Failed Front Passenger Seat

[Venomous]

So taking my Son to the Dr's today, and all of a sudden he has flopped backwards.

Get him out and the seat back won't lock into place, unless it is laid fully back.

Rock it forward and it just zooms back and forth on it's runners.

Booked into MB Derby next Friday, but any ideas in the interim would be most appreciated.

Cheers

Brian

 

[grober]

There are obviously lots of motors and locking pawls around which have to all act in concert. they will all be controlled by a seat control module underneath somewhere. Most failures would however lead to a " dead seat" rather than a collapsing one. The coupes are slightly unusual in they have that lean and move forward mechanism for passengers wanting out of the back' followed by a memory return to previous its postion --- its as if that is not engaging at all. However if you think about it- a fail safe default in event of failure for that mechanism would be something similar to what you describe to prevent passengers from being trapped in the rear half of the car say in the event of an accident .
So 2 possibilities
1 mechanical failure of some component

2 electrical failure to some part of the seat mechanism.

For 1 only a manual inspection of the removed seat mechanism is likely to help.

For 2 I would check the fuses associated with the seat electrics [ at the end of dash??- handbook should tell you]
and also have a look for any loose connections to any electrical components under the seat- be careful tho as remaking a connection might lead to unintentional seat mechanism movement so don't get fingers trapped.
Brave souls have uplugged seat modules briefly to reset the microprocessors but this might result in fault codes requiring Star to reset them.

 

[grober]

Looking a little further into this its possible the rear SAM [ Service Access Module] may be where you should be checking for blown fuse/ dodgy relays/ electric glitches. The electrics on these seats are quite complex with 20 odd interconnected assemblies/switches. So other than the basic tests for electrical connections blown fuses perhaps best to leave to Star to trouble shoot this one.

 

[Venomous]

Hi Grober,

It was a mechanical failure, seat has been fixed - but a further part is on order.