|
Yesterday, my dealer replaced the driver's seat in my 6 month old S70 (15k miles) for the 2nd time with one from a new car. It's better, but not fixed!
The service manager met with me to go over what they found. He showed me a brand new seat bracket for the electric seat that was never installed and fresh from the factory. The pivot points (4 total) where the electric motors adjust the seat's front and rear height are steel rivots. The noise comes from the tolerance between the shaft of the rivot and the 2 cold-rolled sheet metal that make up the bracket. All 4 rivots exhibited a small amount of play in the bracket that he showed me. By hand, you could ever-so-slightly move the bracket and feel as well as hear the noise. Add the weight of the seat and driver (I weight 245), and it's easy to see where the problem comes from.
In my case, the service mgr believes having the front of the seat adjusted up and the seat back tilted back to accommodate my large frame (6'5") creates extra leverage during start/stops that accentuate the problem. When I adjust the seat height, front and rear, to the lowest position, the noise goes away.
They did an inspection of new Volvos on the lot and play in the electric seats varied, but all exhibited some play. In my case the problem got worse over the first few months that I had the car.
The dealer service mgr is just as frustrated as me. He even offered to weld the seat bracket to conform to my preferred position. I declined because my wife drives my car too and she needs a different position.
The good news is that the dealer pinpointed the problem and already has a call into Volvo for a factory solution. He thinks that they may even send him a custom fix to try out. We'll see. For now, he says if I don't hear from him, make sure to bug them when I bring my car in for each 5k service.
My dealer is Keystone Volvo, Doylestown, PA. They're great from sales to service. This is definitely an engineering problem for which Volvo has to take responsibility to resolve.
I'll keep you posted on future developments.
|
