When I got in the car late last night to drive off, I noticed that I couldn't adjust my steering wheel or drivers seat from their respective buttons. I had to resort to using the memory settings to be able to move the seat. When I checked the driver's side fusebox today, I noticed fuse #8 was blown. It's a 10 amp fuse. I thought, alright, an easy fix. I popped in a new fuse and all was well and working for about 30 seconds. The fuse blew again. I guess it's more complicated than just changing the fuse.

I know nothing about troubleshooting electric problems. I resort to the braintrust now. What is the next step I should take in troubleshooting this annoyance?

 

Since you knowledge would be limited we need to keep it simple.
Under the seat is a small box held in place by two 10 MM bolts. Pull it out to see if a wire has lost the plastic insulation between two wires in the cluster.
Easy fix with some electrical tape, but beyond that it might get complicated.
Let us know what you find. Don't fix the fuse until you find the results under the seat.

 

Thank's. I'll go check it out.

 

Sorry I didn’t get the chance to work on this yesterday but I attempted it today. I couldn’t get the seat out because it was blocking two bolts I needed to unfasten. After many attempts with my memory presets I gave up and against your advice popped a new fuse in to see if I could move the seat further. Before I did that I turned the auto function of the steering wheel off.

As I was working on removing those last two bolts I noticed the seat was working fine even after I left it unattended for 10 minutes, the steering wheel tilt as well. I bolted everything back up since it was late and dark out already.

Tomorrow I’ll check if it is still all working as it should. If it does work, then maybe the problem is related to the Auto function of the steering wheel?

 

Is it possible that you jiggled a wire underneath the seat while trying to remove it? That could have moved the bare insulation mentioned from a short circuit position to a plain old exposed position.

If trying to remove the seat is the only work you've done before you saw this restoration of the circuit, maybe you want to check things out under the seat further when you have a chance?

Btw, if you turn Auto on does it blow?

If you feel like diving into this further, tell us what activities happened during the 30 seconds to blow incident.

John

 

During those 30 seconds: I put in a new fuse, everything worked, Auto was turned on, and I reversed the car into my garage. I then tried moving the seat and nothing worked.


It’s very possible a wire or two got jiggled. I was lifting the seat up and shifting it around trying to see where I was missing a screw; I couldn’t see where it was still attached.

At the moment it is still working without a problem. I suspect auto will cause it to blow the fuse. I have yet to test that out to confirm.

 

Pretty much a sure thing that you will find several wires in the bundle with no insulation; insulation has worn-off by seat moving. Going to require taking the seat out of the car and then upside down on a workbench or something so you can get tape around the bare wires.
Be advised that the seat is HEAVY!....protect the door sill with a large towel or something when removing and replacing the seat.

Good quality time with your Jag.

 

Might be a good time to change it altogether for lightweight racecar seats.