03 TL heated seat?

I recently bought an 03 TL - nice car.

I know the passenger side is heated only in the seat.

It seems that the driver's side is heated only in the back.

Is the driver side back only or both back and seat?

TIA

-e

Reply to
effluvius
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The driver's side is heated both in the seat and in the back. Most likely your seat bottom heater is burned out. If the car is still within the 4 yr,

50,000 miles warranty take it in and make the dealer replace it. It is a prohibitively expensive repair if you have to pay for it.

If you are already out of warranty, you can get the heater for about $80 from one of the internet parts dealers. Taking the seat apart and replacing the heater is daunting, but do-able (I just replaced the heaters on the driver's seat in my '00 TL). The only special tools you will need are a hog-ring pliers, a pair of relatively sturdy wire cutters to cut the old hog rings, about two dozen hog rings to put it pack together, and a couple of zip ties.

I found a local auto upholstery shop that lent me the hog ring pliers and gave me a bag of the rings. Make sure you pay careful attention to the routing & mounting of the wiring harness before you take it apart because it is non-obvious when you try to put it back together. One of the wires (its yellow) is to the side airbag. Make sure you follow the directions in the FSM before you unplug it (disconnect the battery and wait a while).

Reply to
E Meyer

E:

THX for the info.

The car is still under warranty, but the hassle of making an appt, dropping the car off...

Is there easy access to the wiring harness to check for a disconnected wire or to connect an ohmeter to check the heater for resistance or open?

Or does the seat have to be removed to perform the basic diagnostics?

My motivation is limited to connecting a wire or an ohmeter.

More than this, the car goes in. Yellow wire huh? Activating an air-bag is way more excitement than I need.

TIA

-e

Reply to
effluvius

It's a $500-$600 repair. It is a lot of work. Having just done it myself, I would say it is worth it to hassle with the dealer to do it. They never gave me any trouble when I had them do things to mine under warranty. You just have to gracefully decline the $400 oil change they always suggest that you need. If the transmission recall hasn't yet been done, you can kill it all with one trip.

The harness is on the bottom of the seat. There are three wires coming out of a hole in the upholstery flap that wraps around from the rear of the seat. The yellow wire is the side air bag. The two black ones are the seat bottom and seat back heaters. The seat back wire plugs into the seat bottom wire, which then plugs into the main harness, which incorporates all the motors and plugs into the receptacle on the floor. The yellow air bag wire goes straight to a receptacle on the floor.

To access it, the easiest way is to remove the seat, or at least take out the four bolts and rock it back in place.

You could try moving the seat all the way up and you might be able to get to the heater connectors from underneath without removing the seat. I think you would need small hands and a certain amount of acrobatic skill to pull it off.

Its really obvious. According to the FSM, the small charge in the multi-meter can be enough to set it off, so whatever you do, do not probe the yellow wire unless you want to see if the air bag really works.

Just unplug the battery for the prescribed amount of time (I don't have my FSM handy right now, I think it was > 15 minutes) before you unplug the yellow wire, don't probe the yellow one & nothing will happen.

Reply to
E Meyer

I take it that maintenance on Acuras is expensive, unlike Hondas. Glad I bought a Prelude and not an RSX and a Pilot and not the MDX.

Reply to
TWW

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