I haven't used my heated seats since probably early March (they did work fine then). Last night my back muscles were REALLY hurting and I felt the need to use the heated seat like a heat pad to warm up my muscles on a 30 minute drive I had.

After about three minutes I realized that no heat was coming out. I then turned on the passenger seat as well to see what was up. After 5 minutes, still no heat. I turned them on to the lower temp mode and still no heat.

It got me to thinking that the heated seats have some other control mechanism in them. Was it that the outside temp was 81F? I tried it with the A/C on and off and had absolutely NO heat. I didn't try it with the heater on, but I've used the seats in the winter with the HVAC completely off and they've worked wonderfully.

I'm thinking there's some control that says, "If outside temp is over (insert temp here), then the heated seats won't work."

Can someone else with an 04 Sedan w/ Heated Seats go out and try theirs and let me know if they work. I don't want to go to the dealer for this issue since I hate my dealer, it's a large inconvenience, and it takes a lot of time, but come winter I will NEED my heated seats.

Thanks,
Brian

PS - Sorry if this has been covered before.

Check your fuses

Thanks for the advice and I will do that, but I'm fairly certain that's NOT the problem because the orange lights on the switches do turn on. I would think that if the fuses were blown that the power to the switch lights would also be cut off; however they could be running on separate fuses but I doubt that.

There are no external controls as per your question.
PIC of cct.

In the pic you can see that there are several elements to the heating.
If none are on then it is a supply or ground issue.
Which usually means a faulty connection or a bad switch.
I'd check some of the extenal conn pts 1st (under the seat);
Then the switch.

Are you still under warranty?

Yeah, I'm an 04 w/ 16k miles so I'm definitely under warranty, it's just an all-day thing for me to go down there. If it's something I can fix w/o spending more than $20 then I'd prefer doing that.

Thanks, I'll check out the diagram and see if I can figure it out.

PS - I sent you a PM about something else...

Interesting post. I have a 04 sedan also and decided to check tonight. I purchased mine new on Feb 26th this year and have used the heated seats during the remaining cold months. Now tonight it is 87 deg so I decided to go check this out and to my surprise mine doesn't work either with the A/C on, or with the heat blasting at 90 deg. Now I only sat in the car for 6 minutes because it normally heats up within 2-4 mins. HHHMMMM got me thinking now. I've only got 8856 on my car.

With all the advice I've seen here, did anyone physically go check theirs out besides me?

Is it possible, that since it's already hot, you wouldn't feel the heat from the seats? I really doubt they get up to 90. I mean, if you ran your a/c when it was 20 degrees, it wouldn't feel that cold either, make sense?

I turned my seat heater on about a week ago by accident and believe me the drivers seat at least was working Now when we first got the '04 I bitched about the seat heaters not being very hot and they aren't compared to my Pacifica but I'll check tomorrow assuming I get out and try to get to work.

Yes it makes sense but you should still be able to feel a little difference, beats me.

So on my 30 minute commute home, after 20 minutes of it on at the High level I turned it to the Low-Level and suddenly it started getting pretty warm. I switch it to High and it got cooler, switched it back to low and it got warmer. I left the passenger seat on Low for 10 minutes and it didn't get ANY hotter.

Something is REALLY weird here.

I just bought a 2003.5 5AT sedan and haven't noticed any heat coming from the seats when tested. It hasn't really dropped below 75 outside, so it may be either tough to feel or the thermo is not allowing them to come on. According to the manual:

Well I forgot the switch on last night, and this morning after drove off to work 2-3 mins later I realised that it was on. Oh it was 77 at 0840 this morning. So it works.

I have a question (a little off topic) - does the back/upright heat?... I was always under the impression only the seat (that you sit on) part heated. I'm in So Cal and rarely (if ever) use it... when I do it's for about 4 minutes at a time, just to get the chill off in the winter.

The idea of heating sore back muscles is a good one - I just didn�t realize the back part heated. Car has been out of commission for a week so I can�t check right now.

Yes the back and part that you sit on heats up