What makes the seats get "cooled"? I have heated AND cooled seats.

2006kmls

2006kmls

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I was wonder how they cool the seats?

They sure get cool! Is it part of the a/c system.
 
i "think" there are little holes in the seats and the ac unit runs throught the seats and thats how it get cooled. i think thats how it works but i dont have this feature in my 00 ls8
 
Ken Motz said:
I was wonder how they cool the seats?

They sure get cool! Is it part of the a/c system.
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I believe a Peltier device is used to cool and heat the air, which is pushed throught the seat cushion and seatback by a fan.

Here's a description from the Lincoln Blackwood. I'm pretty sure the Navigator, Aviator, Zephyr, and LS use the same system:


The core of the system is a solid-state device called a Peltier circuit that is integrated into a miniature heat pump in each seat.

The Peltier circuit is named for the 19th-century French physicist Jean Charles Athanase Peltier who discovered the concept of thermoelectric reduction of temperature - that a positive electrical charge generates heat and a negative charge absorbs energy, producing a surface that is cold to the touch. The U.S. military uses Peltier devices to spot-cool heat-sensitive electronic devices.

The Peltier devices used in Blackwood are made of a high-tech sandwich of the metals Telluride and Bismuth. An electrical circuit switches polarity to either heat or cool the surface. The heat pumps, which are not much larger than a deck of playing cards, force heated or cooled air over the surfaces of the Peltier devices and to the seats through flexible ducts. The heated or cooled air exits through the perforations in the leather seating surfaces. The Peltier devices themselves have no moving parts, and the system uses no environmentally sensitive CFCs or other coolants. In operation, the system is very quiet - about 45 decibels - far quieter than the 65 decibels generated by a typical automotive air conditioning system.
Click to expand...

Full article here:

http://www.ford-trucks.com/specs/2002/2002_blackwood_3.html
 
peltier cooling is a very neat technology. starting to use these in PC fans now.
 
beaups said:
peltier cooling is a very neat technology. starting to use these in PC fans now.
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They've had Peltier coolers for PCs for several years (I think the first one I saw was in '98 or '99), but they haven't been widely used because of a critical weakness: when the Peltier device fails, it reverses the heat flow, so it'll cook the processor in no time.

Fortunately, that's not a big problem in a heated/cooled seat, since you can just use the cool switch to heat and the heat switch to cool if it happens...
 
Is it too late for me to put my vote in for a flux capacitor and nitrogen cells?
 
That's exactly the system Ford uses in all their climate controlled seats. Current one way cools and the other way heats. The amount of cooling is based on ambient temps. But it sure works. I love them on my Aviator.

As a side note...except for the switches and a dianostic circuit, the seats or totally self contained. They are on the Aviator at least and I can't see why they would be different on anything else. They can be added to a vehicle that doesn't have them.

Yep...I've done it.
 
Not to get too off topic here, but does anyone know if the filters for the heated/cooled seats are available again? When I took my car in for its 30K mile service a few months ago, changing those filters was part of the process. However, at the time, the filters were on national backorder, so they could not replace them.

Anyone know where this stands?
 
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