Thanks to this and the several similar reports of satisfactory factory seat heater performance, I am convinced that the factory units can perform well, even in extreme cold.

On the other hand my own experience is no good, and a few others have posted similar dissatisfaction.

I now suppose that my heaters suffer from some reasonably common defect.

I guess a trip to the dealer is in order, but I'm reluctant to try this until the current recall activity dies down a little.

 

Fle a complaint with the NHTSA. This is clearly a defect that needs to be investigated. I'm sure congress. Would love to look into this one.

 

Hmm... either they don't heat consistently between cars, or we have different tolerences for warm behinds.

 

I think the answer is BOTH of the above.

In our case: My wife needs a lot of heat on hers; she's from the deep south.
And I need very little; I'm form the north, and I spent the bulk of my winters north of the Arctic Circle for several years - without seat heaters but very definitely with block heaters.

And as for the equipment: I see from the posts that some work well while others work barely at all.

 

I did a little test the other morning on the way to work, outside temp was 34F. Heated up the car to thaw out the windows, and turned on the seat heater. Seats heated up nicely as they always do in my car, but I left them on this time all the way to work. "eco" was also OFF the entire time.

After about 10 min I was roasting, so I turned off the climate control and left just the seat heater on. I did notice that the seats seemed to cycle on and off the rest of the trip, and did get a bit on the cool side before kicking back in. So there must be some sort of temp control built into the seat that is not associated with the climate control system.

Edit- I grew up and lived in Wisconsin for 30 years before moving to Texas in 07, so my butt warmth requirement may be skewed toward the northern climate model

 

funny

 

Thanks to Biggie for that very useful confirmation.

 

Hey there Jack...

I have not noticed any difference with the ECO on/off... I rarely choose ECO mode any longer though as it is automatically turned-off when I put the car on full defrost..

I have a block heater but I've not yet used it.. I need to run an extension cord out there and I've just not yet done it...

No radiator blockage to speak of.. It's the same right now as it would be in August..

 

Thanks, Randy.

The prevailing opinion here now seems to be that neither the ECO nor any of the climate control settings affect the seat heaters. BiggieJohn has checked the schematics and posted that there;s no interconnection.

Good luck with that extension cord.

Jack

 

I will chime in, even though I don't own my TCH anymore. I moved on to a 2008 Accord, which does have Low and High settings.

The car that my TCH replaced was a Chevy TrailBlazer (terrible vehicle), but I thing GM cars in general have VERY warm seat heaters. When I first got the TCH, I knew that the heaters weren't as warm, but they would eventually get warm enough that I will turn them off (even in the cold of West Michigan).

Now that I have moved on to the Accord, I can say that the Honda heaters are even weaker than the TCH. I do turn them off eventually.

I just use the heaters to take the chill off the seats when I first get in the car and it is cold outside.

My guess is that if you are comparing the heaters in the TCH to those in a Cadillac, you will notice a big difference.