2006 Sierra Heated Seats

[gregory]

2500 HD.
Press on/off button, lights flash on for one second then off. This occurs on both driver and pax side. Discovered this in fall after first attempt to use them.
Changed fuse with no joy. Was visiting USA this last weekend and took it to the dealer for diagnosis and they reported that ALL FOUR seat elements had shorted out and that all needed to be replaced at a cost of $1395.00 parts and labour. They said control module tested OK.They said they are all daisy chained togeather so when one goes they all go.

This does not make sense to me.

Has anyone here heared of this, does it make sense to you.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Gregory

 

[Wrench]

That doesn't make much sense to me, how can they be operated independently with switches if "they're all wired together." Also, the heating element in each pad is just a loop of nichrome wire. If there's a break in the wire the circuit is open and the pad won't heat. Open circuits can't burn out, only shorted ones do.

Now, the dealership might not be able to tell WHICH pad has a break in the wire without removing and testing them, but it's pretty suspicious of them to say all the pads are bad without doing any testing.

Dorman makes replacement heating element pads, if I'm reading it correctly the lower pads are part number 641-105 (about $58 each online) and the upper pads are 641-106 (about $64 each).

 

[Smoky02]

The high dealer quote here is for labour, not for parts, as the tech will have to remove each seat from the vehicle. Then they will have to diss-assemble each seat and remove all factory seat covers. Only then they can start on the replacement of the heaters.

Then they reverse all of the above to get the seats back into the vehicle, so as you can see this is a very labour intensive process.

 

[gregory]

Heated seat repair quote

Actually I have the repair quote in my hand.

It reads,


146545 DIAGNOSED AND TESTED HEATED SEAT OPERATION. SEAT HEATERS BAD - NEEDS NEW SEAT HEATERS - $1296.00

Below is breakdown of parts and labour I asked for:

Parts $568.00
Labour $728.00

I will be taking seats apart in the spring and testing each heater myself.

Thanks for your comments.
Cheers,
Greg.

 

[Wrench]

Don't know which model 2500HD you have, but these are the $60 seat heaters I saw.

I actually installed Dorman's universal seat heater in my girlfriend's car and it works excellent. She has it turned on almost all the time (even during the summer) for her perpetually ice-cold butt.