This morning I got a delivery from the Aus Post guy. I looked at the pack, with a big Fragile sticker on it and wondered out loud, "Now WTF have I ordered that is fragile?" He replied, "You're my favourite client! You order so much you can't remember what you're getting!"
Opened the pack to find 2 of
these:
Seat heater pads!
($30 from eBay) Rather than go to the effort of stripping the seats to put them under the fabric straight away, I decided that for initial testing, I'd just slip them under the neoprene seat covers. It comes with 2 heaters per set, one for the seat, one for the backrest, a 2 position switch, wiring loom, relay and fuse.
I took a longer time deciding where to wire them up, than it took to install...
Since I already had power going to the back for the fridge on a high current circuit, (potential for 2ndary battery back there), I figured I'd make use of the fuseblock I bought a couple of years ago & never installed under the bonnet. Found that it would fit nicely under the drawer I made a few months ago & wired it in there.
(Looking in from back passenger side door with the seat down.
The switches slip into holes I'll have to drill, later. For now, since the wiring is nicely stiffened & supported by thermofit, I have zip tied them onto the seatbealt sockets.
Initial test, they heat up in a few minutes on high, (red led). Will see how they go over the next few days.
At $30 each, if they are good enough, I'll put 3 in the back seat as well, for the kids!
edit: They pull 4.47A on high & 1.41 on low at ~11.6V. (Have to plug in the charger for the battery. Haven't driven anything but a short trip to the shops for a while!
Yes, checked at the battery & got 11.7V...) So, ~50W high & 16.5W low, (at the moment.)