Power Seat Nightmare

[353ipower]

Dear BMW Owners

I receantly purchased a 1992 BMW 535i with around 110,000 miles on it for my son. The car, which was equipped with power seats ran excellent, however when my son pushed the power seat to the reclining position, it somehow got stuck so only one side of the seat would move when we tried to re-recline it to the upright position. To describe a bit better: The seat is currently in the reclined position, and any attempt to bring it back up causes one side to raise and the othjer to stay the same, which causes the chair to twist. We have absolutely no idea what this could be and it would be great if you could provide me some more information as to what the problem is.

[uscharalph]

Do a search on this forum: seat twist. You'll find several links to fix this common problem. I used this info to fix my own.

[Tiger]

Yep... very common... grab underneath the seat in front for adjustment cable round sheath... push it in against the motor AFTER you adjust the seat so it is in perfect recline... not twisted.

[Brian C.]

From Don Gale's excellent repair pages.

Twisted seat fix (http://www.nmia.com/~dgnrg/page_11.htm)

Good luck. This has been repaired by many here and it usually does the trick!

Brian C.

[upallnight]

You will need to get an external torx or star socket to remove the two bolt holding the seat at the back of the rail, tilt the seat forward after removing the bolts and push, wiggle the seat forward. The front of the seat is held down with a clip/hook.

Once you get the seat out of the car you can remove the back cover; pull from the bottom to release the cover.

It will be obvious once you get the cover off as to which motor controls the reclining of the seat, remove the bolts holding the cable to the motor and either shorten the outer sheath as desribe in some fix or use a variable speed drill attach to the cable to raise the side of the seat that is not moving.

[Kalevera]

You will need to get an external torx or star socket to remove the two bolt holding the seat at the back of the rail, tilt the seat forward after removing the bolts and push, wiggle the seat forward. The front of the seat is held down with a clip/hook.

Once you get the seat out of the car you can remove the back cover; pull from the bottom to release the cover.

It will be obvious once you get the cover off as to which motor controls the reclining of the seat, remove the bolts holding the cable to the motor and either shorten the outer sheath as desribe in some fix or use a variable speed drill attach to the cable to raise the side of the seat that is not moving.
The job doesn't actually require a torx socket (E32 and E34 comfort seats can be removed with a 13mm socket), nor does the seat need to be removed from the car in order to perform the repair. You'll save a lot of time by not removing the seat, as you won't have to deal with the seat belt or belt height adjuster, both of which can add 15 minutes a piece to the novice's timesheet and unnecessary complexity.

Keep the seat in the car, remove 4x 8mm hex tap screws for the recline motor (frontmost of the two, tucked up towards the dash), use the recline motor to reset the seatback to the correct position (as noted by winfred). Cut the cables as necessary (sounds like it's necessary in this case, double check the recline gearboxes prior to cutting anything); confirm operation prior to sinching down the four bolts.


best, whit