Help! Drivers manual seat won't move forward or backward anymore. (its stuck in near the most forward position).

Im *not* very handy mechanically and am on a budget. Is this something I can remove the seat and try to fix? If so, how long would it take someone who has has never done this before? I understand I have to disconnect some wires that affect the side airbags. If it would take someone like me over 90 minutes, and Im guessing it would, and I dont know if id handle the side airbag wires, correctly, I'd rather have my general mechanic handle it. What are your thoughts?

Here is a comment I found (elsewhere):

"Definitely not a dealership fix. If you can't tackle it, any reputable shop should be able to. Probably cost you an hour shop rate - so $150 or less. They'll probably quote you a price beforehand.

Is it not unlatching? Or is it not sliding? The seats are not hard to pull. There are four bolts, that you have to pop plastic covers off of to get to, then once those are out, tip the seat back and undo the wiring harness clips. There should be three IIRC. Either way, you can tip the seat back and get a good look at the underside and figure out what is not working. When you pull on the seat release, there should be a linkage that unlocks the mechanism that holds the seat in place. I would suspect something in the linkage failed if it's not unlocking."

Another comment: "Take a good look underneath w/flashlight to make sure nothing's jammed, also, look between the seat and the center console to see that something didn't get stuck...if you don't see anything, then:
Unhook the harnesses, remove the bolts, take it out, turn it over and you should be able to see what's going on. " as well as:

"Most likely a coin had dropped into the rail. Happened to me. "




Im new to this forum. If there is a better category to post this in, please let me know.

 

If you do decide to tackle it yourself, make sure you unplug the battery first, then wait 10 minutes for the air bags to un-arm themselves. Then you can work on removing the seat. But, I'd look with a good flash light to see if anything fell into the seat tracks, and if anything is under the seat preventing it from moving.

 

More than likely something fell in the track. Look good if you have to pull the seat it takes no more than 10 mins to unbolt it and unplug the airbag harness. The most important thing is unplugging the negative terminal on the battery first before messing with it. You probably should take the bolts out and give it a good shake if you can't see if anything in the track. If something is not in the track you can just take it out to make sure the handle is connected correctly.

 

I thought maybe there's a broken cable that pulls the latches. But the parts drawings look like the EX has motorized drivers seat. So I'm not sure what you have.

 

Maybe it's got an optional manual seat? But yes, the EX was always (or at least it seemed) the high end all options available model. They usually got the things not normally found like the sunroof for example.