'03 F-150 heated seats

[protiller]

I have the clothe heated seats that Ford used for a couple years. The heat to my drivers seat quit working. The fuses are fine and there's power to the switch. There's a module of some sort underneath the seat and it appears to be working fine. Is it possible that the heating coils somewhere on the seat are broke? How easy or expensive is this to fix? Any thoughts on what the problem might be?

[Macgyver55]

 Quote:

Is it possible that the heating coils somewhere on the seat are broke?

In a word, yes! Thats probably what I have found wrong more times than not. New elements have a pretty wide range on price. The last one I did was on a Durango and it was about 130 bucks from Dodge.

[protiller]

Macgyver, how easy are they to change? Is it like, take the seat cover off and there's the cooil type of thing? Or is a major pain in the rear and not really worth it. (Heated seats are more of a luxury than a necesity.) If it's an easy fix I'll go ahead and change it out. If it's a pain, I'll leave it.

[Macgyver55]

 Quote:

Is it like, take the seat cover off and there's the coil type of thing?

Well, it is actually an element type thing on a sheet of tough fabric, and yes the seat cover would have to come off if that is the problem. But first, I would do a couple checks to see if that is indeed the problem. Try to locate the wires that go directly to the heating element, usually either 2 or 3 wires depending on the system. Possibly one for high, one for low and one common. Or, it may use only 2 wires if it is using the controller for high and low settings. You can use an ohm meter to check for continuity through the element. If it shows nothing, it is most likely bad. If it has a complete circuit, you can apply battery voltage to it with some jumper wires, which basically bypasses all the switches and controllers to see if it works. If not, its a broken element, if it works by jumping, the problem is not the element.