Power Seat Connection in 85 SD
 

Hi;

I recently aquired two front seats from an 86 SDL and wanted to use them in my 85 SD. My SD driver's seat has 2 position memory and motorized head rest. My passenger seat has no memory, but has the motorized head rest. The seats are not heated.

I went to replace my passenger seat and to my dismay found the electrical junctions to be different. There were more pins on the SDL seats. I have not yet tried the driver's seat because I didnt want to remove that one to find the same connection issues. I thought I could just remove the seat from the black metal mount that houses the motor, connection box, and adjustment tracks, but that is proving more difficult than expected. There are some bolts that are inaccessable.

So, I was wondering about a few alternatives:

a) could I try to buy the female seat connection harnesses to recieve the pins in the 86 SDL seats, remove the harness from my 85 SD and splice the wires from my car into the new harnesses?

b) could I just hardwire it? Would bypassing the reciving box with the male pins cause issues?

C) any other suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,
J

Can you remove the plug and pins from the old seats and put them on the new seats? That way, the car wiring stays the same, only the seats change. The plugs on my 82 are sturdy and easy to work with - you can open them up, move the pins/ wires around if necessary, and snap them back together.

Connectors
 

I got a pair of connectors from an 85 sel that match the male pin configuration on the seats I disussed in the original post. Now, I wonder if my 85 300 SD has the same wire scheme. I was going to wire the new connectors to my existing wires. My suspision is there are more wires on the connector than on my chasis. The wires on the connectors that dont have corresponding wires on the chasis I was going to deadhead. I hope this will work. Any thoughts?

I changed the seats on the 85 SD I sold and the new seats did not have the same connectors as the old seats. I ended up taking the seats off the frame and changing the frames, which allowed me to keep the old connections yet install the new seats. Much more complex than what I expected off the bat. While quite time consuming, it worked great.

Changing bases...
 

Is really not that hard. The "inaccessable" screws that moutn the seat frame to the base can be accewssed by using a small screwdriver in the opening in the motor end and turning the motor to move the seat on the base to lineup the hole to access the screw... Did tht make any sense?

Anyway, the seatback and headrest wires should be easy enought to add to the plug in the existing base. I haven't messed with the headrest part in my 85 but int he 84 the backrest motor wiring is just two plugs tht fit into the main plug under the seat front. Not a big deal to remove them and put the new wires into their places.

Could the new seats have seat heaters and that is the extra prongs in the plug?

As a point of reference each motor is operated by running current through the pins opposite each other on the plug. So if you put positive on the top pin and complete the circuiot via negative on the pin just below it you will move the motor in one direction. Reverse this and the motor will go the opposite direction. You could test your seat plugs to see what controls what and find the common control input points.

The seat position memory is not a part of the seats that I know of. I think this part runs through an external control that is wired into the door switch and not the seats.