While trying to find out where the power gets to my auxiliary fan, I took the modules out of their box. I found several interesting things inside.

First, none of the wires inside were wrapped with cloth tape. They were all just laying about inside. I zip-tied them together, since putting tape on them looked much harder.

But worse yet, several of the connectors were broken. The "tail" on the connector to the combination module was broken off, so there was nothing holding the bottom of this very long connector in place. One of the latches for the connectors on the ETS module was broken, making that connector very hard to R&R. And the connector to the IFI control module was not screwed to the cover. There was a screw inside, doing nothing.

Whoever worked on this car needs to be hauled out to the woodshed.

Now my question: While I was dismantling all of these connectors, I disconnected the battery negative lead and bent it out of the way. It was disconnected for about two hours. When I put it back on, the seat memory and IR remote still work. I thought I would have to resynchronize everything. What gives?

May I suggest that anyone who starts a thread without specifying the year and model face a similar fate?

I'm summarily taken myself out back and given myself a good whomping.

It's a '96 210.020 E300