 15 minutes took the seat temp up barely 4 degrees (ambient was in the upper 70's, it was 82 when she got out of the car), well below 100 degrees.

The other thing going on is you know the space between your thighs? Where you don't have your legs sitting on the seat?

That part of the seat gets as hot as the rest of the seat I am sitting on.

Analogeezer

Click to expand...

There has been some really good advice on this problem in regards to determining if the seat heat is really on. I would use this advice rather than worry about space between your thighs. Just a suggestion.

Mert Cheney

Yeah, if this is really a heater problem, can't you just idle the car for a few min, preferably sometime when it's not in the hot sun and see if there's a temp change?

I've felt for some time that the seats get got in the summer, but I still think it's just butt-warming combined with being pre-warmed in a hot car. Like I said, I had swapped out cloth-for-leather in a previous car; I felt that the leather was cooler in summer, as long as the sun didn't directly heat it when parked.

I don't really want to drop that kinda money on this car but I would entertain getting some seat covers if I thought that might help. Do you suppose that fake leather covers might be cooler? I'm tempted to find out, but summer's about over. Anyway, I like to think that fuzzy fabric is warmer.

You have to admit, it seems fairly coincidental that you measure 94 degrees at the seat when your body is 98 degrees and the car was probably warmer than that when you got into it. How is the seat supposed to cool down? Is the A/C directed underneath the seat cushion? ;-) Seriously, any heat it has, it has to radiate through the entire seat, including the seat heater, before it'll drop any temperature. That's why I think it holds onto heat when you sit on it.

A/C routing into seat possible?

Relating to the last post: Has anybody routed an A/C outlet into the seat? Maybe with some type of flexible plastic duct (e.g. two 1/2 gallon ziploc bags taped together into a flat duct)?

dmarsingill said:

You missed the important part of the post......measuring amp draw in the wires going to the seat. If any amount of amp draw is going on, you will see it.

Donald

Click to expand...

Yes but how would I get to that and measure it? You would THINK the dealer would have done this, they claimed they measured the voltage coming off the switch but I am beginning to believe the service writer was just BS'ing me.

I mean TROUBLESHOOTING a problem under warranty should really be in their purview don't you think?

I think all they did was start the car and leave it in the hot sun for 15 minutes and then go "hmmm both seats are hot".

We never got the car that cooled down below ambient when we took it for a drive.

Analogeezer

Diesl said:

Or sit on the seat with the key in your pocket, and record the temperature in the same spot every minute. Graph the temperatures right away (time to the right, temperature on the vertical). You should see a leveling off pretty soon, after maybe ten minutes. If it is still steadily rising, you need to measure longer until the temperature is pretty steady.

Then you turn the car on, and keep recording the temperature every minute for another five to ten minutes. Is there a step after you turn the car on? That should be pretty convincing evidence.

Were you able to find a green plug under your seat?

Click to expand...

Actually I found an entire set of plugs BESIDE the seat, about four to be exact.....then I wound up pulling the wrong one

Now I have an airbag light (I plugged it back in), going to make another thread about it......

I'll take a picture of that area, it's like a junction box at the left front corner of the driver's seat, there is a little flap of carpet that folds back and about four plugs coming out of some kind of module.

Analogeezer

Electical Junction Box by the front seat

So I found this the other day, I can tell you DO NOT PULL THE RED PLUG JIM!

That one creates an airbag fault.

Someone suggested it was the yellow connector?

So if I pull that:

1. It should shut off current to the seat (I know it might be the electrical adjustments too)

2. If I can figure out which pins go to the driver's seat, measure with a volt-ohm meter and look for current leakage?

As easy as this is to get to, I can't believe the dealer didn't check this....

MertCheney said:

There has been some really good advice on this problem in regards to determining if the seat heat is really on. I would use this advice rather than worry about space between your thighs. Just a suggestion.

Mert Cheney

Click to expand...

My point about between my legs was to the people suggesting it's my body heat heating the seat up, and trust me it's not.

I have owned the car for over 18 months, took a 3,200 mile vacation trip in 90 - 100 degree weather in the Summer of 2013 in the car and trust me I know the seat heat is on.

It's not fully on, but it is definitely on, I am not imaging it.

There must be some voltage leaking through so if someone can point me to the right place to measure that I will do that.

Analogeezer

Analogeezer said:

So I found this the other day, I can tell you DO NOT PULL THE RED PLUG JIM!

That one creates an airbag fault.

Someone suggested it was the yellow connector?

Click to expand...

NO! I found (for an earlier model) mention of the green connector for the seat, and red and yellow for two different airbags. So don't pull the yellow plug.

Diesl said:

NO! I found (for an earlier model) mention of the green connector for the seat, and red and yellow for two different airbags. So don't pull the yellow plug.

Click to expand...

Yeah I was gonna wait to pull plugs until I know what they actually are.

I've seen pix of some plug that is actually right under the seat bottom, you would have to pretty much remove the seat to access it; and that plug was green but I think that reference might have been for a Mk V or something.

I'm getting ready to buy VCDS, anybody know if something like this voltage leakage into the seat heater would register as a fault?

I suggested to the dealer they scan it but I frankly don't think they ever did.

Analogeezer

VCDS arrived today...

So my cable came in the mail, I downloaded the software to my main laptop, but then decided to install it on an old laptop too; it's an XP machine I just use anymore to run some music gear control software, don't really want to put it on the internet of course so it is perfect for using with the car.

Ran the airbag module, it found the fault code right away and I got that cleared...

Anyway this VCDS is pretty deep so I am going to peruse the manual some more tomorrow and then see if I can scan for fault codes with the module that controls the seat heaters....I'll report back if I find a fault code, I did see references to seat heater fault codes on the internet but not my specific issue.

It will be an interesting conversation at the dealer if I find a fault code for this, I am 99% sure they didn't bother to scan it, which considering how easy it is kind of baffles me, that would be the first thing I would do with an electrical problem.

Analogeezer

Found a fault code!

So I did a full scan of the car today and pulled up this fault code for the seat heaters, there were four other codes which I realized were when I disconnected the fuse for the door locks.

The number 54 in VCDS is the number of driving cycles (times the car has been turned on and off) the fault has reported, some faults wind up clearing themselves and will only show 1 or 2 instances.

54 times sounds about right, I have not driven the car a lot the past couple of months, been driving the Mazdaspeed Miata because our weather has been STELLAR (top down driving every day for two weeks!) and it's just a fun car to drive.

Here is a screen clip of the code, I am wondering if the 13.70 volts is significant as well, the other faults were reporting 12 volts.



I told you guys I wasn't nuts!

Analogeezer

Update....

So I have been mainly driving my Mazdaspeed Miata the past month, the weather has been mostly stellar (I drove home with the top down like two weeks in a row) I've just been driving it instead of the JSW.

Anyway I had bought VCDS as I stated earlier in this thread and found a fault code, so I printed out the log file and stopped by the dealer last Friday and showed that to them.

Unbelievably they still tried to BS me (my latest log had 63 instances of the fault code, the number of times the ignition has been cycled with the fault there) and they tried to tell me that was not what the number actually meant, but I pointed out "well that's what the manual from Ross-Tech explicitly states, believe me I read that section over many times.

I suspect they are not used to customers like me, walking in with a log file and getting on their ****.

Anyway I dropped the car off today and was quickly whisked into a waiting loaner car

So we'll see how it goes.

Oh yeah I plan on scanning the car in the parking lot when I pick it up, you know just keeping them honest...

Analogeezer

Seems to be fixed now...

I'm going to scan the car for fault codes tomorrow but on the drive home the problem of the voltage leaking into the driver's seat seems to be gone.

The dealer told me a connector had come loose, I said something about an assembly problem with the seat, but the service writer said it was with the module inside the dash.

I'm thinking now that about a year ago when I had the glovebox door replaced (at a different dealer) they told me back then they had to take out a lot of the dash to replace the glovebox door, so it could be they didn't get the connector well seated when they put it all back together.

I'm beginning to understand now why VW dealers have such a bad reputation, then again general ineptitude and BS'ing has been my typical new car dealer experience....that's why I DIY a lot of stuff and use trusted Indies for the rest.

The service writer today is still maintaining they didn't pull that code when I brought the car in around late August, which tells me he is full of ****, so I don't plan on going back there.

Anyway it's great to have the car back and working right, I had a 2014 Jetta SE (with the 1.8 Turbo engine) as a loaner and while it had some VW qualities (good compromise between ride and handling, responsive engine), the auto trans (regular 6 speed auto, not a DSG) and general low rent feel of the thing made me glad to get my car back

I realize the JSW is a lot more a Golf (and some Mk V in there as well) but man it's hard to believe both cars are badged as Jettas.

(one of a myriad of things that struck me was the door hinges, the JSW ones were easily twice the size and thickness of the Jetta SE ones).

Analogeezer