One cold day when their was some frost on the Z28, I went outside and started it to let it warm up and turned on the rear-defrost. Came out 2-3 minutes later, got in and sat in the car. Went to adjust the power seats (wife had driven it the night before) and the switch would not worked. After screwing with it for a couple minutes, I check the fuse and it appears the rear-defrost and the power seat is used by the same fuse (big metal one). Problem is that I could barely touch it because it was so hot. After the rear-frost went off, the fuse cooled down and I could actually move the seats. Thoughts on what is going on.

It's a 99 Z28 with driver side power seat...

 

thats odd...never experienced anything like it......

 

Check the connection for the power seat, on the bottom of the seat, if thats fine, one of two things happend:
1) Fuse is Blown
2) Motor died out


either way, good luck with the seat.

 

This happened on my friends 98 WS6, the rear defroster and the power seats both use the same circuit breaker. If you use the rear defrost too much, it will trip the circuit breaker, and then the power seats also wont work. The easy way to fix this is to replace the circuit breaker (its in the drivers side fuse panel) with a 30 amp fuse.

 

Didn't you read his post completely? He said that the seat moved after the rear defroster was turned off, so it couldn't be a blown fuse or a blown motor.

What V6 Punk 93 said is correct. The fuse is overloaded. Replacing it with a higher capacity one will fix the problem. In my old Saturn, I was constantly blowing out the 10 amp fuse for my radio when I had the volume cranked. Replacing it with a 20 amp fixed that.

 

I will have to check but I think it is a big Silver one that is 30amps already, their are two silver ones in their, maybe I will swap them and see if the problem moves to the other thing (whatever the other silver one is for).

Thanks for the replies

 

I had the exact same problem ~3 weeks ago, except now my rear defroster is not working properly --- it cuts out after ~90 seconds instead of staying on a few minutes until the window is cleared. See my thread about that problem.

I've got the car booked into the dealership for Monday morning..............I don't see how swapping a 30A breaker for a 30A fuse is going to help..............then I'll just have to keep replacing fuses. Besides..........it's a brand new car!! The rear defroster worked in my '81 Camaro, so why doesn't it work in my '02?! I'll let the dealer figure this one out.....................and I'll let you guys know what the outcome is.

 

Capn Pete,
We are having exactly the same problem, let me know what they say as my car is not under warranty so I will probably be flippin' the bill...

 

If you happened to read my thread, you'd see that "Dimoncutr" had the same problem, and apparently the whole glass had to be replaced!? Hopefully that's not the problem (especially if you have to pay for it yourself) but whatever it is, obviously it's pretty common, and I'd like it to be resolved. Again, IMO, I think it's a poor engineering design.

Anyway........I'll let ya know on Monday what they say about it.