errcl65
I followed a youtube video of someone removing S60 seats. The process is very similar on the 780.
There are metal rings which hold elastic straps and portions of the leather to the metal support
frame sandwich between the board. For the back rest, work from the bottom up. Slowing
peeling back the leather. Remember which you took the rings off and in what order.
Re-assembly is the reverse, expect that I replace the rings with plastic zip ties – which made fitting
process easier – leather easier to fit with the zip ties 1/2 done. Once in place, I fully close the zip ties
and cut the tails. To start the removal, you have to expose the front and back ends of the leather.
At the bottom of the back portion of the seat, there is a piece of metal V grove inside which holds the front
and back tabs (plastic) of the leather tight. Just squeeze them together and work the plastic tab
our of the metal (V grove).
First attempt took me 2 hours. Reassembly was 20 minutes. You need to master this if you want to
service the drive cables, drive motor, 2 cable releases for the fold forward.
1. This is a common failure – OE cable is a brittle single piano wire. If the back rest gears are out of sync,
Driver seat had a broke release cable – I replaced with cable with a similar gauge multi-strand cable for
hanging mirrors. Just thread the cable in the existing housing, tied the end up at the release, it is too tight
to use a crimp. Loop the cable around the release hook at the bottom of the seat and I was able to crimp.
2. What caused the cable failure is like an unsynchronized left/right gear. When the gears are not synchronized,
the frame becomes under pressure around the release hook. One of the locking hooks will be pull up so
hard that it can be moved. Repeated attempts to operate the release will cause the cable to break.
To resynchronize, use 7mm (1 bolt right above the drive cable) to release the locking ring to the drive
cable on each of gears. Remove the drive cable from each gear. Use the manual seat winding tool to
approximately synchronize the 2 gears. Check the free motion of the 2 release hooks. Make sure they move freely.
Optional (drive cable repair/extension):
Repair the drive cables by using a lighter to heat up the metal ends just enough to remove them from the
plastic cable housing. With the ends removed, cut back the plastic 1/4 inch and reattach the metal end again
by warming up the plastic housing. This should expose more of the drive cable – less likely to have a
slip – which will cause future synchronization problems.
Before re-installing the cable, push the shaft of the cable into the housing – this will push the drive shaft deeper
in at the motor end. Re-install the drive cables , lock them in with the 7mm. Apply power to seat and operate
the back rest slowly in one direction, stop and check the tension on the 2 release hooks. If they are synchronized
correctly, the should be no tension on the hooks at any point along the full motion of the back rest. If there is
tension, pop the cables and adjust the gears manually again.
It took me 3 attempts to synchronize. This was about a 2 hour job with the seat out of the car.
This was done with the seat remove and power was applied using a car battery on the bench.
I have both seats working (passenger 100%, driver is good expect for black box logic which i disconnected).