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I'm starting to get burned out on repairs to my seats' heating elements. I've now performed 3 operations (in about two years) and am now facing, going into winter, another cold driver's seat.
My first repair required a couple of fixes to the bottom cushion and one in the seat back.
The second repair found a break in the bottom seat right after my previous fix's heat shrink. I opted to forgo using heat shrink on the repair. All has held up fine to this point.
The thrid repair was again to the seat back. Once again the wire had burned through. The previous repair had held up fine. NOTE: I needlessly had peeled off the bottom cover thinking that this is where the problem was- it was not! I recommend that folks do a continuity test of the seat back as an initial test.
Anyway, I am wondering whether I can bypass the seat back if I again find that it's got an open (haven't checked yet). I'm afraid that the wire is getting too brittle. Having some part of the seat heated is better than none (I like the bottom heated, but my wife likes the back).
NOTE: I haven't been using nichrome heater wire as I read on a repair thread here. I've just used some small guage wire (don't recall what guage it is). I'm not sure if my replacement wire is causing stress on the stock wire (whether there's a resistance issue or not). Since the bottom has been holding up just fine using this wire (aside from the flex stress break at the end of a heat shrink repair), I'm guessing that my replacement wire can't really be an issue.
97 CSE (89k mi)
-Mark Nagel
posted by 64.70.2...
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