Seats move FWD...but not back?
 

I decided to clean my rear floors the other day.

-The last person that sat in my rear seats was Justin Rogers, a nephew of my best friend from High school. I remember this because he was just about to start college for the first time. That was up in Michigan in 2003...

The rear seats were clean, but I wanted to clean and vacuum the area anyway. I decided to move the seat all the way forward and all the way up, as is my custom for vacuuming. Well, I cleaned the hell out of my car with my "antique" 1985 "Dustbuster" 12 volt vacuum. The only problem:
When I went to put the passenger seat back, it didn't work. The PAX seat won't go backwards....

Every other function of the seat works fine, and the fuses for all the seats are fine.

Has anyone else had this problem? I managed to put the seat back into position with a 6 mm hex into the manual override [You've just got to love Porsche! Only a company like this would provide for a manual backup to their automated systems during the 1970's! Boeing aircraft have ALWAYS done this, along with the Airbus products.], and I managed to get the seat back to a position next to the drivers' seat.

What causes a motor to work one way, but not the other?

Has anyone here seen this problem?

Thanx in advance!

N!

Hi Normy in answer to your question nothing usuall stops a motor running in both directions except lack of volts porsche seat switches are cr-p .It is possible to remove the switch internals but you will have to remove the switch from the seat first so you can open it up as it is a clip together assembly once open you can see the internals dont loose the steel balls you need them you need to bend tabs to remove the contacts clean contacts with fine wet and dry scrape gunge off fixed parts with end of screwdriver sound difficult but you will get the hang of it

The seat forward and rear up function on my old 86 did not work so here is how I fixed the problem,

Step 1- Go to Radio Shack and buy some contact cleaner, http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...entPage=search

Step 2- Spray cleaner into the seat switch.

Step 3- Wait 5 Minutes.

I have the same problem (in reverse). Mine will move back, won't move forward.

Plan is to pull the controls out and clean them, just haven't gotten around to doing it.

Now, if we can just get New Zealand to use paragraphs and periods, we would be able to follow the directions :)

Michael

i may not be able to punctuate but i can fix all of my cars
porsche 928 (2)
porsche 911
aston martin dbs
jag mk1
landrover discovery
fiat 6 berth motorhome
I dont own an American vehicle I hav'n't the that much time available to fix them.

Hope you took my comment in good humor. I'm jealous of some of your cars.

Michael

Yep - If the motor works one way but not the other - it pretty much has to be the switch - all the rest of the wiring is shared - power to the switch and drive to the motor are the exact same wires for both directions... easiest to work on with the seat out of course...

Alan

How do the switches come apart. I really don't want to pull the seat. I'm able to pull the switch out of the seat by removing the screws, but how hard is it to pull the switch apart? And is there risk to losing the wires to their attachment point if I pull the switch apart?

Michael

The older 2 way switches are the same as the window switches see the R&R instructions on those.

The 4-way round switches on an '85 with comfort seats are directly wired to the motors so you won't have much room to pull these out... possibly enough to test them though.

There are 6 terminals 2 are power(2) & ground(1) - identify these first. the other 4 are 2 pairs of motor connections (3)+(5) & (4)+(6).

These motor connections should all be grounded when not active - when a switch is pressed one of the 4 motor connections will go to +batt. Check operation of all of them.

For repair (e.g. switch replacement) - I'd take the seat out - you can try switch claaner with it just dissassembled. I have never tried to R&R a 4-way seat switch...

Alan