Cooled seats not cooling

FeedtheNeed said:

the heat exchanger for the lumbar does not work properly.

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Nice work.

The other unknown here is what the airflow path looks like inside the seat back. If airflow from the seat back fan is restricted somewhere inside the seat (maybe even to a greater degree when you sit in it and the foam is compressed), then opening up the airflow on the outside / back won't help much, if at all. Short of someone removing their seat back upholstery to look, our only hope may be the Ford shop manual or other service information / diagrams.

Same issue for me. Bottom seat gets maybe 10° cooler and center of seat back gets at least 20° hotter than the non-perforated sides of the seat. Took to dealer today to address this and a few other issues. When I dropped off they said someone else had a similar issue and that they couldn't help them and probably wouldn't be able to help me. When I picked up the response on the paperwork was "could not duplicate concern at this time" and "there is a normal 20 degrees difference between the seat and backing. A normal characteristic." I suppose that would be okay if it was cooling the bottom 20°. Now perhaps I wasn't clear enough when I dropped the car off and I should have done my own demo, but they wouldn't have known how to fix it anyway.

I'll share my info with the Ford folks here and maybe if enough of us bring it to their attention they'll realize that it's a problem. Maybe it's just a bad batch of seats. For comparison purposes my build date was Dec. 2 and I have ceramic leather seats.

I have a Hyundi that cools both the seat and the back better than this crap. Are you listening FORD. Oh and Heats both better too! For the price Ford should really look into this.

I don't want to be that guy who promotes poor quality, but the fact the bottom of mine cools seems pretty great, I didn't care that the car had cooled seats, I wouldn't have paid for that option if it were standalone.

That being said, my seat backs don't seem to flow any noticeable air at all. My seat bottoms do get cool, and you can actually hear the air flow. I've tried listening to my seatbacks and it sounds like there is a fan running, but I definitely don't feel air flow.

GT Pony said:

All good inputs in that last 3 posts. I wonder if you could rig up some kind of fan & duct that would blow cabin air up inside the back of the seat just to see if the Peltier/Fan unit doesn't heat soak and put out warm air. If you could somehow get slow flow of cabin air up in the back for the fan to blow through the heat exchange it might make the back work like the bottom and stay cool.

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You have to wonder with all this R&D that goes into cars...is there anyone at Ford road testing them for normal things like this? Or rattles? Anything? :headbonk:

RevvdMedia said:

That being said, my seat backs don't seem to flow any noticeable air at all. My seat bottoms do get cool, and you can actually hear the air flow. I've tried listening to my seatbacks and it sounds like there is a fan running, but I definitely don't feel air flow.

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You don't sense the air flow on the backs because it's not cooled air. Wet your hand down, then feel around where the fan is located in the seat back ... you'll feel air flow then.

So I did another test tonight and used my infra-red thermometer to measure seat surface temperatures, just like a couple of other members here have already done.

Some background ... both fans in both seats operate and blow air through the seat's perforated leather. The fans speed up or slow down depending on the setting on the dash (Lo, Med, Hi).

The car was in the garage with the windows down - so no sun load to heat the interior. The whole interior and all the seat surfaces were approx 77 deg F before I started this test. I started the car and only turned on the cooled seats to the max cooling setting. The A/C was off.

After 5 minutes the bottom seat area where the fan blows air through the seat was at 69 deg F on both seat bottoms. Both seat backs were still at 77 deg F. I checked the temperatures again after 10 minutes of total cooling time and the temperatures were essentially the same as at the 5 min mark.

So it's evident that the bottoms cool and the back don't. Nothing new here, but the backs on mine did not heat up ... they just stayed the same temperature as the rest of the interior.

So ... as said before, we need to hear from Ford IF the back of the seats are designed to cool, or to just blow air. If they are supposed to cool, then the units in the seat backs are defective. If they are not supposed to cool, then someone at Ford needs to be fired! :doh:

I just picked up my car today and the bottom was way cooler and the lower back felt like it was trying to suck off the butt cushion. Either way it seemed to be working but it was only 70 degrees today, we will see how it handles when its 110 degrees.

Can confirm this. :rant:. 92 here today so I decided to turn on my AC seats. Imagine my surprise when the bottom seat blows cool air and the back of the seat proceeds to climb in temp.

It wasn't until I got home that I realized that the back of the seat was extremely hot to the touch right at the top of the map pocket. So uncomfortably hot that you wouldn't leave your hand there. I can't imagine this isn't a fire hazard.

I haven't jumped on the Ford bashing band wagon despite the cornucopia of little issues that seem to pop up on a daily basis with this car, i.e. rattling dash, rattling back passenger panel, air seepage on passenger window, exhaust leak, squealing breaks......

This however, is unacceptable. At best this is poor design, and should have been caught in development. At worst, it's just the fleecing of customers out of money for an upgrade that was never designed to work within proper design parameters.

I can't imagine that continued prolonged use of the AC seat would not be a fire hazard. Today it ran in my car for about 30 min and the rear seat back had to be in excess of 100 degrees. Not ok Ford, not ok!

It wasn't until I got home that I realized that the back of the seat was extremely hot to the touch right at the top of the map pocket. So uncomfortably hot that you wouldn't leave your hand there. I can't imagine this isn't a fire hazard.

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I've worried about this. I haven't used the "cooled" seats for more than about 10 minutes at a time. Using them for 30 minutes or more and I wonder how hot the back of the seat will get at that spot where the fan and/or the Peltier element resides right at top map pocket level.

I've pretty much resigned myself as to this being "normal" operations with all of us posting this up. No need to take my car in and get an answer that says they can't do anything or worse they scratch something up in the process. FordService on this site needs to forward this entire thread to Ford so they can be aware their design doesn't work properly. Disappointing for sure. :(

They really do. These cars need to be reworked so the seats actually work. I don't want to hear any more garbage about this being the intended design. Get your design revised and get these cars fixed!

Free Agent said:

I FordService on this site needs to forward this entire thread to Ford so they can be aware their design doesn't work properly. Disappointing for sure. :(

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RubyRed15 said:

They really do. These cars need to be reworked so the seats actually work. I don't want to hear any more garbage about this being the intended design. Get your design revised and get these cars fixed!

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Exactly ... there is definitely something amiss with the cooling unit in the back of the seats. Too many members coming up with the same answer.

I also see the issue with the backs. Yesterday it was 90 degrees when I left work. I turned the seats on and also turned the air to low for the entire 40 minute drive home. I tried making the car as cold as possible. I checked it with the same infrared tester used earlier in this thread. Bottoms were around 71. The back of the driver seat was 95 degrees after running for 40 minutes. If this is how it should work I want it disconnected.

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Droid_Junky said:

I also see the issue with the backs. Yesterday it was 90 degrees when I left work. I turned the seats on and also turned the air to low for the entire 40 minute drive home. I tried making the car as cold as possible. I checked it with the same infrared tester used earlier in this thread. Bottoms were around 71. The back of the driver seat was 95 degrees after running for 40 minutes. If this is how it should work I want it disconnected.

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I'm thinking along the same lines. Would be nice to pull the connector to the upper seat "cooler"/fan and leave the bottom one on since it works. I would bet the upper seat would be cooler with the upper fan/"cooler" disconnected than it would be with it running and just putting out heat via the fan motor and/or the Peltier unit in the seat back. Wonder if it is possible to wedge your arm up the seat back and feel around for a connector and try to pull it? Sad that we are having to resort to some of these possible measures. :(