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I've been to the dealer twice already for this issue. First time around they told me the standard "it's working as it should" BS. Second time around...I pulled up unannounced and had the service manager sit in my truck as it was running. The seat back she was sitting on was hot to the touch with the so called "AC Seats" on 3 bars. At that point she acknowledged that there is definitely an issue. I had her turn the cooling off to show her that the seats actually get cooler with the feature turned off. Again, she agreed with me as the seats did get cooler. It was late in the day at that point and the service techs had already gone home. She wanted me to take it back in the next day but I'd rather wait for a TSB to be issued than be inconvenienced by having to get another rental so they can use my truck as a guinea pig for a day or two just to tell me they didn't fix anything and still don't know what’s causing the issue.
So after reading these posts and waiting weeks for someone to tell us all that they found the cure for our ailing seats issues...I finally decided to pull the cover up on the seat back and take a look at what’s going on in there.
When I got the seat cover up, the very first thing I noticed is that there are no ducts supplying or taking air away from the TED device. There is a small blower with an integrated air filter built in that directs air up a small channel into the TED device and then directly into the duct that supplies the seat. While sitting in the back seat watching this device work (or try to) I was being blasted in the face with very warm to hot air.
This warm air was originating from the heatsink attached to the TED. (red arrow in pic) The blower either a.) is not connected properly to the TED allowing air to flow only over the 'cooled' portion of the device and then into the seat or b.) the airflow is divided in such a way to allow the dissipated heat to be removed from the heatsink and also push air across the 'cool' side of the device and into the seat.
Either way...the fan was causing a tremendous amount of warm/hot air to be blown into the seat cavity. (There are no ducts to remove this hot air) So while this is happening, the fan is pulling air in from the same seat cavity. The recirculated hot air becomes even hotter over time as I was watching the unit work. The way this is setup...it's terribly inefficient. I'm no engineer, mind you, but I believe without proper ducting to provide the TED with cool(er) air from say below the seat AND to REMOVE the hot air that the TED heatsink produces...this unit will never work properly.
In the picture where is the intake? I'll be opening mine soon... When it was open did it cool any better?
Ford will address this issue eventually, the more that complain, the sooner we'll have a fix. How long did it take for the rear center armrest fix....will probably take the same amount of time for a fix on this.
What a shame that such a wonderful product otherwise has some of these issues....but it looks like the rear armrest go fixed on the lines then a TSB went out to the field....maybe there is hope for this to be corrected without a major redesign. The massage function must have sent the old design over the proverbial edge in terms of "stuff" in the seat backs and frankly I would do without massage if the cooling just worked...we live in Arizona....thankfully about 5,500 ft. though so not as hot as Phoenix.
BTW....tried out my 2013 yesterday and in all settings of the lumbar, there was no difference in air flow....had cool air bottoms and up the seat backs...as the 2015s should do. Some mentioned they thought the 2015 cooling differed depending on the lumbar seating. We all know the information that only the lower seats should cool is a load of BS!!
Has anyone directly compared the 2013 design of the cooling with the 2015 to see what really changed in the 2015s!!?? If so, I missed it in the threads on the topic.....
So I'm noticing something strange. If I fiddle with the lumbar at all, the seat back won't cool. However, if after this I turn off the truck and restart it, the seat back will start to cool some. Not sure if that sheds any more light on this.
I would like to note that I'm not experiencing the seat-backs getting hotter with the cooling turned on. They're definitely warming up without it from the ambient heat and my back, and if anything I see little difference with the cooling turned on, unless I cycle the truck.
Still weird that for the first two days the seat back cooled amazingly well, and now it's only kinda weakly cooling. I don't know about anyone else, but that seems like some kind of electrical problem...but I'm not sure what would be controlling the seat bottom from the seat back separately.
Dealer just called and told me Ford said it was normal for the seat back to not cool. This is even with it being escalated.
Well from the number of failures, it appears that it is "normal" for the seat backs to not cool.
What is so irritating about all this is that Ford has not at least issued some sort of advisory to all the service departments to make them aware that there "may be" an issue with the seats cooling. In this advisory, they could at least inform them of what the seats should do and what to look for so that we don't have service departments wasting our time and their time with bull****. Especially the departments that say the backs should not be cooling. At least give them all a consistent line of bull**** so they don't look like idiots when some of them say the seat backs should not cool. Also give them a consistant method of testing and reporting so good data is collected and passed up to engineering.
To fellow posters, can we all agree to stop speculating about whether the back of the seats 'should' be cooling? We know they 'should' be cooling.
1. Most if not all of us experienced them cooling for at least some period of time.
2. We have seen a parts diagram showing that there is a cooling unit in both the top and bottom areas of the seat.
3. We have seen a picture of the seat back cover off showing that the upper cooling units are installed and so should be cooling the backs of the seats.
Furthermore, can we all agree to stop speculating whether only the lumbar area of the seat back should cool? From the parts diagram and the open seat back picture, we see that the cool air discharge is in the middle of the seat back and so we know that the entire seat back should get cool air. Granted the cool air will drop and so the lumbar area may get a little cooler, and in heat mode the top of the seat get a little warmer but the entire back of the seat should be conditioned not just the lumbar area like some Ford reps have been stating.
I suggest that we take the pictures of the seat diagram and the open seat back from prior posts, to the service department when taking the truck in, to educate the service departments that may still be inclined to say that the seat backs are not supposed to cool.
Oh FFS, really? This just in - giant corporations move very slowly. Do you want them to just back-of-the-napkin whip up a fix that might work for awhile? Or should they engineer a much more permanent quality solution to correct this problem for good? That can take months in design, prototyping, testing, manufacturing, developing installation procedures, etc.
Now I'm not necessarily saying that's what they're doing... but keep in mind that everyone here is only hearing what their dealer service departments say, and they're not exactly known for their reliability, or they just don't have any better information. So the best they can do is log those service calls and presumably someone further down the line is working on it. That's all we can hope for at the moment.
Don't get me wrong I love my truck, but don't try and make excuses for this issue. Ford put themselves in this position when they let such an obvious design flaw slip through in the first place.
..but I'm not sure what would be controlling the seat bottom from the seat back separately.
Easy, the seat bottom and top have two completely seperate thermal units and fans and vent systems such as it is.
The top unit could be malfunctioning completely independent from the bottom unit. In fact with all the heat coming from the heat sink on the top unit but not being vented out properly it may be a wonder that the upper unit is not malfunctioning.
06-24-2015, 08:57 AM
