Ok, so I was going to swap the tired old seats in my 1985 380SE with the ones out of an early 1987 420SEL. They seemed similar, the place said they could swap...and they can...except for all of the wiring. The old and new driver's side both have memory, yet none of the wiring matches. The new passenger side has memory and the old one doesn't.

Two questions: 1 - which would be easier, swapping all the wiring/motors or taking the leather/pads/springs from one and putting it onto the other? 2 - How do I go about doing whichever is easier? I need this to be done, at least the driver's side, by early Wednesday morning.

Thanks,
Richard

It's been awhile since I had a W126. IIRC the seat bolts to the track/frame. Personally I would try to leave the existing switches,wires,motors and try to swap only the seats. You're gonna have to take a look under the seat and see how it attached.

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Yeah, I've gotten down into it. The connectors for the motors up in the inside are different too, they are totally incompatible, so I have to swap all the motors and the computer. I've got the passenger seat done (though I still have to bolt it in, but I tried it out and it works. Now I'm taking a break and will do the driver's (now that I've done one this one I don't imagine will take more than a couple of hours).

Why not use the control box under the driver's seat from the original car? The connections to the motors might cause some grief, but you have the old connectors and the color of the wires should be the same, maybe just a few extra wires on the new seat (for memory)

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Well, my soldering skills are only ok, I wouldn't have wanted to do all that soldering. What I did on the driver's side was swap the computer/motor harness at the bottom, and that was enough, but for the passenger side every single thing electrical had to be changed (not just were the plugs different, but the actual connectors at the end of each lead were different).

Hi, maybe somebody'd help: I've changed the seats in my w126 '83 SEC with a '89 one, the new one is with memory function and orthopedic backrest, the old one was only electrical.
I need the two memory computers under the seats (couse it's missing), two vacuum switches for the backrest and a central lock pump with two pipes.
Thanks

The seat backs get removed with a 2 bolts on each side at the rear base of he seat frame.

The tracks are screwed on with 3 P3 screws per side.

I usually take the seat out of the vehicle, take the back off, then you can easily throw the bottom in the car to electrically move the seat tracks forward and back to access the screws holding them together.

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I just put 89 126 seats in my 84 300sd ... I was able to make it work by taking all of the motors/wiring/drive cables from my old seats and putting them in the new seats.


Its not too bad of a job, took about 45 minutes a seat.

I also have all the stuff from the 89 seats if anyone needs it. Email me @ billy at billyvandervalk dot com

How about if the seats are not electric? i got a 83 280se, where the seats aren't electric, how can i upgrade to electric ones?

I wouldn't even waste time thinking about it.

I think you are right! i'll just need to fix the driver seat, it quite low and i'm kind of short. A pillow would do it, but i plan to fix it with some foam materials.

Years ago a I put electric (orthopaedic) memory seats in my 300SE, great improvement.
It took one afternoon to install the wiring and swap the seats.
For the wiring I took a shortcut by routing the power wires to the battery and install a separate fuse box..

Rob