2 things... how effective do you Gen 3 owners find the cooled seats and do the headlight washers always wash when you wash the windshield or can that be turned off?

For me, the cooled seats don't seem to do that much even on high. As for washing my headlights, I think it's a nice feature to be able to do once in a while during the winter but I don't want to be spraying my hood with washer fluid every time I want to clean my windshield.

Any thoughts?

 

Uhhh, the cooled seats are a must if you live in the south. I live in Houston and it's around 95 degrees 7 months of the yr. Since you live in Mass, i can understand your position, it's just not that hot. On the other hand, do you use the heated seat function in the winter?

I don't use the headlight washers.

 

The headlight washer comes on when you have the lights on and wash the windshield, I dont think you can turn that off right?

 

i think there is a button in the drop down panel where your mirror controls are to turn it on and off.

 

I don't see much active capacity from the seat cooling either.

As simple as the idea of operation is (i.e., turn the wheel and it's on), I have to say I don't really know how it works...

Is it diverting flow from AC? If so, is it impacted by the fan level on the AC? Is it impacted by closing other vents? Is it's operation affected by the size/weight of the person in the seat?

The one time I felt that I really noticed it was working was when I decided to do a quick vacuum at the gas station. It was a crazy hot day, so I let the car run and opened one door at a time. When I jumped back in, I was like "Woah, cool seat!" But it's possible that was somewhat due to the dash vents blowing on the unoccupied seat.

Other than that, I can't say I really notice it working.

I tried the counter-intuitive move of turning it down from 3 to 2 - that didn't seem to change anything one way or the other.

 

Actually, the seats in the 3GS are heated and "Ventilated", they are not cooled seats with an a/c condenser to actually cool. The ventilated seats work well when your regular a/c is set at BI-Level or Floor level. As the ventilated fan resides under your front seat cushion, it's important to have cool air running in that area to be "cooling" effective. If you have your a/c vents set at the face only setting, the seat ventilators are less effective.

As for your headlamp washers operating when you work your windshield wipers, that's something you should take in to the Lexus dealer to look at. My windshield wipers work seperately of the headlight washers. The only time the headlight washers work on my car is if I manually press the button to operate them.

 

Yep agreed with the seats.

As for the headlamp washers, I thought it would automatically spray when you have your headlights on and you use the windshield washer?

 

yes, the headlight washers always come on if the headlights are on and I hit the windshield washer. According to the dealer, there's no way to disable it, I've asked and asked

 

This is actually really good to know. I've noticed that sometimes the seats seem to be circulating quite a bit of cool air, and other times they seem to be circulating almost no air -- and I always have mine on "blue 3" :-)

I even mentioned it to my service rep when I took it in for the 1,000 mile checkup, but they said that the seat blowers are working as normal.

I'm going to try switching from face-only a/c (my normal operation) to see if I can notice a difference!

- Mark

 

I also live in Houston. I love the cooled seats when they get up to speed. I'll have to try what flipside909 suggests to see if I can get them to work even better

Haven't ever used the headlight washers.

 

I live in Hawaii and didn't like how the vented seat cooled so very little. They do work though. I think I'll try flipside's theory and see how it goes.

Don't use the washers on the lights here. So I didn't know we even had them

 

That’s true, the headlight sprayer are so stealth that if I didn’t read the manual, I wouldn’t have known I had them, not like those big sprayer you see on the Volvos or the X5. According to the manual, the headlight washer can be activated by pushing the button on the drop down box or windshield washer when the headlight is on.

 

Thanks for all the quick replies. I will try the floor setting myself to see how that effects the ventilated seats. As for the headlight washer, I've only used windshield washer 3 or 4 times but it has washed the headlights every time. I can't remember whether the headlights were on each time or not so I guess more testing is in order! There is a button on the drop down but pushing it seems to have no effect so far.....

 

I use the heated seats a lot and they work real well. That's why I was surprised that the "ventilated seats" didn't work a bit better.

I don't want to use the headlight washers either!

 

My GS450H only washes the lights if you push a button in the flip down thing in the dash near the door, it is not controlled by the control mounted on the stalk on steering wheel post.

As far as the seats go I am not sure if you have to have the A/C turned on for them to work correctly. It hasn't been hot enough in S.C. to turn on the A/C yet, it has only been in the low 90s and I don't turn on the A/C till it gets to 98 to 100. So far I have been driving with the windows open and the seat set to Max cool. It was 93 yesterday and my back didn't get all sweaty and stick to the seat so maybe it did work with the A/C off