Anyone know where I can obtain a seat motor for my 1984 Coupe DeVille?

The power seat track was shared by many other GM cars. Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile. Wrecking yard can tell you what interchanges.

Not quite. The seat track may in fact be shared; however, the motor is not as interchangeable. Unfortunately, the wrecking yards in my area have either not had or led me in the wrong direction. I was hoping that with all the traffic in this site, that perhaps I might get lucky. So far, 24 views, 1 response in a day and a half.

I've never seen a seat motor actually fail? I've seen cables from the motor strip, be disconnected etc. but the motor is protected by a 30 amp circuit breaker, so it would be rare to burn one up?

^^^ You must be lucky then. I've seen more burned out seat motors in my life than anything else.

Without taking it to an expensive electrical place, what's the best way to determine if it is the motor? When I hit the switch, power is exerted into the cables (sort of a jerk movement at the cable), but the seat does not move. It is possible that I could be making a wrong assessment as I'm not a professional (obviously :)). Anyone? .............8/64/3

^^ The motor IS NOT burned out. If you hear a rumbling but no moving, that means the motor is turning. It also means the the motor is turning its mini-driveshaft (just as it should), but not making contact with the appropriate gears/cables to move the seat. The motor is in one small section of the whole assembly, and a mini-transmission moves different gears and cables for different seat functions. In about 99.99% of all power seat problems in these 80s GM power seats, the problem is that the plastic housing (usually yellow plastic) has become brittle and broken or cracked. Therefore the proper gears are not being held in place.

One way you can figure this out is to put your hand under the seat and push up on the entire assembly. Then try the any one of the seat functions. By pushing up on the assembly you may be temporarily reconnecting gears which have separate when the assembly cracked and subsequently "dipped" between the two rails. But that may not always render success. Nonetheless, if you hear the motor rumbling, the problem IS bad gear connection most likely due to the cracking of the casing. Rarely will a motor burn out or a gear get sheared. Your best bet would be to remove the seat from the track and leave the motor assembly and track in the the car. That way you can get a good look at it and fool around with rubber bands, zip ties, cardboard, and whatever else you need to "hold" the motor in it's factory state. I had two power seats completely dead and I fixed both of them with this method. Good luck! :thumbsup:

Greg

Thanks, I'll give this a try and post back.

6/93 in 10

i have a similar problem with my 79 coupe deville. the motor churns but the seat back does not recline. so does this theory hold true that is is just a broken casing if the other functions all work but my seat back does not move into recline or forward. or am i looking at something else? thanks

I'm not sure if the recline feature is in the same unit as the rest, as the power seats I've looked at have manual recliners. I do know that the recline function is one of the first to go for those that has it powered, so I suspect it's the same situation. I didn't even know power recliners were in the Caddies in '79; in fact I don't think the driver seat had a recliner at all in the 80's, except in your case.

By recline I think you mean it wont activate the rear of the seat to lower it in relation to the front. We call that 'gangsta lean". Raise the seat fully up and level, look at the cables that run from motor to the slide rails. More than likely one of the cables is stripped on the end or disconnected. They should unthread much like a very short speedometer cable to inspect the ends of each cable.

my gangsta lean is functional, thats pretty funny. but the seat back itself does not move forward or backward. the seat bottom will tilt front up and back down and vice versa and the seat track will slide the whole seat forward and backward, but the uprigth seat back will not move back towards the rear seat and fornt towards the wheel. it wouldn;t be so bad if it froze in a position that was even close to my regular driving position but it is just miserable to drive now becaseu it is at 90 degrees from the seat bottom. some liberal gangsta lean is all that is saving it right now to get it laening backwards. and again, the motor churns when i do the recline feature but the seatback does not move.