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My wife's been complaining that her seat heater hasn't been working right. It's a 2009 EX-L with factory heated seats. I fnally drove it long enough to figure out she's right.

The back still heats. The seat bottom does not. If you go back & forth from driver to passenger side with both seats set on high, the passenger side is much, much warmer than driver.

I'm assuming the heating element/pad has gone bad. But before I go to the (HUGE) hassle of taking the seat cover off I was wondering if there are other points of failure to consider. I'm assuming both back and bottom are on the same fuse, so since the back still warms I think electrical is ok.

So I'm thinking it's a matter of getting the cover off and replacing the heating pad/element. Honda OEM part is over a hundred bucks just for the seat bottom. Any reason I can't just get a new generic and wire into the factory harness?

Any advice? Pitfalls to watch for? Anything more I should do while I have it apart?

All advice is appreciated.

EDIT: The thought struck me -- Can I simply check resistance with my multimeter without taking the seat cover off? Theoretically, the resistance of the heating pads should match if I can compare the passenger side to the drivers side. Or, is the resistance of a heating pad going to be so high it will look like an open circuit on a DMM?