Well... I had the day off yesterday so I decided to run to the dealer and pick up a new seat heater element for the drivers side chair back ($129.00). It took me about 4 hours to replace it because I wasn't quite sure exactly how to get the seat cover off (they are tight as a drum). I ended up being able to roll the seat cover up just enough to get the job done because I couldn't figure out how to remove the armrest. Here's some info for those who might be attempting the same thing:
1. Pull the SIR fuse (airbags) under the hood, and wait 15 min
2. Remove 4 bolts holding the seat track to the truck floor (2 in front, 2 in back). Don't unhook wires yet as you will need power to slide the seat back and forth as you do this. The rear bolts can be undone with a 11mm deep socket, the front bolts with a 15mm deep socket (or 5/8 spark plug deep socket if you dont have one as in my case). NOTE: 2 of the bolts you need to get to are underneath plastic housings so remove these carefully.
3. lean the seat back a little (this will give you more room to work if you dont want to remove the chair back from the seat-- I actually at one point tried to remove my chair back by undoing the 2 bolts, but mine was stuck real good so I gave up)
4. Unhook main wire harness and the 2 wire harness
5. Put seat on tailgate and disconnect the 6 wire seat heater element wiring harness (see picture of my burnt one)
6. Connector is wired as follows:
Black Brown Seat bottom element: Mine measured 4.1 ohm between these 2
Black/R Black/R
Black Yellow Seat back element: My burnt one measured 7.0 ohm between these 2 ( the new one was 4.7 ohm )
7. If you want to save $130 and just get your seat bottom working again, I think you may be able to put a 4.7 ohm resistor in here and then you wouldnt have to take the seat cover off, though I didn't try it.
8. The seat back cover hooks together at the bottom. Insert a long skinny flathead screw driver down the center to unhook the long black plastic strips that are hooked together.
9. pull seat cover up as far as you can ( a little at a time on each side). This part required quite a bit of effort on my seat.
10. At this point you will have (barely) enough room to remove the old element that is stuck to the padding and put in the new one. For the new one, I recommend sticking the bottom taped end down first, then roll the element underneath the seat cover until the top taped end is in
11. If you've gotten this far, putting it back together is self explanatory. When putting the seat back on put all bolts in loosely first to ensure good alignment then tighten them down.
While I had my seat out I also put some 3in1 oil in the seat belt spindle since it has been making squeaking noises for the last 6 months