Question RE: Power Seats, can you de-power them?

[Tidybuoy]

This is mostly for curiosity. Can power seats be converted to manual by removing the motors and the devices that raise and lower the front & rear.

I purchased a very nice set of seats for my '74 and they are partial power. The have raise & lower function for front & rear. I was thinking of making the passenger seat manual (like it is in many Porsches) for weight savings. I want to keep the driver side as I need some level of comfort as I drive my car a lot and sometimes for very long distances.

Any thoughts?

[timmy2]

Assuming the mechanism locking the seat in any given position wouldn't move, I guess you could pull the electric motor.
It would really depend on the seat construction.

[gtc]

You might be able to remove just the motors, but the seats would still be nice and heavy. Seems like more effort than it's worth, to me.

[Tidybuoy]

When the seats arrive (this week), I will have to compare the bottoms. It seems that, besides the motors, there are 4 actuators (1 at each corner of the seat). The question is, if these actuators are removed will the seat be identical to a non powered version.

If it's not practical to remove, I will leave it. It's adding some weight but also improving comfort a little.

[porschetub]

Originally Posted by Tidybuoy

When the seats arrive (this week), I will have to compare the bottoms. It seems that, besides the motors, there are 4 actuators (1 at each corner of the seat). The question is, if these actuators are removed will the seat be identical to a non powered version.

If it's not practical to remove, I will leave it. It's adding some weight but also improving comfort a little.

The weight is crazy after you have picked up a manual seat,you could remove the drives and fix the seats @ the right height but that would most likely require removing the cover and foam pad of the base as some welding may be required.
You may find another way but the issue I noticed was the bases are more solid + heavy than the manual one's to start with.
You could always prune off some unwanted brackets and steel that may help.
Years of mucking around with euro car seats I noticed even the manual adjust ones for height and angle are a lot heavier also,good luck.

[Tidybuoy]

The seats won't arrive until Friday but here is a picture of the bottom with the pieces that I was referring to: