Requesting help for my power tilt seat - 986 Forum - The Community for Porsche Boxster & Cayman Owners

Hey all. I purchased my first boxster about 2 months ago, and have spent a lot of time going through it. One thing I have known from the beginning is that the power seat tilt on the passenger side does not work. Today i pulled the seat (holy carpet stains batman) to take a look. Need some help with whats going on. My car has manual slide, piston elevation, and power tilt with no seat heaters. It is a 2001 S. When I pulled the seat i noticed this lone female plug on the right was completely unattached to anything here's the bottom of the seat, should there be a motor visibile? I've seen other with a visible 12v motyors, but could have been power sliding Under the seat there is also white female connector that had nothing in it, heated seat? Sorry thins is confusing, the photo posting formatting is archaic and awful

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My next step was going to be to try to supply the seat with 12 volts somehow and see if the motors work, also to mutimeter the flow into the seat connector for voltage. Am I missing anything else?

Well call it just for the experience. The tilt function failing is fairly common. Thankfully it is normally an easy fix. What usually happens is the contacts in the recline switch corrode/burn from arcing when making contact. What you can do first is clean the switch contacts with electric contact cleaner. The tilt adjust lever is a snap on piece. You can pry it off with something thin, and it will pop off. You will then see a small white pin, this is the actuator for the switch. Take the contact cleaner and spray into the switch to clean the contacts behind. Hopefully this will fix it. The loose plug is airbag disable for a child car seat. Let us know if this works for you. Have fun rasslin that seat. edit: Make sure the white switch fits into the center receptacle on the lever when you pop it back on or you will break it or the switch will only function in one direction. edit 2: The search button can save a lot of unnecessary labor! and expense such as if you turned on the ignition with the seat out you will now have an airbag light which will have to be switched off by a Porsche specific tool.

If monty's explanation doesn't work out, why don't you pull out the drivers seat (which I assume has a working tilt function) and compare both seat electrical connections? Its probably easier to do that than second guess what some previous owner has done or not done to the passenger seat wiring.

Quotes source post: 504260

I just rewired a driver seat plug and his is correct. The left side with coding pin is power to the recline. Center is for optional equipment. The small blank black plug is a spacer, and the green plug is for the seat belt.

Images are blurry but worth 1000 words. This is driver side. driver seat belt receptacle has blue plug. Back of plug.

Quotes source post: 504260

lol... dammit Thanks, will try this, looks like my connections are corret, probably just dirty ewitch

Orangeman Don't know but if seat is still out you can test the motor by supplying 12 volts to the 2 pins by the coding pin. Supply 12v+ to one and 12v- to the other. Then switch polarity to reverse. It is important to not run motors in one direction too far as the track operates on some infinity loop. If you go too far either direction the Seat back release will not work.

OK, can someone tell me what this top white connector does? Passenger side (non-functioning) Nothing plugs into it on my passenger seat, but on my driver's seat, it has something plugged into it that runs back to the back of the seat, right where i would imagine an an electric tilt motor would go... Driver's side (functioning) All other connections look the same

Maybe this will help... http://986forum.com/forums/general-discussions/56530-986-parts-katalog-usa.html

The white connector is from the control switch on the side of the seat that controls the operation of the backrest. Here's link to information I compiled while I worked on some seat upgrades. Upgrading Two-Way Power Seats - Rennlist Discussion Forums I have a project that I'm doing for work right now, so I cannot spare much time. I'll be finished with the project by tomorrow night. If you are still having a problem then let me know.

Thanks Kevin. Well, I guess we have our answer. I don't know why there isn't a lead to plug into that connector, but I guess I'll have to take the seat apart to find out. Also, haha, I just realized I could have just unplugged the other side to see what it does. Live and learn

The rear seat motor is inside the back of the seat. It's vertical and small. The plug coming from it is white.

I'll post a picture of a seat motor tonight.

I had similar problem with my car. Wound up taking both seats out and replacing the motors in the seat backs and switches. 996 seat motors work in our cars. Mine is a 99.