jaje

I cannot get the seats in my 944 unsiezed. The previous owner let the car have a small leak from the battery tray and the sunroof leak into the car. The passenger seat is siezed totally and I cannot get it to budge. Same thing with the drivers side.

I've tried a hammer underneath, PB blaster and WD 40 while trying to move them. I need to get the seats out so I can remove the carpet. The seats are in decent shape and are the sport seats. I'll be selling them as I'm parting this car out.

TIA

Joel

billthe3

Are the sliders frozen so you are unable to get to all the mounting bolts? I haven't had the opportunity to deal with much rust, but I would think soaking with wd40 or some penetrating oil and then giving some good hits with a hammer should knock it lose. I'd try to get a pry bar or something to line up with the inner slider from the back and knock the seat forward. If the seats are electric I'd make sure to raise them up all the way so as to get more working room as well.


Oh, if you do ever get them out, I have a spair set of seat bases I could sell you. One of the motors/tracks may be bad on the driver side, but you should be able to harvest those parts from your seats if needed.
/shameless plug

Mike C.

That's right, you do need to slide the seat all the way forward and all the way back to get to the mount bolts.... I don't envy you. Although if you're parting it out, get under there with a cut off wheel to gain access from the underside - then just grind the snot out of the captured nuts.

jaje

Thanks.

I tried banging with a hammer and soaking it with PB blaster (penetrating oil). They are manual seats but nice ones. The carpet in the car is still in good shape so I don't want to damage it as someone is buying it. I was doing this by myself so I'm wondering if I get a 2nd person to help during this procedure I can get them to unsieze. Funny thing is on the passenger side the seat slider lever that activates it is rusted in the open position.

Oh btw...I bought an extra set of good seat sliders from the local scrap yard.

KuHL 951

Are you sure that both sides of the rails are releasing when you pull the lever. The plastic clip for the wire that goes to the other rail can break making only the lever side release. It's worth a look.

jaje

I did not think of that. I'll check that out later day. Thanks.

Zero10

I second the above suggestion, if you cannot get them free from the inside, cut the nuts off from under the car. Then you might be able to better work on them out of the car, so you can sell the seats

jaje

Just an update for those who have this problem. Rusted seat sliders suck! And this is very common from what I hear as these cars are prone to leak from the battery box, sunroof and rear hatch so most cars at one time has had water leakage onto the sliders.

Here's what we found to free up the sliders (Herb - AKA hpservertech - helped remove these).
- Two people make a huge difference in getting these loose.
- Drench the sliders (both sides) with PB Blaster and let sit for a while.
- Take a tempered steel hammer (a normal hammer we all think of) and bang the sliders from under the seat
- Do not unbolt the fronts or rears if you have access as you'll want them bolted down in order to try to free the sliders
- Early 944 seats (mine was an '84 model) only have one locking side with the lever (the other slider is completely free and does not lock)
- Remove the rear bolts first as you can get more push from your front legs to get to the fronts
- You can have someone sit in the rear of the hatch pushing with their legs near the bottom of the seat (don't kick at the top as you'll break the reclining gear). Push from the sides or you'll rip the leather

If you can't get them to budge like on the passenger seat in mine here's what you can do (note this will damage the floor of the car but you can always weld a plate in if you rip the floor board and any repairs will be covered by carpet and a seat):
- If you can't get the sliders to move you'll have to cut in from the bottom
- The seats are held in with brackets welded to the car floor (the front brackets are attached to a width spanning bracket from the tranny tunnel to the lip below the door, the rear brackets are held in with 2" x 2" brackets solely for the seats).
- You can cut in from underneath to get to the underside of the bracket so you can drill out the nut welded to the bracket.

We couldn't get to the rears so we cut with a dremel underneath to get to the underside of the bracket - then cut out a 2 x 2 swatch to see the nut underneath. We used the dremel again and cut the nut holding down the slider and it came out. This only worked for the rear side closest to the door as the other rear bracket near the tranny tunnel had fuel lines running close by (too close for a dremel). Here's where we decided brute force was the best method. We lifted from the fronts and used a Come - Along to help with our progress and ripped the entire bracket out.

I'll post up pics later.

GT350Mike

Were you able to get any pics? I have the same problem and I'd like to see what you have done.

jaje

I was lazy and never got around to it (also sold the car several weeks ago). Here's what I recall.

Some seats have a wire going across it b/c both sliders are locking (this I noticed on late model seats). On the early ones I had there was only one locking slider (that had the adjustment bar on it) and the other one was a free slider.

If you have rusted sliders soak the heck out of them in pb blaster. I was able to get them to move some using a hammer and chisel hitting the interior sliding arm. Also do not push on the upper back of the seat as it will break the seat's incline gear (you'll have a seat back like a Saturn that will all of a sudden fall back and cause you to crash).

The floor is raised where the seats attach and a nut is held in place by a clip of some kind. I could not get the seat to slide forward all the way (I could get it to go all the way back and get to those bolts) and had to cut in from underneath on one bolt (the closest to the side of the car as the fuel line was close to the passenger tt tunnel). Just make an educated guess how close you are and drill a small hole then shine a light from under the seat and hope you see it through the carpet. Once you figure out where you need to cut make a small 1" - 1 1/2" square hole in order to get to the nut and fit a dremel cutting wheel up in there. I had help from someone and we cut the nut several times until it broke loose. The other rear bolt we wound up just pulling the seat out and ripping it up from the floor. If I wanted to save the car I would have welded some steel underneath and filled with water tight epoxy. Porsche did a bad job with the seat mounting in these cars making so difficult to get access.