Both electric seats in the S4 don’t work. The driver side is jammed all the way forward with the recline waaaay back to compensate so you aren’t chewing steering wheel. For those of you like Ernest who “hated” driving like this in high school, you’d feel right at home. For the rest of us, me in particular, I’ll fix it. The passenger seat is almost opposite. Un-recline puts you in a Ron Jeremy position. When he was thinner that is.
I pulled the passenger seat last week, brought it home and started the rebuild process to fix operation. First off will be replacing the stripped plastic white gears. I did that by trying to manually move the seat forward and back with a hex wrench. Seems as though that part was stuck from lack of grease. Then I tore down the switches which are usually the fault. The contacts get worn and dirty. A new switch will set you back $125 so I took my time balancing balls on top of springs after cleaning and adjusting contacts.
This project is kinda a pain that I don’t look forward to doing again if the fix isn’t in for more than a few years. I simply don’t know how long the contacts will last. But to replace the switches, I’d have to remove the seats and pull out the wiring anyway. And that’s half the battle. Once they are out, I might as well pull apart the switch and save 4x$125.
Paul
That’s double bad luck, expensive switches that don’t last. Would be nice to have a reasonably priced replacement ot have they improved the quality hence the high price?? Love the resto Wed posts, thanks.
Groosh
Thanks again Paul! I guess the switches lasted almost 30 years unless they were replaced prior. But I don’t think so because the zip ties holding wiring underneath looked original.
My concern is that once metal is bent, like in the case with the tiny tabs, their rigidity goes down and they may bend out of tolerance more quickly. When that happens, the little ball on top of the spring can fall off rendering the switch useless for that particular movement.