my seat back cable has been broken for a year,
I am getting ready to have it fixed, my
trusted volvo shop told me that it could need a new
motor and a cable, the gear/ that the cable goes into
can be stripped,

I can hear the motor working,

anyone have to replace the motor and the cable??
I want to replace the cable only.
my back can't take the down cool position anymore.

I think I paid abot $45 at volvoparts.com for a new cable.
It is a bit of work to get at the parts so my choice was to replace
it while I was in there. Following a tip from this board I also used
cable ties to put the seat cover back on and that worked well.

If you don't want to tackle the job then print out the instructions
at http://volvospeed.com/bay13.htm for your mechanic. It describes
the procedure for a couple different configurations (motors are
mounted differently if you have SIPs) and I found it was a very big
help.

Go over to www.VolvoSpeed.com and look under the Repair/Maintenance section at Bay 13 and look under the Misc. section you'll find the article on the seatcable repair, its a very common repair. You have to take the skin partially off the seatback to get to the cable in the back of the seat. Instead of hogrings I used nylon tie straps to reattach the skin to the seatback, works great and you can't see them anyway. Hogrings and the pliers are hard to find unless you order them from JC Whitney or some other upholstery specialty shop. All you need to do is heat up the metal cap on the motor end of the cable to slip the metal cap off the plastic cable housing, don't overheat it and melt the plastic though, you just want to warm it enough to soften the plastic to release the cap. Once the cap is off just trim about 1/2" of the cable's plastic sheath housing off then warm the end again and slip the metal cap back on. Reinsert the cable back into the motor and secure it and test its operation, you'll find it works fine now. Reattach the seatback skin and you're done. Takes about two hours if you've never done it before. If you end up letting a mechanic do the job tell him you want all the old parts (the old cable) back. Otherwise most shops will just do this mod and tell you they replaced the cable. The cable is about $60 or so from Volvo if I remember right. But there's really no reason to replace it with a new one because the new one will do the exact same thing in a few years. Good luck ........ Mike

I put a new cable in mine and it worked fine. You can do the service the cable method but I doubt you will get a mechanic to do this- they will most likely just want to replace it.

I do not remember exactly what I did (I forget things easily, an Einstein kind 'a dude), but here is an outline,

I cut one end of the cable (after removing the cap sort of thing). This caused the square wire to stick out more on the other end going into a female socket. Improvisation!

The entire cable got an inch or so short. Rest of the system was in good condition.

No more cool down look for you!

Ronjon
'93 850

SO YOU TRIMED THE STRIPPED AREA OF THE CABLE
GOOD TO GO???

DID YOU GRIND IT
CLIP IT

OR SHOULD I ORDER A NEW CABLE

This was two-three years ago. It is hard to explain, but I will try. I did not read any instruction what so ever. However, like many suggested, buying a new cable is not a bad idea. Not too many people has the patience, crazy idea or the intuition like I do. Sorry! :)

I shorten the plastic casing on, say, the Motor end, not the stripped End side. The stripped End side connects to a female square type socket and this is the end of the cable. The Motor side connects to the motor. I took this end off, removed the metal cover around and cut the cable casing (not the wire) to an amount that the End side female square type socket can take in. I put the metal cover back and re-connected the cable to the motor. By shortenning the cable casing/plastic jacket, at the Motor side, the wire sticks out more than it used to on the End side.

Einstein