Pontiac Bonneville, 1965 Power Seats

So this is my power seats. they are 8 way. the middle stick goes front/back and up/down. Every way works except front back and its in the farthest back setting which is cool, but my wife is sick of duct taping phone books to the bottoms of her feet when she drives. When you press it forward or back the red circled pin spins (as it does with every direction) but track doesn’t move. Any ideas on cause and/or fix? seems like everything works but i just don’t know where to start! thank you in advance. i have it rigged to battery to mess with it.



The transmission is broken for the fore-aft track. … the lumpy thing at the top of the picture circled.

Stripped gear or shaft. Take it apart and look inside.

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/early-60’s-gm-power-seat-repair.1189959/

Tester

wow. that is about as good of help as someone could have given me. thank you! it seems the guy wasn’t able to successfully get one to work. but the difference between his and mine is my bar spins, (whereas his didn’t, on all of them) but just doesn’t move… which gives me hope that a good break down and clean will work!

thank you!


this piece right here? do you know what it looks like inside? is it basically 4 sets of teeth that get alternated?

Disconnect the black drive cables from the seat adjuster, they are similar to speedometer cables. See if they rotate while operating the switch, check if the inserts are broken.

I hope that was a joke, as that could slow the movement of her feet just enough to cause a wreck, or the book get caught on the edge of the pedal…

If not a joke, well my son, daughter and wife are all short, and if needed, have used pillows behind them to move them forward enough to work the pedals, I have also used small block(s) of wood and strap them somehow to the pedals to help a customer reach them better… I’m sure Amazon probably has all kinds of pedal extenders now a days… lol

yes. it was a joke. :slight_smile:

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thank you. whats an insert?

There are a flex-cables inside the black/blue/yellow cables to drive the gears inside the seat base.

If the cable rotates freely, the problem might be that the gears in the seat base are seized.

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everything seems good. it’s the top piece that controls the middle switches. i don’t see the problem. but when u press the switch the speedometer cable. its black. didn’t move.

the gears look fine but the black cables dont turn.

i may have gone a bridge too far. i messed with it now only 1 way works. im guessing the gears have to lined up certain way once you open them and are trying to put back. everything seems fine. no gears seem chipped. … and advice is welcome.

My guess would be bad/broken cable. Gotta be a vendor in hemmings that can check, repair, them. Now our 86 Buick bought new always had a problem with the passenger reclining seat back. Sometimes it would catch and sometimes not so cable problems are not new. Never fixed it though.

update. so i got all cables to spin. and whole thing is taken apart. theoretically it will work when i put it back together but it’s weird that i have to click 2, 3 sometimes 4 times to get a direction to work. it may be because im using flimsy little alligator clips from my battery. and maybe battery is almost dead. i’m not sure. when you’re driving along when you press it, it works. you don’t have to do it multiple times. i’m also concerned that if bars are exactly equadistant when i put bacj together, over time they will slowly seperate and itll be cockypuss. also the two screws that hold the gearbox to frame are stripped to the point they won’t tighten all the way. ..

it’s not. i think maybe it got put all the way back and then just sat for like a decade. and it froze to frame? i say that because separated, now, all the cables turn. and i can force tracks to move after lubing, with drill. not sure though once i put back together. nothing seems broken or stripped though.

Reassemble the power seats, get the seat in position to drive, then go out and charge the battery. Now test seat function.

alllll fixed. i got front and back and side to side. lol and up and down. 8 ways! thank u for everything!!!

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Also another cool thing is that the way the bolts are set up, i’m able to shift the entire seat back like two inches. which for a .6ft3 guy that’s awesome.