Heated/Cooled Seat ?

J

JW06LS

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Hey Everyone,

I just bought a 2006 LS Sport yesterday. I'm loving it. The only thing is the mornings are starting to get cold so I thought I would turn on the heated seats. The three lights light up for about 15-30 seconds and then turn off. When I try to turn it on again they just flash and turn off. The passenger side seems to work. The lights stay on and when I turn on the the cooled seat on the passenger side I can hear the ac.

So does anyone have any ideas of what I could do to fix this? Or has anyone come across this issue?

Thanks.
 
Okay, I'm too lazy to go through all the details of how the heated/cooled seats work again, so try the link below.
http://deneau.info/ls/s6x~us~en~file=s6x1a003.htm~gen~ref.htm
What you want starts a few paragraphs down.
Please note that heating or cooling uses the same thermoelectric module, just the direction of the electric current is changed. In neither case is the main AC air used. There is a double fan built into each seat.
Your symptoms imply that the module is overheating. If you don't hear a fan on the driver's side, then your problem is that the fan isn't working. If you do hear one, remove the filter and see if it is clogged. Also, be aware that if you press both the heat and cool buttons at the same time, it puts the seat into auto mode where you don't have to mess with it (it follows the setting for temperature on the climate control.)
 
I had that issue as well. Ford had to take the seat out and replace the piping because it was bent or smashed or something and the unit was overheating. After that it has worked ever since.
If you have less that 50000 miles on it then it's covered.
 
Lincoln Luebbe said:
...If you have less that 50000 miles on it then it's covered.
Click to expand...

Actually, that depends on when it first sold. When I bought my 06, it was the last one on the lot and Lincoln gave it the same warranty that the 07 Lincolns were getting at the time, 75K miles.
 
Wow, didn't know they could do that. I thought it was a 07 MY change in policy, not when it was sold. Cool!
 
joegr said:
Also, be aware that if you press both the heat and cool buttons at the same time, it puts the seat into auto mode where you don't have to mess with it (it follows the setting for temperature on the climate control.)
Click to expand...

I love that. Mine is always on auto.

joegr said:
Actually, that depends on when it first sold. When I bought my 06, it was the last one on the lot and Lincoln gave it the same warranty that the 07 Lincolns were getting at the time, 75K miles.
Click to expand...

That's pretty cool. My 06 was sold in 05 so my warrenty is up in a couple months. I do have the ESP for tweo years after that though.
 
Thanks for all the replies.

The car does have a warranty and I have contacted the dealer. I was just looking for some information. The driver side seat can't be put into Auto mode either and there is no fan noise like there is on the passenger side. I am dropping the vehicle off next week for them to look at it.

Thanks again,

J
 
joegr said:
Actually, that depends on when it first sold. When I bought my 06, it was the last one on the lot and Lincoln gave it the same warranty that the 07 Lincolns were getting at the time, 75K miles.
Click to expand...
The 7/75K Warranty that Lincoln added to the deal is PowertrainCare only (if you have something more, you either paid for it or negotiated your dealer into adding it); the bumper-to-bumper still expires at 50K. Go to https://www.flmowner.com/servlet/Co...et/ContentServer?pagename=Owner/Page/HomePage and enter your VIN, and you can see which ESP plans are active on your car. It'll also show your LS's Warranty Start Date; the factory warranty expires four years from that date (or at 50K miles, whichever comes first).

Back on topic, that happened twice to my '06, and they wound up replacing the Peltier device (the unit that does the heating and cooling) both times, as I recall (I think there was a run of bad parts from the supplier, but I'm not certain of that). It was all under warranty, so I have no idea what it would cost.
 
JW06LS said:
The driver side seat can't be put into Auto mode either and there is no fan noise like there is on the passenger side.
Click to expand...
When it does that, the only thing you can do is restart the car. If it does it immediately after starting, the unit in the seat has overheated and cooked itself. The cooling may still work (both times it happened to me, it was in the winter, so I didn't try the cooling), but as soon as it goes into heating mode it'll quit.
 
SoonerLS said:
The 7/75K Warranty that Lincoln added to the deal is PowertrainCare only (if you have something more, you either paid for it or negotiated your dealer into adding it); the bumper-to-bumper still expires at 50K. ...
Click to expand...

Yes, that is correct. Sorry for being misleading.
 
SoonerLS said:
When it does that, the only thing you can do is restart the car. If it does it immediately after starting, the unit in the seat has overheated and cooked itself. The cooling may still work (both times it happened to me, it was in the winter, so I didn't try the cooling), but as soon as it goes into heating mode it'll quit.
Click to expand...

I don't think the cooling would work either. The only difference between heating and cooling, is that the current applied to the thermoelectric module is reversed. That causes the opposite sides of the module to get cold and hot. (In heating mode, the interior side gets hot and the exterior side gets cold. In cooling mode, the interior side gets cold and the exterior side gets hot. The double fan blows on both sides.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling
 
IIRC, when the unit in the seat fails, it throws a code that the dealer can read with their fancy-shmantzy O-fficial Ford Decoder Ring(tm) diagnostic tool (it's either WDS or NGS; I can never remember which superseded which). It's a U code, so it won't give you any visible warnings, other than the flashing indicators above the button.

If I remember, I'll see if I can find the OASIS report from the last time this happened to mine and let you know.
 
SoonerLS said:
When it does that, the only thing you can do is restart the car. If it does it immediately after starting, the unit in the seat has overheated and cooked itself.
Click to expand...

I second that. This has happened a couple of times with my car. Everytime it has returned to normal after turning the car off then back on. Last time was just a few weeks ago when coming home from vacation, my wifes back was starting to stiffen up so i turned the heat on. When it happened I pulled off the road, shut it down, restarted and it worked fine the rest of the trip.
 
JW06LS said:
Hey Everyone,

I just bought a 2006 LS Sport yesterday. I'm loving it. The only thing is the mornings are starting to get cold so I thought I would turn on the heated seats. The three lights light up for about 15-30 seconds and then turn off. When I try to turn it on again they just flash and turn off. The passenger side seems to work. The lights stay on and when I turn on the the cooled seat on the passenger side I can hear the ac.

So does anyone have any ideas of what I could do to fix this? Or has anyone come across this issue?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear about your issue.

Last year my car did the same thing on both Passenger and Driver side, and the dealer replaced the "blowers" and the "ducts". Anyhow, my car started having the same issue again today (not even 1 year after the dealer repair).

If you would, please let me know what the dealer's diagnosis is for the repair.
 
Anyone ever get a definitive answer on what was causing the OP's issues? I'm having a similar problem with mine, except when I try turning on either the heated or cooled it just turns off after about 2 seconds. I pulled the filter and monitored the fan and it never even spins up. So I don't think it's an overheating issue. Passenger side works fine...
 
HerbieTheMisfit said:
Anyone ever get a definitive answer on what was causing the OP's issues? I'm having a similar problem with mine, except when I try turning on either the heated or cooled it just turns off after about 2 seconds. I pulled the filter and monitored the fan and it never even spins up. So I don't think it's an overheating issue. Passenger side works fine...
Click to expand...

It sounds like the fan motor has failed. I've heard of that happening a few times. The system will disable pretty quickly if it doesn't get a signal back from the fan monitor that the fan is running. A Ford specific scan tool can pull the fault codes triggered by this.
 
The best educated guess from experiencing it and hearing other people talk about it is this:
There could be 2 problems;
1. Blower/motor is broken or malfunctioning.
2. The more common problem is the hot air is not able to travel up and out of the ducts so it builds up and the system turns off to prevent damage. If this is the case usually the piping is smashed or unattached or both according to my local dealer who had the car four times to actually fix the problem. It has worked ever since (almost a year) until recently.
I experimented and I may have found a fix... With the seat in normal driving position, if I sit as far back in the seat cushion as possible it seems like it takes a little bit of pressure off of the middle of the cushion and the heating works better than it ever did.
 
Thanks for the info. I don't think it's the collapsed ducting issue since it turns off within 2-3 seconds (and the fan never spins up). I'll try swapping the fan with the passenger side and see what happens.

Leather gets really cold when it's -1 degree out... :eek:
 
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