Yesterday i fixed three things that annoyed the crap out of me
- Rocking driver seat
- non working seat heaters
- stuck rear brake pad that would make this thud sound when released
So first i did the brakes. Took all four wheels off to inspect them. Boy toyotas gets tons of surface rust! Fronts look good, though eventually i am going to get new rotors and pads all around. Found the right rear brake pads wearing unevenly. Took the pads off, well try to anyways and the one that wore unevenly took a while to get out. turns out idiots that did the brake job before just jamed the pad in with a tiny piece of rusty metal wedged in there. so what happened was the pad did not "float" it just got stuck. with a little dremel tool and some care it "floats" now. Priceless $0 repair!
No pics sorry...
So since i was on a roll, i decided to tackle another annoying thing. My Rocking chair i had for a drivers seat. Search all over and no one found out the reason it rocks and roll LOL. 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! The ride home was freaking awesome...priceless $0 repair
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 will make a seperate post for the rocking seat seat repair
Thanks for reading, come again!
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