I spilled about 1/2 cup of plain water in the driver seat of my 2006 XKR yesterday, and thought nothing of it. I left the key in the ignition as I sometimes do, in off position. When I got in the car today, the seat was all the way forward and tilted up, and will not operate.
Any suggestions?

 

I had a problem with my 2006 XKR that the drivers seat would recline but not come back up. We assumed it was broken gears or a bad motors in the seat. After taking the seat out and checking the motors we could not find a problem. I did some research and found a post about the seat control module located under the front of the seat.

It is held on with two 10 mm nuts and has two or three multi wire plugs in it. When I switched the left and right side seat modules the problem went away in the drivers side.

I opened up the faulty seat module and inspected the circuit board under a magnifier. one side of the board had two if the wiring traces corroded away. The traces were about 1mm wide running along eh edge of the board. I

I repaired them by carefully scrapping the coating off the trace on either side of the break to expose the copper conductor. Taking a fine soldering iron I soldered a strand from stranded wire across each of the two break in the circuit trace. I check the repair with a ohm meter to assure it was conducing and not shorting to the other trace.

This fixed the problem.

Try switching your sear control modules

 

Thank you!

 

I guess it's possible that the water found its way to the seat control module and shorted some tracks which moved the seat. It's also possible the seat module is damaged, or is not yet but could be if you continue to provide power to it while it's damp. If it were me, I wouldn't power the seat module again until it had dried out. Disconnect and remove the module, remove the case to expose the circuit board and dry it out with a hair dryer.

Also, if it still doesn't work when dry, try swapping driver and passenger seat modules to check if the problem follows the module.

 

Opened seat module and found water damage along front edge! So now can I get a suggestion on sourcing a replacement/remanufactured unit? I am sealing the front edge of the passenger box with clear silicone to avoid a similar situation.
Thanks to all!
Moseley

 

The front edge damage is usually caused by the module case rubbing on the tracks due to car vibrations. Not the best design. This was the common issue Burl was alluding to. If yours has water damage as well (i.e. electrical shorts have damageded sensitive electronic components internally - damaged tracks can be fixed), you can find used modules on ebay usually between $100 and $200. Best of luck. Let us know when you fix it.

 

I changed the passenger module over to the driver seat and the seat will now adjust. I left a message for Darrell Turner to see about repairing my old module, and also located one on eBay.
But here the plot thickens, and the memory function now only adjusts the steering wheel and not the seat, regardless of how many times I try to program it.
Any ideas on that issue, as well as alternative repair sources if Mr. Turner is not available, would be appreciated!

 

There are three connectors for driver's seat module with memory but only two for passenger seat module. I'm not sure if the seat modules are exactly the same for driver and passenger and maybe they're not, but presuming they are, did you get all three connectors on?

 

Yessir, I checked that. Thanks!