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Results of hooking up bottom seat heater grid Posted by JerseySaab [Email] (#666) [Profile/Gallery] (more from JerseySaab) on Tue, 10 Dec 2013 20:15:11 Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup |
A while back I reported that my driver's seat heater failed due to a fault in an inaccessible part of the seat back heating grid. That could not be repaired without a crazy amount of labor (or replacing the entire seat!) but it seemed like it should be possible to at least get the bottom heater working.
Plusbig problem of course is that the two heating grids are in series, and just bypassing one might lead to overheating or burning out of the remaining heating pad.
At first I tried a 100-watt, 2.7 ohm resistor to emulate the seat back heater in the circuit. This resulted in almost no heat from the seat bottom and the resistor got too hot to touch! There was too much voltage drop across the resistor, not enough current reaching the heater.
I finally got a chance to test a revised setup, putting a second resistor with identical specs in parallel with the first one, dropping resistance to just under 1.5 ohms. This works great! The seat bottom gets nice and warm without threatening to overheat. The back heater is missed, of course, but in cold weather at least you can get your buns toasted this way! Hope this helps someone who may be in the same situation.
100-watt 1.5 ohm resistor with heat sink
->Posting last edited on Wed, 11 Dec 2013 10:05:19.
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