BMW heated vest not working

[rubberscrubber]

Is there anyone nearish to Gainsborough, Lincs willing to let me try my Jacket on their controller and vice versa..

or can you measure voltages from the plug and resistances of the jacket heating elements at the 4 pin connector..

Jacket is the latest version with the high/ low controller, 2 red led's.

 

[cookie]

if it's the same jacket i had, it's a case of "they all do that sir". rubbish connector to blame.

i had my vest replaced, when that failed, i got a refund and an EXO.

 

[rubberscrubber]

the connector looks fine and the pins appear to be ok with no corrosion, I guess they must fail internally.

 

[Steptoe]

Test the vest by connecting it directly to a 12v battery.

 

[shugie]

The connectors fail, or rather the wires going into the connector don't have decent strain relief, and eventually fail.

I cut the connector out and soldered permanent joins on mine with heatshrink over. OK I've lost the convenience of the connector, so the wire is always attached, but it does work.

Assuming yours is the waistcoat type which is partly silver, there are two pairs of wires, from memory one pair is blue and the other pair grey, and the cables are different sizes. The lighter cables are, I think, connected to some sort of temperature sensor, and the heavier to the heating element. Since the two circuits for sensing and heating are not connected in the jacket itself, you don't need to worry about polarity, so connect blue to power and away you go.

The controller turns the current on and off to maintain the set temperatures, you can feel the jacket getting hot for a bit, then cooling down, then getting hot again. I tend to use it on the higher setting, which seems to be on pretty much all the time.

 

[Pukmeister]

If all else fails I can wholeheartedly recommend the Kais heated vest, cheap but certainly not poor quality.

 

[rubberscrubber]

Fixed it, you can see in the pictures that a solder join has failed, more than likely down to poor skills from some 8 year old.
took a bit of finding the other end in the lining, but found it in the end. Made a bit of a mess hacking into the lining, but is being repaired as we speak.
So if you have 1 of these and is not working, don't give up hope.
tested and showing 3 amps