A quick, cheap and permanent fix for broken 355 seat potentiometers

I don't think it matters which position, as long as you set the seat pot to the correct resistance for the position.

 

I LOVE I T !!!!!

How in the heck did I miss this thread? Oh yeah 348's don't have power seats. What ever the case, AWESOME post!

 

Just to string it all together. Here is another thread I put together on the subject. Though I mostly just consolidated information that other people had already discovered and posted.

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=288373

 

With pics even.

 

Is this a common Failure on the 355? Should I brace myself for seat malfunction?

 

Ummm, Ya!

 

Heh, I see that I posted on that thread long ago so I must have seen it once before. It's like a ghost from the past when I see stuff I posted that I don't remember. Great thread though man and I will definitely have it handy this weekend.

 

Good luck this weekend! Let us know how it goes!

 

Thanks for the update. I didn't get around to messing with it this weekend. Painting the house and running an excavator all day Sunday. Hope to get on it next couple days.

 

Yes, i realize this is a very old thread... and that there are a half dozen other similar threads. Helping a friend with his 355 Spider, sounds like the typical 'bad pot' problem. Honestly, this set them to 600 and do not reconnect them to the seat tracks method sounds a hell of a lot better than trying to glue broken shafts back together or source unobtainium replacement parts...

Sure seems like having the driver ensure the seats are not all the way back before operating the top is totally reasonable and a far better solution than the overly complex and failure prone 'factory' setup with fragile position sensors and computers.

Thoughts?

 

If you fix the pots by installing the small roll-pin as suggested in posts here the system will function as designed, but I do agree that it is the most ridiculous power convertible top ever conceived by mankind.

 

Or simply buy a repair kit

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/143665671697

 

Just thought I would update this thread with what I did recently after my second problem in 3 years with the seat pots. I have no idea if its the right procedure but at this moment my roof is now working again!

Symptoms were the passenger seat was stuck all the way forward. Roof inop. Roof would work on the emergency switch but pax seat stuck all the way forward still.

I turned off power to the car and unplugged the multi plug but left the seat power plugged in.
Repowered the car.
I then removed the rear seat bolts and turned the ignition on and moved the seat back using the switch on the console.
Removed the front bolts.
Turned off power again and unplugged the power cable to the seat.
Removed the seat.

I then removed the drive unit / drive shaft and removed the potentiometer.

Upon opening I found that the potentiometer was very stiff and the plastic ball joint would just spin on its ball and not actually turn the potentiometer.
I cleaned the unit and applied silicone grease. Ran it back and forth a few times between its max and min hard stops.

I then cleaned the seat mountings with an M8 die ( think it was M8) as there was a lot of crud in there.
Refitted the seat and connected seat power only.
Turned car power back on and moved the seat all the way forward and back to get the seat bolts in.

I then motored the seat all the way back to as far back as it normally goes.

Turned off power to the car and re-connected the multi plug.

Then turned power back on and sent the seat all the way forward.
Then sent the seat all the way back.

I did this a couple of times just to be sure and cycled the ignition a few times too.

Then just to be sure I killed power to the car again and left it for half an hour then tried again and it was still ok.

Then I tried the roof and it was operational again.

The seats move as they should and return to the correct position after operation of the roof.

I have no idea if the ECU learned the new values or if its still using the old ones, but either way its working and as best as I can tell the potentiometer really cant go much further than full aft and forward anyway so I think you cant really mess it up. HTH.

 

I think the Roof ECU is using the old values. Moving the seat to the endstops manually has probably reset the pots to the right starting positions, thanks to the regreasing. The old values would have needed to be set with a Ferrari SD1 tool.

My car is in for a major at the moment. I’ll ask my tech next time I see him how he uses the SD1 tool to do the relearn.