[jntmjt1]

Hi,

My 66 Bonneville station wagon has a power bench seat. It worked fine for about three years. This winter it started acting funny. Now it won't go up or down at all, it tilts just a little bit, and it moves forward and rear very, very, very slowly and makes a lot of popping sounds. The seat doesn't seem to move evenly either, it seems like the passenger side moves even slower than the drivers side.

The tracks are clean and lubed and free of obstructions.

Do you know what my problem could be? Am I due for a new electric motor? If so, where can I find one?

Thanks for your help,
John Thomas
jmaj@centurytel.net

[Heybuck]

Pull the motor apart, remove the 40+ year old frozen grease, clean it up and re-lube.

I'll BET it works. Point is, if the motor is working one way but not another, my guess is you will find its a mess inside. These things are pretty simple.

[Deadhead]

There are several things it could be. You might just have gotten the 2 sides out of kilter or it could be that one side is not engaging anymore. Could also be that some of the mounting bolts have come lose on the mechanism causing the above.

The cable ends can get messed where a plastic part of them will not allow them to stay in the socket anymore as well.

The sound you hear is the gears on one end turning while the other end is stuck, and the spring loaded deal snapping them back into place as they slap into their groove.

I have been into mine & repaired when it had similar symptoms. There are some VERY LARGE tension springs at either end of the seat in the gear mechanism. These keep the gears engaged but flexible & thus in synch on both ends. On mine, the one on the Pass side had a broken end on it, causing it to release tension. This caused the seat to get cattywompus and act as you describe when I replaced the carpet. It was POSSIBLE to loosen the bolts that held the mechanism down and rack or shim it such that the gears would engage properly, but it was a major PITA, requiring many trials & error. I did this until I was able to find a replacement spring.

If you don't have one, you need to get the Fisher Body manual. It gives you the step-by-step on how to reset the whole thing after it gets racked. Once the thing is out-of-synch you have to go through a procedure of disengaging part of the thing and running it to full forward on one side & adjusting to that. It is complicated enough to where it is worth having the book to do it. No problem to accomplish but hard to describe.

[jntmjt1]

Originally Posted by Deadhead

If you don't have one, you need to get the Fisher Body manual.

Any ideas where I can buy a Fisher Body manual for the 66 Bonneville?

Thanks,
John Thomas

[Deadhead]

I bought mine on E-Bay used, but there is a guy on there who has reprinted ones. I have not been on much lately, but there was always one on there typically.

I don't have a flatbed scanner or copier at the moment or I would offer to fax the pages to you. Pgs 10-1 to 10-18 is what you need.

[bradkline]

I think your problem probably isn't the motor but instead the solenoid pack that drives each of the cables to the actuators that control seat upward/downward and fore and aft motion.
I took the whole motor and solenoid assembly out and found stuck solenoids due to
40 + year old grease. Some of it had really hardened but clean it off real well and lightly grease it with white lithium. I put the whole assembly back together again and the seat now moves properly and smoothly.

If the cables are indeed also out of sych, you will have to reset them as suggested by one of the other contributors. If not, it places strain on the drive assembly and will result in jerky action since the tracks are not moving the seat in sequence.

After I cleaned it all up, lubed the tracks I was amazed how smooth the whole system now operates.

Good luck,

Bradley Kline

[radioburningchrome]

For anyone who needs shop or chassis manuals, Bob Johnson's Auto literature is the place to go. That is where I have always purchased my manuals, even pre-internet.

[fastboy143]

Has anyone seen or bought the cd-ROM that is now being offered on ebay? If it is complete and useable it's a good deal. $30 for both the shop and fisher body manual IIRC. However I would miss the grease smudged pages that you look back on months/years later and recall how much work you put into that weekend project.

[Deadhead]

I bought the thing and never use it. I go for the books every time. As near as I can tell, you can not do any kind of search on it. You just have to page through it.

I sent a few E-mails to try to confirm this but never got an answer back for me that says it all.

Mine has weird coverage of models too. The Master Parts book or a copy thereof is better - that and the paper body and chasis manuals.