Max heat setting for V70 heated seats?

I couldn't find anything in the archives about this. If I missed
something please feel free to point me towards the relevant
discussion.

Anyway, I have a 2004 V70. I was told by the dealer that the seats can
only be turned up to 109.5F. That seems paltry and the seats are not
as warm as the '89 245 or the 2004 Accord I own.

Am I at the limit? Am I not? Is there a way around the limit or
another fix?

Thanks.

 

You may want to have the heaters on your V70 checked if they are not
warming up the seats. On my 2004 V70 the high setting takes the chill
off pretty fast and a minute or two of sitting captures enough of that
radiated heat that it is borderline uncomfortable and the seat heater
gets turned off.

I'm thinking that a maximum temperature beyond 10 degrees above normal
body temperature would get uncomfortably hot very quickly. The idea
behind seat heaters is to raise the seat temperature from some very
low number to body temperature. Not to boil water.

 

Well, they work, if by that you mean hitting the switch makes the seat
less cold. I cannot feel anything I would call heat either sitting in
it or putting my hand on it.

"Too hot to touch" is roughly 160F. I was able to find heated seats on
line that went to about 135F.

The seats were originally set at 98F, which is just silly. The dealer
cranked them to 109.5F. What am I to do now, take the car back in, get
charged an hour's work only to be told they *do* work?

 

AFAIK your Volvo-dealer is able to adjust the max heat of your seat
heating. It is adjustable in the series you own. At least my
owners-manual says that for my 2005 V70 D5.

Your welcome,

Joerg

 

That is the temperature for cooking most meat. Hardly comfortable.

Heat output is cumulative when you are sitting on the seat. It builds
up and that seat would get very hot, indeed dangerous if temperatures
were held to that level. I doubt that you would find a seat that
heats to 135 degrees let alone 160 degrees to at all comfortable.
Think about what happens to your body once the outside temperature
begins to approach and exceed body temperature.

That's human body temperature which would seem to be about the right
temperature setting.

Yup.
They do work as designed. Seat heaters are designed to do little more
than take the chill off the seat bottom raise it to body temperature.
Why anyone would want a seat to be radiating heat at 160 degrees is
beyond comprehension.

 

I wasn't aruuing for seats that hot, just giving some temp
comparisons.

The questions still remains why my seats are not as hot as the Volvo I
owned before this one or the Honda Accord I currently own. Neither my
wife nor I find them satisfactory.

 

We've also found the haeted seats in our 2001 V70 not as good as an S40 we
had before. How do you turn the heat up?

E.

 

I can't tell you much about model-to-model differences. But I don't
know how you could accurately compare the temperature output to a car
that is no longer with you. There are too many variables.

Does both the low and high heat setting work on your car seats?

 

I can tell you which felt warmer. That's pretty easy to differentiate.

Yes. The single light setting is barely noticeable to my bare hand.
The double light setting is noticeable but tepid.

 

They are not designed to be instantaneous hand (or seat) warmers.
They are designed to radiate a certain amount of heat that is held in
by your rear end covering the entire seating area. Heat is trapped
and builds up usually within a minute or two. A more precise if less
sales oriented description would be that they are chill removers.

 

My '01 V70 heated seats are the first ones that had two levels of heat.
That is the only adjustment: high, low, off. I find that they are very
hot, my wife says the aren't hot. I wear a short coat and my trousers
are the only thing between my leg and the seat and it gets uncomfortably
hot. My wife wears a long coat, so she never feels the heat.

Heated seats are actually intended to take the chill out of the seat and
provide a neutral surface, not heat up your body. Of course the heat
is much more important with a leather seat than with a fabric seat.
Leather gets hot in the summer and stays cold in the winter. Fabric is
neutral all year long. It seams that Volvo heated seats have a thermal
switch that detects when the heat is getting too high and turns them
down to a low setting. That is entire an empirical observation. I have
never taken one apart and seen the thermal switch.

 

maybe the fat tissue is different as well my passenger seat rippled because
of too much heat now its fine after use with out the heater on

 

I'm not that bothered - it's just that the S40 seats were much warmer and
faster to heat up than our V70 (both cars have leather seats).

E.

 

The S40 seats are a lot smaller....

 

And I think our bottoms have got bigger...

E.