Seat Heater Fire

The Plot Thickens

I left the car at the dealer this morning for a full seat heater diagnostic and finally spoke to the Service Rep at around 5:00 (I had old contact numbers on my customer profile so they couldn’t reach me). The Rep tells me that there isn't a heating element in the seat back…just the seat bottom, so you see, it can’t be the heater, $700.00 and they’ll fix it right up. Let’s pause a moment here and soak that in. Now, he says “It was burned from the outside, looks like a cigarette.” Imagine my horror in discovering my 8-year old daughter smokes! “Stop, just stop,” I say, I saw it burn from within the seat, it does have seat back heaters and I referenced the repair manual on that fact. Come to find out…the service technician never looked at the car, merely stated that “older models only have seat bottom heaters”, and so my February, 2004 build-date car sat all day without anything so much as a passing glance. What does it take for a dealer to be an advocate for customers? Corporate said no such thing about older models lacking seat back heaters, okayed a seat repair and now the dealer is playing defense? No one looked at the car? At 6:00pm I arrived to show the Service Rep the manual and before I say a word he blurts out that the seat will be dismantled tomorrow because I was so adamant. “Yeah,” he says, “the manual is confusing, it says the drivers side has a seat back heater, nothing about the passenger.” Right, I said, the right side is the drivers side nearly every where else and is wired identical to the left side.” I've got to call corporate tomorrow.

You may be interested in this below from the MINI Technical faults Help section on the BBA-Reman website.............

Fault::-
Front seat heating too high or low.

Cars involved:
All vehicles having heated seats and liner (12/2001-03/2004), without liner (12/2001-12/2003).

Reason:
The resistance of the seat heating element is too high or too low.

Solution:
Attach adapter harness (part no: 61.100.152.025, hot and without liner or part no: 61.100.152.026, cold and with liner) with the seat harness already present and fasten harness to the seat frame using cable tie.

Link:
Mini Technical Help

Thanks for all the posts. BTW, the outside temp was like 60-65F when this all started. Called corporate Mini this morning and relayed my last post. By 9:00am this morning the dealer called to say…they found a seat heater in the seat back of the passenger seat! Imagine that…an actual seat heating element where one was suspected, is referred to in the repair manual and wiring diagrams along with past sensory detection by my wife. Oh, to know that I’m not dreaming of a phantom heater that lit up the fabric, to now know it really did happen! Big thanks to the dealer for finally diagnosing the problem in about 45-minutes even though the car was ignored the previous day when it arrived for a look-see. “We just don’t see west coast cars with seat heaters in the passenger seat back, but when you said you bought this car as a demo that had been shipped from back east, that got us thinking.” Well, I also said my seat caught fire and that didn’t motivate an inspection, but because I mention the car is from back east, NOW you look into it? So I’ve stumbled across the golden phrase…power steering pump, transmission, yo-yoing, rattles, windshield trim, etc…remember to say the car came from back east. Parts will be here in 2 weeks.