Power Seat Motors

[bustedbenz]

I've never taken a seat apart. What kind of trouble am I looking at here?

I let somebody else drive the MB today (I was riding) - and they had to adjust the seat from where I keep it set (5'4" people don't drive cars set for 6'4" people without some minor problems). The particular adjustment that seems to have died is the rear portion of the seat up/down adjuster. The seat back recliner works perfectly, the seat sled forward-backward functions perfectly, and the front half of the seat goes up and down perfectly.

When I tried to re-adjust the car back to my driving position after I took the wheel again, my last correction was to lower the back portion of the seat. So, I did, without issue. I lowered it a little too far, and ran into trouble when I tried to raise it back up again. When I raise that part of the switch, I hear the seat motor engage, but the seat never actually moves. Sounds about like... well, a motor free-wheeling that has been clutched out of whatever it's supposed to engage. It'll do this indefinitely without ever "grabbing" the seat and moving it upward again. I didn't want to mess with it too much going down further because it was already uncomfortable for me to drive, but it seems to be willing to go down, just not up.


Is this enough information to provide a guess on what decided to break and how hard it's going to be to fix?


This is getting slightly old. I've already had a window switch break this week. Physically can't push the switch to "Up", it's damaged inside or there's a piece broken preventing the button from pressing. Works fine going down of course. The window I use the most, of course. :-/ End of rant.