Whats up all! i just bought my 04 430ML from a gentleman in North Carolina a couple weeks ago. Fell in love with the car. While waiting for my title and tags to show up, I am finding tiny things wrong with the car that i want to fix before i start driving it officially. HEATED SEATS. It is cold here in VA now. My heated seats are not working. the ***** lite up and work however the seats do not warm up. Anyone here have had this issue? Were you able to fix this issue without having to take it to Lexus? Simple fix or no? I would like them to work as designed. Thank you in advance!!

 

Did you check all the fuses? That's where I would start, then check the connectors are OK under each seat. It would be weird for both driver and passenger seat to fail internally.
I assume that the engine was running when you tested them? I'm pretty certain that they won't work unless it's running. Otherwise you could flatten the battery pretty fast.

 

It also depends on whether you have the ventilated climate control heated AND cooled seats, or just heated seats. Plain heated seats should heat up quickly with the heating elements, so fuses, etc for those. If they are the cooled and heated seat style, those use the regular climate control system and are heated by the hot air from the heater and engine coolant, so your engine first has to heat up before warm air will circulate through them.

 

'01-03 are the only ones that use the regular climate control to assist the seats. All years with the cooled seats use a Peltier heating/cooling element. Sometimes seat performance suffers due to lack of airflow from collapsed seat foam. If it just has heated seats they use a resistance type heating element.

 

Ah good to know! Thanks! Mine is an '03 and I know unless you pre-warm the car the front seats don't get warm until you have pretty much arrived at your destination.

 

They take a while to warm up. Of all the various features on the LS430, the heated seats are the only ones I would consider to be mediocre if not actually bad.

 

I have an 04 UL and the seat heat is instant. I think you have a problem somewhere.

 

Thank you for posting that jayclapp. I am puzzling over this issue still. In post #3, thellmer says "If they are the cooled and heated seat style, those use the regular climate control system and are heated by the hot air from the heater and engine coolant, so your engine first has to heat up before warm air will circulate through them."

In my '05, ML with heated and cooled seats, when the engine is stone cold on a freezing day i have to drive a few miles at least and the engine temp get well above the C mark before I am getting any noticeable heat in my drivers seat. That would be consistent with thellmer's observations. But, other posts (and some vids on UTube) say that there is a pelier heating element that heats the air as it is blown into the seat, which would seem to be how you and others get "instant" heat.

Either my peltier element is bad or going bad or I don't have one and everything is normal - not sure which to believe now. I don't want to take out the drivers seat to inspect it, as I did that a few years ago to replace the drivers seat cushion with an OEM replacement and that task is a real chore.

 

All great info and thank you. I haven’t received my tags for the car so I haven’t been able to drive it. I’ve started it in the driveway and tinkered with some things trying to get to know the car better. I have seen that the seats have air filters too?! I’ll change all of the filters in the car as well just to give her a fresh start before she hits the road. Maybe the seat air filter swap will help a bit.