DIY: rocking chair / seat / heated seat $0.00 repair priceless

gshadow325

New member
i decided to tackle another annoying thing in my T4R. My Rocking chair i had for a drivers seat. Search all over and could find out why it rocks and roll LOL. many were repaired under warranty with no real reason what was repaired. some just changed the seat frame. me wanting to fix this cheap, lead me to look for the reason....well here is the reason.

There is a bar that runs from left to right. basically behind you butt or the bottom most bar in this picture


or this part that i have highlighted in red


That bar as outlined in red in the above picture is a brace that holds both sides together. it is welded from the factory. Well the welds suck. it doesnt go ALL the way around the bar. it just goes 1/3 -1/2 of the way around. So the welds break and one side just moves back and forth creating a rocking sensation! It broke at the spot highlighted in yellow circle in above picture, in my truck.

in this bottom picture, i am using a screw driver to point to the broken weld.


this weld is broken on the drivers side so it allowed the passenger side to drop down.

I picked up the seat and walked across a busy avenue with it on my shoulder over to my buddies at the body shop and in less than 30 seconds of grinding and welding (took 5 minutes to set it up though) i had a solid seat!

Since i had the seat apart to fix the rocking chair. I wanted to fix my heated seats. So boys and girls this is how you do it.

Take a Digital Volt Meter DVM and set it to OHM setting and change it to test for continuity. find the leads going to the seat heater pads, in my case its the ones in yellow circle in below picture.


You take the probes from the DVM and touch them together, your meter should beep. if it doesnt change it to a setting that it does.

You take those same towo probes and touch them to the two pins coming from the bottom seat pad. Some cars have the bottom and the back seat pad wired in a series. so you will have to use your spidey sense to make sure you going directly to the two leads coming from the seat pad or else your DVM will never beep or they maybe both bad.

So you sure you got the two leads coming from the seat pad right? if you connect your probe to them it should beep. if it doesnt that pad may be bad. if it does, then move on to the other one. do the same. this is the way you find out what pad is bad. they usually break here in this next picture. its easy to find. used a flashlight and shined it on it to follow the wires and it showed a break.


So get a piece of wire and reconnect it, solder it for a solid connection. tape it up with some good 3m supper 33 tape, dont use cheap stuff since this will get hot. super 33 holds up very very well. Now you saying how the heck do i put the seat leather back since i dont have hogclips or hogring pliers. Here's the trade secret cheat i will share with you since you read this far into my post! Get some quality 40lb zip ties!! easy peasy!

btw all this is in my repair/build thread in my signature
Thanks for reading, come again
 
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Very good info, I had this problem on my 03 sport and the dealer said they would charge me $400 to take the seat apart if it wasn't the frame that was broken so I never did it. Starting to notice a bit of movement on my 08 seat. Definitely will check this out to see if this is in fact the issue and can be fixed under warranty
 
if it rocks back and forth..its probably broken weld.

the way this seat is designed its bound to fail. especially since they dont weld it completely around the bar and the bracket. it only is welded at most 1/2 way around. when i had it apart yesterday, i saw moving parts but when i saw that weld break 100% thru....it was stupid design/weld job.

btw- $400 WTFBBQ thats why i wrote this post because its basically a free repair, just some know how and some friends with a body shop with a welding machine. i would not think anyone will charge more than the price of a McDonalds extra value meal to weld this if you brought it to them!!

you can actually see the bar if you made the seat go all the way up and slide it all the way foward. it would be the bar that goes from left to right and be above your feet if you were sitting in the back seat. if you pulled on my seat when you sat in the back, it would dip towards the center of the car. the weld broke on the side towrds the left.
 
Removing the front seat

HI there,

Thanks for your great information about fixing the popping/rocking seat. I have a 3rd Generation 4R and need to have this same weld fixed. My question is, how easy is it to remove the seat yourself? And, do you have any links to DIY seat removal? I am a girl, and a novice, but fully capable of many DIY stuff. I am all about saving some $$ by removing the seat myself and taking to a body shop to have the weld fixed.

Just thought I'd see if you had some info about removing the front driver's seat. Tips? Tricks? Things to be aware of.

Thanks,
aschaaf
 
simple job to remove the seat. There are is a bottom frame on the seat that is connected to the floor of the 4runner by four bolts, two in the front and two in the back. The bolts and ends of the seat frame are covered by four plastic trim pieces. Remove the four trim pieces, loosen and remove the four bolts, tilt the seat back and unplug two, maybe a couple more electrical connectors and you are done, remove the seat. Take the seat out and have it welded. Reinstall by reversing the steps listed above. Good luck. Phil
 
can you weld the broken bar with the seat still attached in the vehicle? Or does the seat have to come out? Thanks..
 
can you weld the broken bar with the seat still attached in the vehicle? Or does the seat have to come out? Thanks..

For safety you need to remove it. There really isn't enough room to get a welder under there. Removal is 4 bolts.
 
^^^^^what he said! Add in two connectors. It's absolutely possible, but why would you want to? It would even make sense to drive the truck to the shop and remove it in the parking lot. Then have then weld it.

If you can't remove the seat, drive it to the shop and show them this thread so they know what to look for and how to fix it. Then pay them to remove and replace the seat. It takes all of ten minutes to remove and reinstall the seat. That's $50 per hour/2 = $25 and 25 to grind it down and zap it with some hot metal. Should cost you $50 to 100 if they really want to make some money on you. To me even 100 is worth it, the rocking chair drive me nuts!
 
gshadow, this is very good info! The dealer replaced my entire seat due to this complaint (I have a Toyota platinum warranty) and the problem is back! Damn seat wiggling about is disconcerting.
 
Cant thank you enough!

I did this fix this weekend. It was easier than I thought it was going to be. I hadn't used my little Eastwood welder in a while so that was fun too. It isn't pretty, but it's fixed and I don't feel like I'm driving a ragged out POS anymore. :party:

Thanks again!
 
GJ and nice write up. I have this problem and my seat back wont spring forward on its own. toyota really cheaped out on this one and imagine what it would be like in an accident.
 
Wish I had found this thread earlier as I found/made this repair this weekend on mine. Oddly, it wasn't the weld that broke but the pipe cracked and broke next to the weld.
 
I'm pretty sure this is what just broke on my driver's seat as well, but I have a 3rd gen. I'll take it apart this weekend.
 
i decided to tackle another annoying thing in my T4R. My Rocking chair i had for a drivers seat. Search all over and could find out why it rocks and roll LOL. many were repaired under warranty with no real reason what was repaired. some just changed the seat frame. me wanting to fix this cheap, lead me to look for the reason....well here is the reason.

There is a bar that runs from left to right. basically behind you butt or the bottom most bar in this picture


or this part that i have highlighted in red


That bar as outlined in red in the above picture is a brace that holds both sides together. it is welded from the factory. Well the welds suck. it doesnt go ALL the way around the bar. it just goes 1/3 -1/2 of the way around. So the welds break and one side just moves back and forth creating a rocking sensation! It broke at the spot highlighted in yellow circle in above picture, in my truck.

in this bottom picture, i am using a screw driver to point to the broken weld.


this weld is broken on the drivers side so it allowed the passenger side to drop down.

I picked up the seat and walked across a busy avenue with it on my shoulder over to my buddies at the body shop and in less than 30 seconds of grinding and welding (took 5 minutes to set it up though) i had a solid seat!

Since i had the seat apart to fix the rocking chair. I wanted to fix my heated seats. So boys and girls this is how you do it.

Take a Digital Volt Meter DVM and set it to OHM setting and change it to test for continuity. find the leads going to the seat heater pads, in my case its the ones in yellow circle in below picture.


You take the probes from the DVM and touch them together, your meter should beep. if it doesnt change it to a setting that it does.

You take those same towo probes and touch them to the two pins coming from the bottom seat pad. Some cars have the bottom and the back seat pad wired in a series. so you will have to use your spidey sense to make sure you going directly to the two leads coming from the seat pad or else your DVM will never beep or they maybe both bad.

So you sure you got the two leads coming from the seat pad right? if you connect your probe to them it should beep. if it doesnt that pad may be bad. if it does, then move on to the other one. do the same. this is the way you find out what pad is bad. they usually break here in this next picture. its easy to find. used a flashlight and shined it on it to follow the wires and it showed a break.


So get a piece of wire and reconnect it, solder it for a solid connection. tape it up with some good 3m supper 33 tape, dont use cheap stuff since this will get hot. super 33 holds up very very well. Now you saying how the heck do i put the seat leather back since i dont have hogclips or hogring pliers. Here's the trade secret cheat i will share with you since you read this far into my post! Get some quality 40lb zip ties!! easy peasy!

btw all this is in my repair/build thread in my signature
Thanks for reading, come again

This was helpful, even I'll try this
 

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