factory power seat motor replacement

[crossy]

Alright, I have been bopping around the internet, facebook and youtube, but figured I would also ask here. I have a 1986 Olds 442 here that is worth fixing right before I sell/keep, and when I purchased it the P/O had gacked the motor/drive on the driver bucket seat. He had found a new replacement plastic drive housing, but took everything apart, and I have no idea how it goes together. I am plenty mechanical minded, but not familiar with this set up as 99% of what I have done in the past was manual adjustment. I am looking for a good youtube video?, a link to complete replacement assembly? Peoples that rebuild? And even the option of converting to Manual bucket tracks. It’s way too bad a time of the year to scour junkyards full of picked over cars that DON’T have what I need and it’s too hot for this old man and the U-pull yards here are grown over and full of bees. I have however heard that the whole sytem can be replaced with ????? that has 3 motors?? Remember I am not rebuilding a complete unit. I just have a little box of unknown parts here. Thanks for any help- Crossy

 

[Bonnewagon]

I have several and they are a total b*tch to work on. There is a motor and a transmission on it and those cables are all different from model to model. They look the same, but are always either too long or too short. Ask me how I know. A factory manual should have all the info. The good thing is that almost any power base from any GM model will accept your seats. I currently have a power base from a 1995 Buick LaSabre bolted in. A driver seat from a 1994 Firebird bolted right on. I had to modify the base a bit to fit my wagon but nothing crazy. There are power bases out there as we just found a nice one for our 1980 Trans Am. If you score one, the most important thing is to get the wiring and controls. The power base we found came from a late '90s full size Caprice and to get the controls the guy would only sell it with the entire wiring for the car. It was a chore to separate the seat wiring, but we got it done, controls and all. Now that I am an old fart I do appreciate a 6-way adjustable power seat.

 

[crossy]

So I managed to this POS back together. My seat is mint, and all the cables were still there. I installed a new coupler( $40) .I ran 12 volts to the input wires and all I get is a loud click inside the transmission,, each switch makes a different part of the transmission click which makes sense because there are 3 functions inside of it. I never heard the motor running so i gently tapped the motor a few times while holding one of switches ON to no avAIL. --- SOOO I assumed the motor was bad from sitting. I disconnected the feed wiring that Y's off of the input wiring and i ran 12 volt to the motor and it runs well?? so I guess it's time for continuity checks on wires themselves because There is no other reason i can think of.

 

[Bonnewagon]

What kind of control switch do you have? Door, seat, or console mounted? When you push a button, you are actually enabling two separate circuits. One for the motor, and one for the transmission solenoids. Test at the switch for contact. GM used those switches with the pins on the bottom that press into the connector. Sometimes they don't make very good contact. The motor is energized in all seat functions. The DC motor direction is controlled by reversing the polarity of the white and dark blue wires. So up/down, forward/backward, are using the transmission solenoids to control function of the shaft driven screw motors, but the electric seat motor is fed the correct polarity for the direction desired. You should be able to test the motor by reversing the 12 volts positive and ground between the white and dark blue wires. The motor direction should reverse accordingly. Even the newer models with an electric motor for each function work the same way. My outboard motor trim-n-tilt works that way too. Two relays switch the polarity and change the direction of the DC motor. When I got my first power seat from a Grand Prix, the door mounted control switch was missing. I had to use three double pole, double throw, momentary on/off/on switches on a fabricated mount to mimic the factory switch. After that I made sure to grab the factory switch!!!