A while back I posted on how I repaired the heated drivers seat in SWMBO's Fabia. Unfortunately at that time my camera batteries were flat and so I couldn't take any pictures. :(

Well, the heated seat element has broken again only this time my camera's working.

I didn't actually take any photos during the stripdown (silly me) and I'm now I'm in the middle of the second repair but I thought I would post some pics whilst everything is dismantled to show the seat parts and what lurks beneath !

Ok, first off disconnect the battery !!

Then you have to remove the seat from the car.

This involves removing four splined retaining bolts which are relatively accessible by sliding the seats backwards or forwards but you need a spline tool.

I didn't have one the correct size but I managed to undo them with an appropriately sized allen key socket.

Once the seat bolts have been removed you then need to unplug the red and green wiring connectors underneath the seat from their sockets.

In this picture taken after the seat was removed you can see (three of) the seat mountings, the four splined bolts, and the red and green plug connectors attached to the seat wiring.

The seat can now be manoeuvred out from the car through the front door.

The next job is to remove the seat height adjuster which requires you to pick out with something sharp and pointed the two plastic plugs on the round part of the lever where you will find two torx screws lurking beneath, remove them and the lever will come away. Now remove all the screws holding the plastic seat surround and move it away from the seat base.

This will allow you access to the metal part of the seat base where the seat cover is clipped in under a groove running around it.

Carefully remove the plastic beading holding the seat cover to the metal seat base. This is clipped into the metal groove on the seat base and comes out fairly easily.,

Be careful though as the top of the seat cover is attached to the seat foam by metal rings attached to a piece of stiff wire sewn into the cover and the rings either have to be cut (as I did) or prised open to fully release the cover from the foam base which also has a piece of stiff wire built into it..

The metal rings attach the two pieces of stiff wire together, one is sewn into the seat cover and one is built into the foam base, thus the rings hold the seat cover to the foam base.

If you cut the rings with wire cutters, as I did, I found that I could successfully re-attach the foam to the cover by using small cable ties on re-assembly.

The seat cover can now be removed completely (and the opportunity taken to wash it while it's out in my case) to reveal the heated seat element which is lightly glued to the foam base. It can be removed quite easily from the base carefully working from the front to the back.

You can easily see where the heated element has failed on my car by the scorch mark it made as it died ! Luckily, it didn't mark the seat cover !

It appears to have broken just below my previous repair (the black heat shrink over the cables shows that) and I'm just about to look at making a further repair to it now which I will endeavour to ensure does not encounter any movement as I suspect that flexing of the previous repair where the wires enter the heat shrink may have caused this current fault !.

Details on how I joined the broken wires can be found in my last post on this subject and only with the addition of making sure that this current repair doesn't flex (I still need to think about how I'm going to do that) the means of joining the wires will be the same as the actual joint is still intact.

Anyway, I hope this is of some help to anyone considering repairing their heated seats.

Off for a cup of tea now then I'll look at doing the repair to the seat element and reassembly which is just the reverse of dismantling but maybe using cable ties to attach the foam seat base to the cover depending on whether you cut off or bent open the small metal rings.

EDIT: Job done and the seat is now back in and working perfectly again, nice and toasty !!! :D

Total cost ... ZILCH !

Finished job here (car badly needing vacuumed out) .......

Whoah.....that actually makes retrofitting it look really scary!

Is that not a fire risk with the element burning out like that?

Why don't you just take it to the dealers??

Why don't you just take it to the dealers??

a) Because believe it or not I actually quite enjoy challenges like this.

and

Have you any idea how much dealers charge to do this sort of thing ! :eek:

Yep - £78 + VAT an hour!

Yep -

So retrofitting heated seats is possible then! I wonder how much the pads are? Could be combined with fitting leather too. Just some basic wiring, install a couple of switches and done...?

Thanks for the pictures, Bit tooo much information on your brown scortch marks though. No Offence !

Details on how I joined the broken wires can be found in my last post on this subject and only with the addition of making sure that this current repair doesn't flex (I still need to think about how I'm going to do that) the means of joining the wires will be the same as the actual joint is still intact.

For anyone interested in the way I repaired the break this time, I cut away some of the material towards the back of the heat pad allowing sufficient cable to be drawn out so that the new cable join could then lie flat in the groove running accross the seat cushion. The repair was as before, soldered with heat shrink insulation then it was laid flat in the cushion groove and embedded in some silicone sealant which will hopefully keep it from flexing and breaking again, time will tell.

Tomorrow I will reassemble the seat and hopefully this will then turn out to be be a more long term solution !

Thanks for the useful guide, so far (touch wood) I've been lucky with the heated seats staying operational, but no doubt I will be looking back at this thread at some stage

How much is a new heat pad? Surely worth the cash after all the hard work...?

Have you any idea how much dealers charge to do this sort of thing ! :eek:

Well, depending on the frequency at which this element usually fails, VAG parts all come with a year's warranty (and dealers usually provide a one year guarantee as well on labour work), so if it happened within the same year, IMO it would have been better for you to take it to them to keep the warranty going.

Well, depending on the frequency at which this element usually fails, VAG parts all come with a year's warranty (and dealers usually provide a one year guarantee as well on labour work), so if it happened within the same year, IMO it would have been better for you to take it to them to keep the warranty going.

Perhaps you have a fair point ? :confused:

Time will tell whether this repair stands the test of time but I'm happy to take the chance.

The good thing for me is that so far it has cost me the princely sum of £0.00 to repair the seat just a few hours of my time and then there's the challenge of actually doing the job which is much more interesting than the alternative decorating SWMBO's lining up for me !

I've no idea what a seat heating element costs from Skoda but I can almost guarantee it won't be particularly cheap and it's unlikely to be in stock in my local dealers.

All in, as I want to put SWMBO's car back together today and I can do so for free, I'm happy enough to approach it this way & I don't think I'll worry too much about a guarantee.

Very Good Article by TD-eye on seat heater repair. For what its worth ,I have been using 'Heatshrink ' for electrical repairs for a long time,and found because it shrinks down to 1/2 its original diameter ,and its thickness doubles it is not

as flexible as it could be . I remember using it to repair the flexible cable into the dashboard control unit of a CD Changer,where it enters the control unit. The repair failed sometime later ,because the cable core went open circuit ,where the cable met the beginning of the heatshrink!

I wonder if silicone tubing ,simular to what model shops sell for fuel pipes, would provide a longer lasting repair. Fibreglass sleeving can be obtained from an Electronic supply company , (CPC , Farnell, RS ) ,but I would think is more flexible

than Heatshrink ,but not as flexible as silicone tubing.

Very good point there Andy Pandy as that's exactly where my first repair failed so it's probably worth keeping in mind for anyone else attempting this.

I'll just keep my fingers crossed that my alternative repair lasts this time, so far so good !

I know that small bore (1mm ish) silicon tubing is available from fishing tackle shops - no I'm not a fisherman!!!

So retrofitting heated seats is possible then! I wonder how much the pads are? Could be combined with fitting leather too. Just some basic wiring, install a couple of switches and done...?

I've got both heated seats and leather, and find the heaters all but redundant. The leather is so thick that it takes a while for the heat to get through them; in the meantime, my bum has heated the leather from the top.

Td-eye, can you please repost the pictures, as the links are all dead.

Yes, please post them again.