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BMW E36 Recline Gear Seat Repair
93K views
Jan 29, 2023
BMW E36 recline gear repair diy. Electric seats are nice to have, but they do have a common set of issues that typically occur on higher mileage vehicles. Luckily, most of the repairs are quite simple to perform. Replacing the recline gear involves removing the seat completely, and then opening up the gearbox to access the plastic gears. The seat has two nuts and two bolts holding it down, and then there is some wiring underneath that must be disconnected. The gear box lid has 6 torx bolts holding it to the gearbox, once you've removed the bolts the gearbox lid should easily pop off. If you buy solely the plastic gear you will need to press it onto the rod. This can be done by placing the gear on a solid surface and then tapping the rod into the gear. BMW E36 seat repair is typically pretty quick and simple, this repair took me about 45 minutes total.
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Hey, E36 Fanatics, Steven here
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Today I'm working on some seat repairs on my 328I, E36. I have automatic seats in my car, and over time they tend to start having a few issues when they get into the higher mileage
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Some of the common issues are seat gears, power motors, and the lever
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I actually had my passenger seat that the plastic lever broke, and then a week later, my recline feet
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in my driver's seat went bad as well. So this video is going to be my recline
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feature repair, which more than likely it's going to be a gear in the
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gearbox. They have two plastic gears inside. One of them probably went bad
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And then afterwards I'm also going to do a video on the plastic lever on my
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passenger side which has gone bad, which is probably it has a bowden cable that
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runs from the lever to the bottom of the seat. And that is a typical issue that goes
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bad on these vehicles. Also, I'm going to include that video on the Bowden Cable lever repair
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at the top right of this video. And then also, if you have some time, check out my BMW
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blog. I'm also going to have a link to that in the top right corner of this video
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Inside the gear boxes, they have these plastic gears and they don't frequently go bad
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but when your seat stops working, it's frequently the plastic gear. And what you'll see is
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is it's broken into like a hundred pieces and shattered into little bits and it just does this
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over time and one good way to tell up there's my puppy you can hear you can hear the motor
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whirring but it's not doing anything and of course this is my recliner my recline's not working at all
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at this point so I've actually done this repair before on this same seat
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and I'm probably replacing the exact same gear. I would highly recommend not going on eBay
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and getting the really, really cheap one for like $8 because the quality is not as good
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Because like I said, I just replaced this like two years ago, so I'm not very happy
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First thing you're going to do is you should have buttons or caps over your bolts over here
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You're going to want to push your seat all the way back until you can see these bolts
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Like I said, they've probably got a cap on and you just pop off with a screwdriver. These nuts are 5 eighths or 16 millimeter either one and just loosen them up and get the nut off and you got one on each end
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Okay so I got both nuts out now go ahead and scoot it all the way up Until you can see the front
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Whoops, sorry, Zaxby. You're all right? All right, at this point you should be able to see the two rear bolts
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Like I said, they've probably got a cap on them. the one right here same size remove it okay so I picked up the seat like I said all
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you got to just pull all those four bolts and thing comes right out you do got some wires underneath the seat though that you need to disconnect you got this
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wire running up to the seat and it's got several connectors right here underneath
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the seat disconnect those like I said I've just got the seat pulled up a bit so I can see underneath here and I'm gonna
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disconnect them and then I'm gonna be able to flip the entire seat
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It's also got a little zip tie. I'm gonna have to clip but no big deal
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So normally there would be a kickplate that bolts in right here I do believe
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However this seat is missing the kickplate I probably forgot to put it back on when I
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originally replaced the gear. Here you can see the connectors a little bit
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better because I got the whole seat flipped over at this point
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And here's the wires. So like I said, you have three motors controlling the various seats
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seat movements on this vehicle. And then you have several gear boxes
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The one we're after is this one right here. This is the one that has the gear that goes bad
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So to get you your gear, you're going to need to remove first these two motors
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You got to remove this top motor first. It's a T25. It's only got two bolts, one here, one there, and then the same for the bottom one
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Here's the bottom motor. It's got the rod coming out, and then you got the top motor here, which has the rod that fits into the motor right here
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So now you've got to access. Now you've got access to your gearbox
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The next thing you're going to need to do is remove all of these small torques bits here on the top
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They have to be removed in order to gain access and in order to pull the lid off
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Okay, so most of these smaller ones are T20s. And then the two larger ones at the back are T I just gotta go ahead and remove these You could pull this whole seat out
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or you could just do what I do, what I'm doing, and just flip the seat inside the car
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I feel like it makes it easier. Okay, something to remember here
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The two in the far back over here, and the far back are much longer than the rest
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rest of them you got to remember that when you're reinstalling these okay so my
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gear is not broken into a million pieces but as you can see it's missing a good
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chunk of it right there where it had broken up so that's my problem this isn't
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turning the plastic gear. Plastic gears that stop making contact. So, just got to replace that tiny little gear right there and we will be good
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Okay, guys. So that has been out, and I've got my new rod, and I've got my new gear, my new cat plastic gear
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Now, when I bought this thing and actually came with a new rod, so I didn't have to press it on
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however if you're so typically when you buy these things they're not going to come with a new rod
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you have to press it on it's really not hard to do uh i sometimes if the last time i did this when i
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do it on another car and i press it on uh i just took the backside of a wrench that had a rubber
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that had a rubber part on it or that was a rubber handle and i just hit the end of this and pressed
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into the gear. The gear has two sides on it. One side is obviously the holes are bigger than
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the other side and it's got like these little flanges that are coming out. That's the side you
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want to press into. So anyway, so I got my gear box out. This is the gear that I actually
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replaced last time and that one if I recall you don't need to press in. It actually doesn't
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press into the rod if I recall correctly. So what I'm going to
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to do now and what you're going to want to do when you replace that little thing you're going to want to
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take some grease and if you really want to go to the extra mile you can pull out all of these
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pieces right here and you can re-grease them because i mean this is like 20 this is like 22 year old
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grease right here so but i not going to do that so i am just going to really i just going to crease it real good Maybe lighting up a bit on it but you get the idea Okay So I going to go ahead and pop my gear back in
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There we go. And you can see now that the whole thing's spinning
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Okay, before, when I was, I was first taking a look at it, it didn't spin at all because the gear was broken
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Another repair to do while you're doing this, here is the second
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Here's the second gear right here. If this one's gone bad, you know that this one's not going to be that far away from it
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So I would go ahead and buy both of these and replace both of them just as preventive maintenance
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But if you don't want to, you don't have to. These right here are the rest of the metal gears and I mean you can pop them out and re-grease
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them if you want to. I'm not going to do that but you can
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So it's time to pop back on our cover once everything is back into place and it is
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Okay so that was a little bit more pain than I thought it would be but I got it in
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So the only thing to really remember about putting back on your cover
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is that you're going to want to remember the two long ones go in the back over here
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Alright, now you're going to want to go ahead and put back on your motors
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You're going to want to put the one that goes on the back with the rod on it in first
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Like so. Last but not least, once you put back on your wiring and everything, you're going to
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go ahead and bolt back down the rear bolts. Make sure to tighten these real good and make sure the railing and everything is properly aligned
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Now what you're going to do? Come back to your seat control. Go ahead and push it all the way back
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Let's test out the seat. And look at that. It is now working
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Still really ugly, but at least it works. Hope you all enjoyed this video
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And as you can see, this is a really easy fix to save you some money
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So you don't have to go to the mechanic for something like this. I hope y'all enjoyed this DIY and y'all have a good one
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