Well today I finally got around to the last in the list of jobs that needed doing on my wifes Skoda Fabie Elegance Estate since purchasing it, repairing one of the heated seats.

In case anyone else has a problem this is how it went.

Since I bought the car a few months ago the drivers seat has failed to heat although the passenger one worked fine. As there is only one fuse that ruled out that possibility then !

I started by removing both seats (held in place by four torx bolts) and swapped them over then re-connected them to determine whether the fault lay in the drivers side power supply or to the actual seat itself..... and of course it was the seat itself ! :(

So I had to strip down the seat. I was going to take photos but my camera battery was flat.

Anyway, the fabric cover on the base of the seat was fairly easy to remove it just sort of unclips from the frame once the plastic side covers are removed. The centre cushion however is held onto a locating wire running inside the foam base by metal rings. To fully remove the cover I had to cut the rings with a wire cutter. I reassembled it using small cable ties instead.

Once the metal rings have been cut the cover can be removed revealing the heated seat element which in my case was complete with a small burnt hole where the wire element had broken.

The heated element is held onto the foam base by a glued strip front and rear which is easily seperated.

It was then easy enough to repair the fault, I stripped both ends of the broken wire back about 10mm each, placed a bit of heat shrink over one end then twisted the wires together & soldered them over a length of about 15mm. Finally I slipped the heat shrink up over the joint and applied some heat to insulate the job. Then I glued the heating element back onto the foam base at the back & front with contact adhesive.

At this point I was about to start stripping out the heater element from the back of the seat as no part of the seat was heating but first I thought I just would check for continuity of the element with a meter. This showed that there was continuity in the back of the seat and lead me to the conclusion that the two heating elements were therefore wired in series and that was why neither part was working. This turned out to be correct & it's probably just as well because stripping down the back of the seat did not look like such an easy task as the base ! :thumbdwn:

So I started reassembling the seat base starting with the fabric cover which although time consuming was quite straightforward, the most fiddly bit being fixing the centre cushion back to the foam base by means of small cable ties round the locating wire rather than the original metal rings. Replacing the plastic side trim etc was a piece of cake & the seat was complete again.

Once assembled the seat looked just as it did before I started which was a relief !

I bolted it back into the car and reconnected the wires underneath, started the car, switched on the heated seats and ...... ahhhh, lovely, a nice warm seat again !

All in all not such a big job, it took me about four hours start to finish although I could probably knock an hour off that if I was to do it again.

So anyone who has a heated seat problem and feels like tackling it yourself I hope this helps you a little bit, it's not too difficult it's just a shame my camera wasn't working or I could have added pictures !

BUT see also my later post: http://www.briskoda.net/forums/fabia/heated-seat-stripdown-pictures/73132/

Thanks for the detailed description though, I'm sure it will come in handy

My driver's side seat failed at 2 years 11 months and 28 days so luckily got repaired FOC under Skoda's warranty Wonder if it's a common problem then and why it only affects the driver's seat?

Chris

My driver's side seat failed at 2 years 11 months and 28 days so luckily got repaired FOC under Skoda's warranty Wonder if it's a common problem then and why it only affects the driver's seat?

Chris

........because the driver's seat gets used more.