1997 Park Avenue Driver's side seat

[Holaday1185]

To all:

After cleaning my car and driving down to the road, I realized that I casually needed to adjust my seat. I went through all of the motions until I got the option to move my seat up and down. The problem: On the driver's side seat of my 1997 PA, ALL of the seat movements work perfectly with the exception of the up and down button. You can hear a motor of somesort working under the seat, but no action. Any help is appreciated.

-David

[biged77]

See my posting last night 1/5/07 about a similar problem on my 1999 Park Avenue. In cleaning the car maybe something fell into the seat mechanism and is causing it to bind up. The fact that you hear something probably means the motor is trying to turn. Mine was doing the same thing and the problem turned out to be the motor gear assembly which had a broken tooth which was binding up the gears. If it turns out you need a new motor you may be out of luck.

One option would be to permanently adjust the seat to your desired height manually. This is not easy but is possible and requires first unbolting and removing the seat cushion where it bolts to the automatic seat mechanism frame. The motor has a threaded rod that turns and causes a clevise to go back and forth. You can remove the pin connecting the clevise to the seat mechanism, raise the seat to the desired height, then adjust the clevise until you can reinstall the pin.

The other option - use a seat cushion like my wife did until she convinced me to work on the seat.

Biged77

[mcmlxv1]

The driver's side rear tilt function and both the passenger's side front and rear tilt function on my '01 are broken. The motors run, but the cushions don't move. Also, the driver's side left plastic seat track has slipped forward out of its metal base and now protrudes a few inches out behind the color-keyed plastic finishing panel. When I adjust the seat completely rearward (like when I use the EXIT mode), that plastic track pushes on the inside back of the trim panel, causing the entire panel to seperate near the door sill with a loud cracking noise.

The car has only 40K and was owned for 6 years by an elderly man who rarely adjusted the seat. The passenger seat was barely sat in, much less adjusted. I have noticed a lot of other Parks with similar failure. These are weird, complicated seats and I'm not confident they'll be reliable over the long term. At least I have the side-airbag seats introduced in 2000 that deleted the power floating headrest/seatbelt pod.

I was recently flipping through the 1997 introductory brochure for this generation of Park, and the ad copy bragged that the seats had been designed with the aid of a physical therapist. Maybe the quality control engineer was out of the room at the time.

I plan to have the seats repaired soon under GM Major Guard. I'll let you know how I make out. I think it's already paid for itself.

Thanks.