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heated seat question

J

jmiska

New member
So I live in Florida, where it's a little warm this time of year. My car, being an original Florida car, was not ordered from the factory with unnecessary options like heated seats.

Still, there have been a couple occasions over the last few months where I would swear that dammed driver seat was on fire. I know all about the feeling of a hot Florida car seat. My seats have cloth upholstery, which is generally more cool and comfortable in the Florida heat. Still, sometimes that seat suddenly feels like I'm sitting on the fires of hell. It happened today.

I started looking around, and I noticed there's actually a 20A fuse in the slot labeled "seat htr" WTF? Why is there a fuse there if there's no seat heater? Is it possible that there are actually heaters in the seats, as in, GM doesn't bother to delete the option you don't buy, they just disable it, and somehow the heater is getting activated?

Anyway, I pulled the fuse just to be sure my butt won't burst into flames. However, it really got me wondering if all the GP seats have heater elements in them, and it's just the climate control head that determines weather you get that option or not, and if my HAL9000 is trying to burn me out of my car.
 


pretty sure it only come in cars with leather seats. not 100% sure. but most of them have it it seem, at least the driver seat.

if you had it you would have a switch for it.
 
haha! I'd like to think it's cause I'm in great shape!

Seriously, I know from product design that it's sometimes cheaper for companies to completely install an option in every unit, and simply disable it at the control panel for customers that didn't buy it, than to inventory different configurations of multiple parts. If a high enough percentage of GP's were ordered with seat heaters, and the heater elements are cheap enough, it would be more cost effective to have heater elements in every seat in inventory on the manufacturing line, then just change out control heads on the dash depending on what configuration the customer ordered.

I know I don't have seat heater buttons on my climate control head and my car is not supposed to have heated seats, but the fact that there was a fuse in place for the seat heater got me wondering if there are, in fact, elements in the seats and the climate control module was somehow making them come on when they're never supposed to. One day after a power outage my microwave suddenly lit up a whole bunch of new features that my model wasn't supposed to have. They disappeared and it went back to normal about a week later. Control processors can be full of bugs and bad firmware.

Anyway, I was just curious. Maybe it was my great circulation, or maybe the sun somehow hit the seat just right to super-heat it. In any case, the fuse is out, so if GM did leave heater elements in all the seats, and if my climate control module is messed up and decided to turn them on, they have no power now anyway.
 
I'm like 99% positive they only came with leather seats. This true with most manufacturers. I installed heated seats on my 08 GP, it had cloth, and nothing was under there except seat cushion.
 
The circuit may be installed from the factory, but they did not put the heaters in a car that was not going to be equipped with them, and they did not put heaters in cloth seats for another. Also the seat heaters don't just stay on all the time. There is a switch to turn them on and off.
 


There could be other items that your car has that are on that fuse. While a fuse is labled for one item, it likely powers more things.
 
Must be my butt needs a temperature calibration! Anyway, thanks for the replies. Also, as of now, that fuse is still out and I haven't found any circuit that's open, for what it's worth. I'll probably stick it back in just for good measure in case it was powering something else, when I remember to do so and I'm at the car.
 
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