Re: Headrest won't go up or down-front seat (archive)

Scott,
I have fixed this on two different 750's
The problem is that the cable that runs from the motor to the gear has slipped. To remove the back of the seat, I think that you need to pull from the bottom.
Then you can remove the motor and adjust the cable.
The problem is that the drive shaft can move either to far into the motor or to far into the gear. When this happens, either the motor turns the drive shaft but it is not engaging the gear or the drive shaft has moved to far into the gear and is not turned by the motor.
Good luck
Paul
91 750iL
94 540i
96 328iC

To remove the seatback, pull from the bottom (helps if you give it a little shove "up" first...), then once the bottom is free, tug the whole thing "down".

The fix is to either prevent the inner core of the cable from falling so far into the hole in the motor shaft (1/8" - 1/4" of welding rod or coathangar wire dropped in the hole will do it... really!), or shorten the outer jacket of the cable (effectively lengthening the "core" of the drive cable, so it doesn't back out of the hole in the motor shaft). The key is to wiggle/twist the core so it seats in the worm drive at the headset end before you reattach the cable to the motor.

There's tons of posts on different approaches, try searching the archives, but these are the two solutions that come up time and time again.

have fun, it's a simple fix and SOOOO satisfying to have everything on the car working 100%.

eric
'88 735i 5sp w/ working headrests

Follow Ups:

Re: Headrest won't go up or down-front seat Paul 21:48 11/19/2000 (0)

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