Interior

Seatback Swap

>My light gray S4 driver's seatback has some wear on the outside beaded edge
>and I want to swap it with the one from the passenger's side. Has anyone tried
>this-the cable harness is on the same side in both seats and the seatback
>tilt release is on both sides of the seatbacks, so it looks like the only
>problem might be where the cable is routed under the upholstry at the rear of
>the botton seat. Any Help?

Don Burrows


I did this last year. It's pretty straight forward. The only things that need to be remembered are: 1) the polarity of the rake motors need to be reversed, and 2) do not take up all the slack in the lock linkage for the seat. Also, when removing the four attachment bolts, be careful not to slide the large elongated nuts too far away from you to reach them when it comes time to re-install. I had never done it before, and it took me about 90 minutes to do both sides. Cleaned out some major dust bunnies while I was that far into it. Also, found some looses change, but $0.37 was not the reason for doing it.

Merry motoring. Ed Ruiz

>Has anyone tried swapping the driver's seatback with the passenger side in an
>S4 without removing the seats from the car?

Can't be done...no access to inboard pivots.

Steve - 87S4/auto/GPW


I'm going to exchange the seat backs and I have the passenger seat out, but it's not obvious how to get the back off without disconnecting the wiring harness, which looks like a daunting job. Is there a plug under the cover in the seat back? I'm going to look at the shop manual but if anyone can lend some advie it would be much appreciated.

Don Burrows
87 S4, A/T, Dark Blue


Actually, I've done the seatback swap on my 87. You can disconnect the seatback motor harness. There is a plug under the seat...just pay attention to how it's routed. You don't have to touch the seatback itself to do this. There are alignment marks on the seat hinges/seatback drive spindle that need to be aligned when you mate the back to the seat. The easiest way for me to do this was to take one of my MC batteries laying around, and apply power to the seat back and drive the spindle to the proper orientation.

Steve- 87S4/auto/GPW


Thanks, Steve, I did figure out how to make the cable disconnects but now I can't get the hinges apart. I've removed the two cap screws that bolt the upper part of the hinge to the seatback and the C clip from the pivot point but I can't slide the bushing that the C clip was on far enough in toward the center of the seat to be able to separate the hinge pivot. What am I missing?

Thanks,
Don Burrows
87 S4, A/T Dark Blue


The square section drive rods can push in slightly, and that leads to an incorrect assumption regarding disassembly. These square rods are separate pieces and can be pulled out of the drive spindle...this should solve your disassembly problem.

Steve- 87S4/auto/GPW


Well, I guess that I was due for some good luck. I just completed the swap and everything works fine. I did not have to reverse any connections. Thanks for your help.

Don Burrows
87 S4, A/T Dunkelblau