83 300SD seat switch replacement options?

[Travis_k]

It seems that whoever designed the seat swiches on this year forgot they were designing a mercedes and hard wired the switches into the wiring harness rather than using a plug. Would it work to just cut the plugs off a correctly designed one (of a different year with a switch that plugs in) and use the switch from that?

[scamandin]

My experience with Mercedes is the color coding system is almost (almost) universal.

I recently changed the drivers seat with a later model 126 seat and noticed different plugs. All but three wires were the same. I took some pictures of both plugs for reference and proceeded to put the wires in the old plug in locations of the old wires on the new plug. Except for my seat going back when I push it forward, everything else works fine. I'm guessing the three different wires have something to do with that problem but I am too lazy to tear it out again.

[tyl604]

The seat switches in my 81 300SD are hard wired. I found someone on the forum who sold me another seat switch. It ended having one more wire than my 81 but I learned which ones to connect together. Works fine. I just used some plastic wire connections.