We've been in Londoninium over the weekend with the tin tent, left there this morning to come home, putting things away and hitching up was pretty damp inducing, both Mrs E and I got cold and wet ..... so as she does she puts on the seat heater to warm herself up ..........
We are on the M25, I'm doing 60 mph (max whilst towing) nice and comfortable in lane 3 of the 4 lanes, overtaking a posse of HGVs who appear to have speed differentials of 0.05 mph and continually overtake each other, when a smell of burning starts ..... followed by a loud expletive from Mrs E as she leans forward away from the backrest ... I glance down and smoke is starting to drift from the area of the small of her back !!!! ...
Switch off the heated seat PDQ, and accelerate a tad to clear the HGVs, but being aware of doing anything daft with 1600Kgs of tin tent on the back, get clear of the outer truck and move into lane 2 .... still 2 trucks to get past ... smell is not getting worse .... smoke appears to have stopped, but the seat back still feels VERY hot .. Mrs E is perched on the front edge of the seat by now ..... so I continue past the last two trucks and into lane 1 .. trying to decide if I need to stop on the hard shoulder (the most dangerous part of any motorway) ... but we continue as things are not getting worse ........
Eventually get to the next services and pull in to have a proper look ... there is a nice 50p sized scorch/burn mark, although the leather is not quite punctured, right on one of the seams where the small of her back would have been... so I think that seat heater is FUBAR... I'll work out how to isolate it tomorrow
Alls well that ends well ...... but .... if it hadn't of "gone out" so quickly... or it had ignited fully / faster ... it would have been very tricky getting somewhere safe to evacuate .... especially as there was 60 litres of LPG in the boot at that moment ....