Power Seat Problems - Seat Leans or Wont Move

Shortly after I purchased the Riv, the driver's side power seat stopped going forward. When I checked it out, I found a jumper wire coming from the switch, with an alligator clip on the other end, just laying there. After investigating, I found out it's a ground. When I hook the jumper to the little grounding tab under the seat, it will go forward, but gets pretty hot. How are the switches supposed to be grounded, and is the bad ground my only problem?

It sounds like the bad ground is your only problem. Its very likely that the wire gage used in the jumper cable is too small and that is why it is getting so hot. Do not use it long term as it could cause a fire. I would do a little digging and see why you have a bad ground (rust or loose connection???). If you can't find the root cause the next best thing is to run a jumper wire, of the proper size, similar to what you found before. My guess is that 12 gauge wire should work. It should safely handle 20 amps.

That happened to my seat too all the other switches work fine, except backwards ... I've unbolted the seat and investigated also...
Except I found about 15 wires going nowhere, coming from nowhere.... I need a diagram of where they're posta go...
My seat goes forward not back, and over the years I've kicked the button a few times and my seats all the way pushed up....
Anyway I manually shoved the seat back by unscrewing an buncha crap

my driver side power seat doesn't recline!! i changed the pump out, and it does the exact same thing....it sounds like its tryin to recline, but it dont move....but the seat goes in all the other directions....just that one pump, so i wuz thinkin that maybe its the seat that's jammed....idk any suggestions?

I have a similar problem. All the switches work, except the one that reclines forward or backward, it simply has no response at all. Not sure what to do about it it just started doing it yesterday.

Steve: do you have seat memory and does it still work?

Autumn: what year is your Riv?

Dino: what pump?

Cameron: please check the bundle of wires coming out of the seat switches. If you follow them you will see where they run kinda close to the seat frame. Check for scraped/chafed wires. Also it might be you lost the recliner motor - after many years the magnets can come unglued and the motor will quit running. If there is not a wiring problem you can get replacement motors off RockAuto.Com.

Albertj

I didn't even know our seats reclined until recently, DUH.

albertj wrote:

Steve: do you have seat memory and does it still work?

Autumn: what year is your Riv?

Dino: what pump?

Cameron: please check the bundle of wires coming out of the seat switches. If you follow them you will see where they run kinda close to the seat frame. Check for scraped/chafed wires. Also it might be you lost the recliner motor - after many years the magnets can come unglued and the motor will quit running. If there is not a wiring problem you can get replacement motors off RockAuto.Com.

Albertj

the motor...my bad...the motor for the power seat is wut i changed out, but it still didnt work, so i permanently have to sit straight up! been lookin to buy sum leather ones, or at least a driver on that will go work correctly, u kno

R1V13RA wrote:

my driver side power seat doesn't recline!! i changed the pump out, and it does the exact same thing....it sounds like its tryin to recline, but it dont move....but the seat goes in all the other directions....just that one pump, so i wuz thinkin that maybe its the seat that's jammed....idk any suggestions?

Not tryin' to be a smartass, but are you sure you replaced the right motor?

There are 4 of them under there, and the diagrams I'm looking at don't make it too clear...

Failing that, I'd say that the gears or drive cables are stripped at the hinge-point in the bottom of the seatback.

Replacing a "Pump", that would indicate to me that you replaced the lumbar pump.
Has nothing to do with the recline motor. And as Eldo said there are 4 motors that you need to isolate the one that isn't working.

Actually, he corrected himself in the post prior to mine, he meant motor. Also (just because I have soooo much trivia stuck in my head) our cars don't use air pumps for the lumbar.

The Aurora used an air bladder, but our seats use a padded, flat strap, probably seatbelt webbing, that is anchored on one side of the seatback, and tied onto an electric retractor on the other side.

The other thing we got 'cheated' out of was memory control for the recliner. The LeSabre/Park Ave had it, but noooooo, not Rivieras...

There seem to be a number of power seat problems that people have decided to 'live with.' Here are some insights you may find helpful.

1) you may want to get a couple small cables with alligator clips on each end from RAdio Shack so you can try to move the seat on its stracks enough to expose the mounting bolts in the rear. THat is, move it forward far enough so you can remove those 2 bolts, tilt it forward and take it out. While you have it out, clean up the area under the deat.

2) If you are ever going to fix these things, do it sooner rather than later because with the 2009 model year ending, GM does not have to keep parts around for the 1999 Rivieras anymore. Many of the parts you will want to get will change from plastic and metal to Unobtanium in a couple-three months.

3) The more parts in an assembly that are subject to wear and tear, the harder it is to troubleshoot remotely. The seats have internal moving parts, actuator motors, cams and shafts... lots of parts. It's just not easy 'cause there are multiple causes of failures and multiple points to fail.

4) There are visual clues that help troubleshooting that are not communicated in your postings. Such as whether you're the original owner, when the problem started - even looking at how worn the switches are can give useful clues. Point is that for some of you the quickest fix will be to get a factory service manual.

5) Most of you seem unfamiliar with basic electrical troubleshooting, and probably were not necessarily looking for this opportunity to learn. Notwithstanding, here are some resources to get a troubleshooting 'mindset' that you might find useful:

http://firechief.com/apparatus/electrical-trouble061307/

http://www.autoshop101.com/forms/h2.pdf (basic troubleshooting tutorial from Toyota)

http://www.autoshop101.com/ (a family of tutorials from Kevin Sullivan, San Bruno College - these are pretty quick reads and explain a lot. Recommended for newbies and as a refresher for those wanting to 'brush up' skills)

http://www.aa1car.com/library/tselec.htm (very basic)

Happy reading - and hopefully the advice you get will make a lot more sense after you complete the Kevin Sullivan tutorials.

Albertj

If the heating element for the driver side mirror is shorted out would that cause the heated seat to not work?
Thanks for any info.

Bert

I don't know Bert, the 98 wiring diagram doesn't even have the heated mirror's on it.
There is no way to troubleshoot this problem with the wiring diagram because of the lapse of GM technical writing dept.
The heated seats are clearly spelled out, but if there is any inter-relationship between the two is hard to know.
I suspect they do share some of the circuitry, but that is just my guess at this point.

Maybe someone with AllData could look it up there and see what they have on the heated mirrors.

Rickw wrote:

I don't know Bert, the 98 wiring diagram doesn't even have the heated mirror's on it.
There is no way to troubleshoot this problem with the wiring diagram because of the lapse of GM technical writing dept.
The heated seats are clearly spelled out, but if there is any inter-relationship between the two is hard to know.
I suspect they do share some of the circuitry, but that is just my guess at this point.

Maybe someone with AllData could look it up there and see what they have on the heated mirrors.

Well, as you know Rick, I got completely frustrated by those mysterious missing heated mirrors... However, if they operate like every Cadillac with the same climate control guts, and little 'heated' icons on the glass, they turn on along with the rear defogger and would have nothing to do with the seat heaters, except maybe a common fuse or circuit breaker somewhere.

My best guess...

Yes, Now that you mention it I thought I read somewhere in the FSM about the heated mirrors coming on with the rear window.
Need to go back to the manual and find it.
It's bothering me now.

I remember where I read about the heated mirror's....It's in the owners manual (pg 2-51 for the 98)
"When you operate the rear window defogger, a defogger also warms the heated driver's and passenger's outside rearview mirrors."

It still sucks that there is no information in the FSM that i can find.

Rickw wrote:

I remember where I read about the heated mirror's....It's in the owners manual (pg 2-51 for the 98)
"When you operate the rear window defogger, a defogger also warms the heated driver's and passenger's outside rearview mirrors."

That's another good tidbit of data!

After reviewing my '97 manual, and the posts to the heated-dimming-mirror thread, I think it's safe to say that the mirror heaters are something else they didn't add until '98, just like the passenger seat heaters and standard supercharger.

With only one year of production left, I guess that's also why it never made it into the shop manuals...

(I still think that cooking liquid crystals is a bad idea, and It seems most of the people with ruined electrochromic mirrors are the ones with the heated/dimming combo... They should probably just be replaced with regular, non-heated dimming glass on the driver's side, and treated with RainX or some such.)

Rainx is nice, but it sucks to scrape ice off that mirror because it's so small. If the mirror were a alittle larger it wouldn't be a problem.

deekster_caddy wrote:

Rainx is nice, but it sucks to scrape ice off that mirror because it's so small. If the mirror were a alittle larger it wouldn't be a problem.

Living a few feet above the Bay, I naturally don't have any experience in this, but isn't there something "new, better, stronger" than RainX? Also, isn't there an aerosol de-icer to negate the need for scraping?

Eldo wrote:

deekster_caddy wrote:

Rainx is nice, but it sucks to scrape ice off that mirror because it's so small. If the mirror were a alittle larger it wouldn't be a problem.

Living a few feet above the Bay, I naturally don't have any experience in this, but isn't there something "new, better, stronger" than RainX? Also, isn't there an aerosol de-icer to negate the need for scraping?

Don't know, I've been using RainX since it came out 20 whatever years ago. Awesome stuff. If there's something that works better, I haven't heard of it.

I would never use an aerosol de-icer.

Aerosol de-iers are just alcohol I understand.

heating the mirror with the auto dim should not be a problem as long as the mirror does not get but so hot, no hotter than the ambient conditions expected for the unheated mirrors (30 below to 120 above fahrenheit or some such). I suspect the problem with the autodim mirrors is breakdown of materials due to age and sun exposure.

Albertj

yup....found the right one, which is the one i replaced from the pull yard, but that wasn't the problem....because even after changing it, when i try to recline the seat, the motor is going, and the wire/rod (whatever u call the two things coming out of the motor on either side_ continues to try to spin, but something wont let it spin. kinda hard to explain since idk correct terminology for these parts.

Eldo wrote:

R1V13RA wrote:

my driver side power seat doesn't recline!! i changed the pump out, and it does the exact same thing....it sounds like its tryin to recline, but it dont move....but the seat goes in all the other directions....just that one pump, so i wuz thinkin that maybe its the seat that's jammed....idk any suggestions?

Not tryin' to be a smartass, but are you sure you replaced the right motor?

There are 4 of them under there, and the diagrams I'm looking at don't make it too clear...

Failing that, I'd say that the gears or drive cables are stripped at the hinge-point in the bottom of the seatback.

Well, you can remove the seat from the car and with a 12v source (Battery) try hooking up the power to the connector that feeds the motors and get a closer look at what's binding.
It may be something you can fix or you may find it easier to replace the whole seat and save the parts from your old one for future use.

yea, i wuz hopin to find replacement seats and just trade em out, u kno....its like sumthing is jammed in the tracc or sumthin....idk, but im 99% sure its not the motor