Originally Posted by AMP

As an aside here.... you can power the entire seat out of the car to test everything and make sure that it's functioning properly.

On the harness connector to the seat you'll see a number of different sized pins. The two largest blade type pins are the power feed. If you pop the hood off of the back of the connector you'll find a brown wire and a red/yellow wire feeding these pins. Brown is ground and red/yellow is B+. Make up some short cables using female slip-on spades (to slide onto the pins in the harness connector) and connect the other end to a 12V power source (I use a jumper pack). At this point you can operate all of the seat controls and make sure that it's all working before re-installing the seat in the car.

Normally I would post pin numbers, but I'm taking a long weekend and don't have the wiring diagrams here.

I usually use a heat gun (as you would use for heat-shrink tubing or stripping paint) to get the barrels off of the cables.

Originally Posted by tradin1

you dont need to remove the cord out of the plug, thats extra unnecessary work. when you determine which cord it is you need to lengthen, you can carefully cut off a half inch of the black cover AROUND THE METAL INSIDE THE COVER, and you are done.

much quicker doing it that way, i helped hdhntr do his at adams last weekend and he will tell you it only took 20-30 minutes max.

Originally Posted by doc$holliday

So you're saying you were able to leave the cord completely plugged into the motor and connected to its metal tip, yet cut away the black insulation and somehow push the cable further into the metal tip? Sounds interesting but I'm a little confused by the description here. Although certainly some people have gotten more lucky than others with this DIY, sometimes those cables only need a little heat and sometimes they are a real PITA.

SP

Originally Posted by tradin1

you cut off a piece of the rubber insulation in the middle of the line, and once you cut it, it pushes itself in by itself, slap some black tape on there to keep it together, and its good as doing it your way.

Originally Posted by doc$holliday

Good info on powering the seat outside of the vehicle. The only thing to remember is that the seat sitting on the floor of your garage does not equal the seat as placed on the rails inside the car. This method to power it is great if you already know you have the two motors properly aligned and would like to test it out before putting the seat back in the Beast!

Thanks for the good tip.
SP

Originally Posted by doc$holliday

Okay, so I learned two things the hard way recently: First, if you are going to do the twisted seat repair, do everything possible to get it right the FIRST time because repeating all this 3x is a major PITA. Second, if you are going to do a writeup about it, do it in Word and then copy it into the thread...because if your computer reboots, you lose everything you typed. Ugh.

Enough about all that. I know I took a LOT more photos but I'm having trouble locating some of them now, so I will just have to go with what I've got here. I'm going to go through this procedure as it pertained to me, which is to say that I had to do the full Monty on this repair. There are several places where you may get lucky and not have to do all these steps. Let's just say that a simple "look under the seat, heat up the black wire and pull it out" fix did NOT work for me.

A note about airbags (SRS): I had no issues with this. Make sure you leave the key in the house or whatever and do NOT insert it at any time when your seat is unplugged. Follow that and you'll be fine. Also note that the power seats and such only operate for a certain amount of time, say 15-20 mins, when a door is initially opened and there are no keys in the ignition. So if at any point you are wondering "why don't my seat controls work?", it could be that your doors have been open for too long, just shut them, reopen and resume.

What you will most likely need: A socket wrench and assorted size sockets, a smaller flat-blade screwdriver, various pliers, possibly a cordless drill, an 8mm box wrench (one that ratchets if you have it!), a plastic level, something to heat with (I prefer a small handheld butane torch from Home Depot, works absolutely perfectly for $15 or whatever and looks like a small gun), razor knife, someplace clean to set your seat, and probably a helper elf to pull this heavy-@ss seat out of the Beast.

Summary of the issue: the reason your seat is twisting (half of it is raising, or tilting back, or whatever) is because all of the motions that are available are controlled by motors underneath. Each silver motor has two black cables running into it (one on each side) and each cable does half the seat. Inside the black, plasticky insulation is actually a mechanical cable with ridges in it. Something inside the motor clamps onto those ridges and physically spins the cable (inside the black insulation), creating a winding motion and moving the seat. One of your motors has lost half of its spinning, which means the mechanical cable has become "disconnected". What you are looking to do now is to pull that cable out, cut back the insulation to allow more of the cable to push into the motor, and reinsert so that the motor spins both halves of the seat together again. Sounds easy, right??

First, try to manipulate the controls of the seat such that everything is in "normal" position. In other words, the seat bottom and seat back are level. Sure, they may not be where you want them (since you were trying to move the seat in the first place, right?) but just get them level.

Step 1: Seat Removal - Raise the seat vertically to allow easier access to removing it. If you have never removed your seat before, you need to take out the metal stopper piece in the seat track behind the driver's seat. Ignore this if you are working on your passenger seat. The stopper is in the right side track, here is a pic:

Now you can move the seat all the way back to access the bolts in the front. There are two in the front and two in the back, all size 13mm or whatever it is. The ones in the back are protected, pull aside the plastic like this:


While you are underneath there, you need to disconnect the seat belt. Here is a photo of the bolt you need to remove, after which the belt will pull up through the plastic trim and separate from the seat (it stays hanging in the car):


Now, in the same area (lower left behind seat, for the driver side) you need to remove the seat belt tensioner pin. It's sort of like a cotter-pin, you'll figure it out. This thing is what keeps tension on the seatbelt as the seat moves forward and back. Here's a closesup:


Okay, there is only one more thing to do in order to get the seat out of the car (or, if you are feeling lucky and want to attempt it, you can try to do the repair while your seat is merely laying all the way back so you can access underneath it while working in the footwell area. Personally, I don't recommend it. Anyhow, the one thing is to disconnect the power cable to the seat. This will erase your memory seat settings, as they are kept in the seat, not in the buttons on the door. Here is a picture of the cable:



Before you pull this cable out and disconnect seat power, let me say this: you really prefer to have the seat raised to max vertical height before taking it from the car. It will make your work on the motors easier. Also, it may be good to tilt the seat back and disconnect a motor or two to figure out which one operates the seat function that is messed up. Do this now before you pull power and take the seat out.

Step 2: Motors and cables
I def wish I had those other pics, they were much better at showing the entire bottom side of the seat. If I find them later, I'll edit this thread. Anyways, now you have the seat out and flipped upside down. You need to know which motor of the 3 is controlling the seat function that is twisting up. I'm running out of time for now so I'll assume you found out which one it is. Here is a pic, there are two motors in this one: one is middle right side, between the two large black support bars and the other is in the upper right corner. You can see the black cable going into it pretty clearly.

Each motor has 4 screws, they are 8mm I think. They will be very difficult to get at, in some cases. Those screws HAVE to be loosened at least somewhat in order to pull the black cable (with metal tip) out of the motor. Having those 4 screws tightened down is what locks the cable into the motor. You will need to bend some of the seat's metal tabs out of the way to access some screws, you'll see what I mean. The alternative is that if you want to try to heat up the black cable near the motor, and pull it out to work on it while leaving the metal tip embedded in the motor, you can try. It's going to be difficult but some people got lucky with that, aka anyone that was able to just get under their seat, heat it up with a lighter and do the repair. Good luck with that.

Here is a photo where I have bent a tab, removed some screws and pulled out the cable:


Here is what the cable looks like:


You need about a half inch of the metal ridged cable exposed in order for the motor to grip it properly. Once you find yours, odds are that it's shortened to about 1/4" or less exposed. Use your heat source to heat up the metal tip and pliers to pull it up and off the black insulation. Yes, this can be a real PITA. Keep at it. Trust me, that butane torch is awesome for this. Use a razor knife to cut away the black insulation to get the proper amount exposed. Then you have to heat it up again and reattach the metal tip. Once it's ready, plug it back in the motor and reassemble whatever you took apart.

In theory, that should do it and you should be able to reverse all this to complete the procedure. HOWEVER, that may not be it. Here are additional issues that can come up:

1) you were unable to get the seat level previously and so now the two halves of the motor are not synced up right. This happened to me, I put it all back together and found that one buttcheek was sitting at least a half inch lower than the other. This will eventually drive you crazy. So, you need to re-sync the two motor halves. What you can do is all the above, make sure the black cable is all repaired and ready. Before reattaching to motor, put the seat back in the car. Make sure it is in the exact proper location where all the bolts are aligned. Why? Because the seat is weird, trust me on this one, if you are going to level it you ONLY want to do it when it's in the car in its normal spot. Otherwise, what is "level" on your garage floor won't be level in the car. I found this out the hard way.

So, you have put the seat back in the car with the black cable hanging loose. Pull it out so you can get at it, grab your cordless drill and wind that sucker (whichever way it is) until you get stuff leveled. Here is a pic to help you envision this:


2) now it's leveled out. Take seat back out, reattach cable to motor, reassemble everything, put back in car, finish it all off and you should be good.

Okay, that's all for now, I gotta go catch a flight to Vegas for the weekend. I hope that helps some of you guys, send me a PM if you need anything and I should get it via my email.

cheers

Sean Paul

Originally Posted by tradin1

you dont need to remove the cord out of the plug, thats extra unnecessary work. when you determine which cord it is you need to lengthen, you can carefully cut off a half inch of the black cover AROUND THE METAL INSIDE THE COVER, and you are done.

much quicker doing it that way, i helped hdhntr do his at adams last weekend and he will tell you it only took 20-30 minutes max.

Originally Posted by doc$holliday

So you're saying you were able to leave the cord completely plugged into the motor and connected to its metal tip, yet cut away the black insulation and somehow push the cable further into the metal tip? Sounds interesting but I'm a little confused by the description here. Although certainly some people have gotten more lucky than others with this DIY, sometimes those cables only need a little heat and sometimes they are a real PITA.

SP

Originally Posted by tradin1

you cut off a piece of the rubber insulation in the middle of the line, and once you cut it, it pushes itself in by itself, slap some black tape on there to keep it together, and its good as doing it your way.

Originally Posted by doc$holliday

Ahh I get what you're saying. That sounds even better and I'll give it a shot on my passenger side one of these days. thanks!

SP

Originally Posted by tradin1

you cut off a piece of the rubber insulation in the middle of the line, and once you cut it, it pushes itself in by itself, slap some black tape on there to keep it together, and its good as doing it your way.

Originally Posted by primeral

1) seat doesn't need to be level at the time of repair, you can worry about it later

2) if you haven't done it before, it might be difficult for you to see which cables need repairing. You will need to unbolt the seat from the floor of the car to at least have the ability to tilt the entire seat backwards so you can look underneath. I couldn't work like that, so I put towels over my steering wheel and door trim to protect them from scratches during seat extraction. Be careful because the seat is relatively large and heavy.

3) Once you've identified which cable needs fixing, pick the best spot on the black sheathing / jacket where you have access to manipulate it. I think a good tool for doing this is with a wire stripper, and using the 14 gauge stripper. You aren't supposed to cut the cable underneath, just the black insulating jacket. Anywhere between 2-3cm from that cut make another cut. Then use a sharp utility knife to join the two cuts so you can peel that 2-3cm of jacketing off.

4) From here you can pull the metal cable from the motor completely, with its part of the black jacket intact, and use a portable drill to twist the metal cable to level the seat out.

5) It is a good idea to move the seat back into the vehicle to have it sit properly and you can perform some fine tuning with matching the heights or reclination. Don't bolt the seat back up yet, you will need to tilt the seat back to complete the job.. Again, use the exposed cable and a portable drill. Once it's nice, put the metal cable back into the black jacket, into the motor. Since you removed 2-3cm of jacket, the metal cable should now have the ability to be inserted 2-3cm farther into the motor.

6) Connect the seat's electrical connector to the seat. While making sure the two cut ends are butted together with one hand, try to use the seat switch to see if both sides move in unison. It's just a matter of motor turning cable turning gear.

7) Once you are satisfied with this, you need to permanently attach both ends of the cable to each other. A crimped ferrule or metal sleeve or something would be my prime choice, but I didn't have one handy so I used packaging tape. It's ghetto, but it's nowhere near as ghetto as the gangsta lean a twisted seat provides. Clear packing tape worked well for me, and it had good adhesion.

8) Disregard females

9) Acquire currency