There are a number of posts here and there about the driver/passenger front seat switches beginning to fail in numerous ways. 05 sedan here and the passenger seat stopped moving back a while ago and recently the up function for the back part of the seat went out. The girlfriend's son accidentally powered the seat all the way forward and the back all the way down so the seat was stuck in this position, completely unusable. So a question here, some searching there and the fix was on. The back 2 bolts that held the seat to the floor were reachable but the fronts weren't.

So my GF did a little YouTubing and forum searching while I was at work a couple of weeks ago and figured out you can take off the motor under the seat out (3 phillips head screws to remove it from the seat) and along with it the plastic arm that connects the motor to the mechanism that turns the gear for the right seat rail (also 3 phillips head screws). She then used a small socket to manually turn the gears on each rail to move the seat bottom back to access the front bolts rotating from side to side to keep the movement even. I freaking love her because she's not afraid of any challenge and takes pride in fixing stuff she knows nothing about. With this being done it was a matter of undoing the harnesses and removing the seat from the car to access the 2 screws that hold the switch assembly to the seat. They are in no way accessible with the seat in place. They are under a thin "skin" that needs to be removed to get to the screws. I unclipped the plug and carefully snaked the plug through the seat assembly so it wasn't damaged removing it. I had to loosen the seat cover off a decent portion of the bottom cushion to make room to work the plug out.

I sprayed the switch from all sides with CRC contact cleaner then sprayed the whole assembly with a white lithium grease and manipulated the switches for several minutes to work it into the switches. The switches can be taken apart to clean the tiny ball bearings and springs inside the switch but we thought we'd skip that part unless it became necessary. It's a delicate procedure and easy to mess up and/or lose springs and ball bearings FYI. Then it's just a matter of reversing all the steps and installing the seat to see if the fix worked. IT DID!! Now the seat works like new and we're happy.

However the car was driven with the seat out and upon re-installing it the SRS light flashed repeatedly when the car was on. Followed the reset procedure in this thread using post 2 and voila, no more flashing light. https://g35driver.com/forums/repairi...g35-coupe.html All in all it was a learning experience for both of us and I'm proud of her for getting the process started correctly and helping to the end. HTH anyone with a seat issue, I would believe it's the same for a coupe as it is the sedan but not completely sure.

 

Good one! I'll be honest, I wish my GF was as hands on with car stuff. But it's fine.. she's hands on in other ways :P

Anyways, I hope I never have to do this, but I'm glad there is light at the end of the tunnel if I do!

 

Congrats. Hope that fix holds up. Mine were pitted and covered with so much carbon that I think they'd just stop working again soon if I didn't scour that crap off the contacts.

Re: girlfriends: sounds like you got a good one. My wife will take stuff on if she has too like when she towed and set up the camper solo last weekend. We got a jammed up awning, subfloor flooded with water and the grill fell off the camper bracket while loaded with dinner for 3 families. It could always be worse (nobody got hurt or any permanent damage) so no serious complaining here. Not sure what might happen if I set her loose on my car though.

 

Thanks fellas, she's amazing and the girlfriend isn't so bad herself lol. Other moments of greatness she's pulled off were rebuilding 3 sections of fence in the back yard destroyed by Hurricane Harvey including digging holes with a post hole digger, filling them with concrete and leveling each board then ripping out the bedroom door/frame and rebuilding the whole thing including trim, paint and even creating the hole for the door latch. She did all of this w/o any help from me, she actually refused my offers to assist lol. So keeper material she is for sure.

jbarnett I found a couple of great threads/posts that included pictures of the switch removal and disassembly and their bb/springs were filthy. If our switch craps out again in the future knowing what I do now, it'll be a quick removal of the switch from the seat w/o removing the seat from the car then disassemble and clean. Takes a little maneuvering but can be done.