A couple months ago, I noticed a burning odor occasionally emanating from the passenger seat of my 99 Disco II (an acidic battery type smell, not flame). It only happened on the very rare occasions that I had a passenger sitting in the seat, so I thought it might be pressure-related. I inspected the area under the seat and found nothing visually amiss other than a few loose connectors. After a few weeks without any additional issues, the seat controls suddenly stopped working.

While the truck was in the shop for an unrelated issue, I had the mechanic take a look. A melted fuse was discovered and replaced. The back rest tilts again, but the seat unit itself no longer slides backwards and forwards in its rails.

Without pulling the seat to investigate, the tech believes a malfunctioning motor might be the culprit. Since its not critical functionality, it's something I'd like to tackle myself if possible. Anyone have a similar issue in the past, and have any thoughts about how to most efficiently (and cheaply) restore function?

Thanks in advance!

 

You may want to unbolt the seat and look for melted wires. It's also possible that you burned the insulation off of the motor windings, but you'd probably pop a fuse if you tried to run the seat forward or back. Anyway, the best way to test wires is to check the resistance of each wire with a Ohmmeter. A normal wire should have almost no resistance from one end to the other for the short runs under a seat. Also, use your nose... burned insulation has a unique smell, and noses are very good at localizing roasted wiring.

I've got a similar troubleshooting task in my new Disco. I went to slide the front passenger seat forward, but it didn't work, so I opened up the little access cover under the seat and discovered that I have a CD changer (cool!) and one of the wiring plugs is unplugged under that seat (not so good). I'll diagnose why that plug is unplugged later, but first I have to swap in a new water heater in my basement... <sigh>....

Scott

 

Start by swapping the switches left to right, they are known melt hazards. If that does not work then you would need to pull the seat motors. There is a thermal fuse in the seat motor that will open permanently. I soldered one closed and after that now I just swap them with junkyard ones.