Sports seat Electrical Problem

[Taverner]

I have the hard back sports seats. On the passengers side both electrical adjustments work fine. On the drivers side neither of the adjustments work.

I have checked and swapped fuses, all OK. Have partly taken the seat out and checked that there is power to to main connector plug under the seat. This is OK. As I find it difficult to believe that both switches or both motors have ceased to work at the same time, I am trying to find an alternative reason.

The switch is in two parts and at £46 each and I do not want to waste money if that is not the problem althogh my local OPC said the switches do sometimes fail.

Has anyone had this problem and can offer guidance as to what the problm might be.

Michael

 

[Taverner]

Maurice,

Many thanks for your reply, I was thinking I must be the only one who had seat problems. Thanks for the pin numbers. I had worked most of this out for myself and while I know what the switch should do it is difficult to see from the wiring diagram which way it connects.

When I next have time I will take the seat out again and make a more thorough check with my meter. I will let you know what the fault turns out to be in due course, when hopefully I have fixed it.

See you at the Polo. Hope the weather improves a little though.

Michael

 

[Taverner]

I started this thread when I had a problem with one of my electric seats. Just to recap, I have the hard backed sports seats so there are two control buttons for tilt front and rear. The passenger's side worked fine, the driver's side nothing.

After hours spent messing about and testing I have finally found the problem and fixed so all is OK. As the problem was unusual I thought I would mention it here in case others had a similar problem and so save them time. I will not go into all the testing, with misleading results, as that is simply a waste of time.

So to the solution. As both buttons did not work I concluded that it must be a common problem. Under the seat there is an 8 pin plug which connects the wiring loom to the seat. The fault was in the loom part of the plug and I only found the problem by dismantling the plug completely, there is a pull off cover. There are three wires into the plug. One live (red) and serves 3 pins one ground (Brown) serves 4 pins and another (blue) serves one pin. I could not decide what this was for but assumed that it was used if the car had heated seats. The fault lay on the negative, brown wire side. There are two sets of four pins the brown wire is connected to one but the other three pins on that side are connected by metal links in the plug's construction. The seat does not use the pin with the wire attached but uses two of the other pins, which as I said are linked. The problem was that the metal link between the brown wired pin and the next three pins had broken so the ground circuit could not be completed, I could only see this after I had taken the plug to pieces. Rejoined this broken link with solder, reassembled the plug and hey presto all worked.

I have posted the outcome as I thought it was rather an unusual fault and might help others in a similar situation. Also I am glad I didn't give it to my local OPC to solve as I dread to think what the costs might have been.

Michael