Yabo

My driver seat rails on the new Turbo driver side are pretty rusted, so that the seat will not move forward or back. These are the basic 4 way power seats, with the lever to manually move front and back.

I tried a bit with a pretty good sized hammer and assorted things to try to only hit the seat part of the slider, and haven't had any luck moving it to get to the bolts.

Has anyone had this problem? How did you solve it??

KuHL 951

Slam on your brakes while holding the lever up...it worked on my 83. Are you sure it's actually disengaging when you pull the lever? Not sure about the 86 but on the early cars there's a thin rod that connects to the other side, if the plastic clip breaks off it won't unhook or slide.

spoolinturbo

u can still take them apart. its just a pain. take the upper part of the seat off and start dismantling. theres like metal rods that slide through the seat that keep the actual cover and cushion on it. once you take that off you will be able to access the mount bolts. (going through all the springs and stuff, i just used a 6in extension so i didnt have to mess with the springs too much)

I had to do that to take my drivers seat out

if your leather is messed up...its going to suck putting it back on

adwolfe12

For my stuck seat in my 83, I just sprayed some WD-40 on there and held the lever up and pushed back as hard as I could. I work and scared the crap out of me.
Alex

MM951

I had to do this in my old N/A... I took the factory jack and a few pieces of wood to act as spacers/spread the load between the back of the seat base and underneath the rear seat...then jacked it back and forth enough to move it. Removed the seat/rails..bead blasted em, oiled em up and they were good as new.

Luis de Prat

Exact same here with my 83.

Yabo

Good ideas, thanks... Guess disassembling the seat might be a good idea, though i like the jack idea too. I think I also need to check if it's truly disengaging.

roman944

yeah mine were stuck too, luckily I had barely enough room to sneak a wrench in there

Yabo

OK.. found that the handle wasnt actualy doing anything, just twisting/shearing off the bar right where the handle connects to it. In trying to get the mechanism to move , the bar on that side along with the latching teeth came right out from under the seat, so i had to pull the bar that goes to the toher side with vice grips while hammering stuff.. real pain in the ***.

Got it moved enough to get to the bolts. Of course two of the bolts, one on either side, furthest in the rail on the rear stripped out the head... so going to have to drill it. Fun stuff.. Few more hours and I might have the seat out LOL. then hopefully I can salvage the threads to still put new bolts in..

roman944

my bar would slightly move the part that latches on to the teeth, and t hen would just bend to the side

we tried everything to move the seat - kicking it, using a hammer, tried to use a prybar to get the latch off the teeth - nothing worked

finally I got into the back seat from the driver's side and pushed on the seat with my legs just so we had enough room to sneak a wrench/socket in there - and took the seat out with the rail; after looking at the rail - it was rusty and way out of shape

preluditta

Oh, my God! Dude, I`d buy you a wagon of beer for this!

2 days ago I bought a 2.5 liter non-turbo porsche 944, year 1985. Guess what? Driver`s seat won`t move so I had to call my boyfriend who came over and drove the car home, because my "model legs" couldn`t reach the pedals
we spent 2 days trying everything to get the seat moving. with no results. WD-40 failed. hammer failed. everything else failed.
Then I put in google something like "porsche 944 front seat stuck" and found this topic, read it through and decided to try the jack+wood method, which finally WORKED! My next thought was - why this never came into MY mind?

Well, whatever it takes, thank you so much! Gotta go now, there are still lots of things that I should fix on my "new" 944 to bring it up for a new life.

Thanks again!
Linda

Grandpa#3

Just a "Man" thing, Linda. We believe in brute force, get a bigger hammer, or longer pry bar methods. We are gentle for very short periods of times.

Cheers,
Larry

MM951

Glad to hear it worked for ya. I learned the usefulness of a scissor jack when trying to remove a rusted on oilpan from an old toyota landcruiser.

RandyJvln

Tiger03447

I used the jack method also on my '83. use a socket extension in the hole of the jack instead of the aluminum handle. that way you won't break the aluminum handle..like I did. Durrr!
You can also try soaking the rails in PB Blaster...which has a good track record with me and all of my stuff that has grown together over the years. I also had some luck with the bolts using long allen wrenches (not the ball type...too soft) to get to the bolts...and lotsa crawling around...once you loosen up the bolt a bit, you can use an allen type socket on your ratchet. If you try to convert the seats from an '83-84 into an electric version from a later car, you will have to do some head scratching.and fab work.been there done that..