I have a '04 Forester with a stick. This is a bare bones Forester X. I noticed that there appears to be wiring for heated seats present. Does anybody know if and how I could activate these?

Thnaks for any help you can provide,

 

Joeb

elements installed in the seat, a relay, and a switch. This can be a fair size job which would be much easier if you could find a wreck to get the seats and the other bits from.

My Forester XS has the heated seats, the two switches are marked high, off, low; which indicates there are either three wires coming out of each seat or a resistor in the switches ( just a guess). If your dealer gives you the o.k. on the safety of doing this, you might try hooking 12 volts to one seat to see if it warms up. You should remove a seat and do this on your workbench so that if anything unusual or exciting occurred it wouldn't effect your new Subaru!

Note to all readers: I carry a good fire extinquisher in every car I've owned, since a buddy of mine watched his D Jag burn to the ground one day. I've never had to use it on my car, but I've put out two other car fires with them.

The wiring harness might have the wire and connector for heated seats, but I would be very surprised if the seat element existed. If it did, then the feature would exist, right? (Ok, might need the switches too.)

 

As was said, getting the entire seat might be the easiest solution.

 

Commuter

I too notice that there is a wiring harness that seems out of place under the front seats on my basic X Forester 2004 5 speed. Could it be that car companies actually save money by installing the element in the seat, along with the wiring harness and relay (maybe under the dash near the fuses) when the basic car is put together, then if you want and pay for the option, the dealer just installs the switches? The element itself is probably a trivial cost compared to dealer tech time.

 

I don't know whether I would hook up 12V directly to the harness connector while the seats are in the car, who knows what other electrical parts could fry But it seems like it would be a pain to take the seats out to do so on a workbench. I wonder if taking the fabric off the seat would be any easier, just to see if there is something that looks like an element underneath.

 

Does anyone have the part number for the 2004 Forester seat heater switches? I want to try hooking it up to the under-seat harness but would prefer not to let the Subaru dealer gouge me...maybe an aftermarket purveyors of OEM parts or a used parts dealer could find it for a lot less.

 

 

 

 

 

I have a '04 Forester with a stick. This is a bare bones Forester X. I noticed that there appears to be wiring for heated seats present. Does anybody know if and how I could activate these?

Thnaks for any help you can provide,

 

Joeb

if the elements are there, applying 12 volts to the harness will operate them without harming anything else. the harness at the seat is disconnected therefore it has no interaction with the rest of the circuitry in the car right?

 

i'd be very surprised if the elements were there. but it's worth a shot.

if the elements are there, applying 12 volts to the harness will operate them without harming anything else. the harness at the seat is disconnected therefore it has no interaction with the rest of the circuitry in the car right?

 

i'd be very surprised if the elements were there. but it's worth a shot.

Be careful running 12V directly to anything. I don't know anything about Subaru wiring, but many Mercedes DIY'ers have burnt out HVAC blower motors and other parts by "testing" them by applying 12V, when the max the blower motor actually gets is about 4V. I would suspect that anything that needs the current of the seat heater element would be 12V, but if you can find any wiring info, look for a relay or other voltage "altering" device. Does anyone know if the Subie seats have any other devices? Many cars now have occupacy sensors, child-seat sensors, and other circuitry in the seats. Some folks have found wiring harnesses in the seats of their Mercedes, and figured they had found heated seats, ran 12V to it, and fried some expensive sensors that were part of the SRS system.

I have the pdf versions of the Factory Service Manuals for:

- 2002 Forester, and

- 2004 Impreza.

(not the same as yours, I know, but may give a guide).

 

The wiring for the Seat Heaters are shown to be similar for both cars (although the wire colours differ slightly). Each seat has two heater elements. Connecting one to 12V gives the 'High' setting. Connecting 12V across the two elements in series gives the 'Low' setting. If you see a Black wire in the seat, that is probably meant to be grounded.

 

All that the switch (mounted in the centre console in my 2002 Forester) does is to switch the incoming 12V to the correct combination of heater elements.

 

Good luck.