300 E seat motor problem

[V007]

I have a friend with a problem (1986 300 E) driver's seat back rest. It will lean back but will not come forward when the switch is pressed. There is no noise when I press the switch. The seat itself will move either back or forward with no problems. The head rest also works.

There seems to be three motors under the seat - round bright canisters with
a black cable coming out of the center of each end. I removed all the screws that fix the seat to the base and can now move it around but it is still attached to all the cables, which come up from the floor.

It seems that there is a drive rod in the black sheath that goes up into the back rest near the hinge at the tunnel side of the seat. Unfortunately I can't see how to get at the rod. The seat is upholstered and I see no way to remove it to get at the area of that hinge.

Does the seat cushion come off the frame? That would be useful for getting at the motors.

I bought a Haynes manual but is is useless.

Comments much appreciated.

TIA

V007

[V007]

I solved the problem myself - a bad electrical contact

[A264172]

I have a similar problem (seat back does not go forward or back).

It's not the switch I tried to jump the socket and I can hear a relay click under the seat so I think the wiring is good to somewhere down there.

Are there replacement motors anyone?

I think V007 might be gone but has anyone else dealt with this scenario.

[icetrey]

something similar happened to me... in my 89 300E there are 2 fuses that control different parts of each power seat. one had gone bad so some parts were working and others werent. lucky for me it was only a fuse... hope this helps.

[A264172]

Which fuse?
Was it a fuse box fuse or was it someplace else?

[icetrey]

They are in the regular fuse box... if you have the diagram of the fuse box under the fuse box lid then they are easy to find... also, if they are visually broken then that makes them easy to find also... if you don’t have the diagram I can see about getting a pic for you. I believe they are the blue ones (but don’t hold me to that). Also it is a good idea (if you haven’t already done so) to change all fuses in the fuse panel. Made my 300E run a little smoother... some of my fuses were so old. My fog light fuse blew after running them for only a few days. And the fuses are only like 25 to 30 cents each.

[A264172]

Turns out a spring broke in back of seat then proceeded to start shredding wires like jack the ripper.
Easy enough fix electrically just put it all back together. Dremmeled off the offending blade and zip tied the two spring pieces together, then crossed braced them with more zip ties and wrapped the whole thing in duct tape.
The seat feels like new again and responds to every switch command all for a bucks worth of zip ties and tape. When I had the back(s) off I took the slack out of the cargo nets as well. Car continues to move in the right direction.