I took out the passenger seat to access an under-carpet O2 sensor wire (per advice from another forum) and discovered that I did not need to remove the seat. In fact, the downstream (after CAT) O2 sensor wire enters the cabin immediately ahead of the passenger seat left rail and can be accessed by making a small incision in the carpet.
In any case, when I reinstalled the passenger seat I must have altered an adjustment setting because the left and right rails appear to be out of adjustment. The right side is slightly ahead of the left and when I attempt to power the seat forward or backward the left rail moves and the right one remains mostly still - moving only occasionally. It's as if the right side is out of sync with the left and virtually motionless.
Is there a description anywhere online of how to adjust/align the Avalon's power seats? Any help would be appreciated.
Check the drive cables for proper seating in the gears. If the tracks were significantly out of alignment, you'd need to force the seat to get the four mounting holes to line up.
I had removed the four mounting bolts and tipped the front seat back against the rear seat leaving the tracks mounted to the floor.
When I tipped the seat forward again it took a little effort to get the mounting holes lined up again but I managed. But that's when I noticed the misalignment left-to-right.
I will check those cables for the heck of it, thanks for the tip. The FSM, as far as I am aware, doesn't cover seat track adjustment (just removal and installation). I will have to check when it arrives.
I had removed the four mounting bolts and tipped the front seat back against the rear seat leaving the tracks mounted to the floor.
When I tipped the seat forward again it took a little effort to get the mounting holes lined up again but I managed. But that's when I noticed the misalignment left-to-right.
I will check those cables for the heck of it, thanks for the tip. The FSM, as far as I am aware, doesn't cover seat track adjustment (just removal and installation). I will have to check when it arrives.
In the past year, I've had the power seats out of my son's 97 Camry and Daughter's 99 Avalon. Perhaps the Gen 2 mounting is different, but your description of removing four bolts and leaving the track mounted to the floor makes no sense to me. On the cars I did, there are four bolts holding the track to the floor, easily exposed and taking about 1 minute per bolt to remove. The track and seat come off as a unit.
My error. I should have written a more accurate description. My memory isn't what it used to be. I meant 8 nuts, 2 at each corner.
At each corner underneath and attached to the seat there is a jointed arm with two mounting holes. The mounting holes on each of these arms must be positioned on two studs on the track and secured with two nuts.
I removed those 8 nuts and flipped the seat back (with the tracks still secured to the floor pan) when I was prepping to access the O2 sensor.
It is entirely possible that I could have simply removed four bolts that fasten the tracks to the floor, and removed the seat and tracks as a unit, but I don't recall being able to easily access any other fasteners. I will have a look again this evening. Perhaps I made the removal more difficult than it should have been.
Unfortunately, my decision has come back to bite me in the form of a misaligned seat track.
My error. I should have written a more accurate description. My memory isn't what it used to be. I meant 8 nuts, 2 at each corner.
At each corner underneath and attached to the seat there is a jointed arm with two mounting holes. The mounting holes on each of these arms must be positioned on two studs on the track and secured with two nuts.
I removed those 8 nuts and flipped the seat back (with the tracks still secured to the floor pan) when I was prepping to access the O2 sensor.
It is entirely possible that I could have simply removed four bolts that fasten the tracks to the floor, and removed the seat and tracks as a unit, but I don't recall being able to easily access any other fasteners. I will have a look again this evening. Perhaps I made the removal more difficult than it should have been.
Unfortunately, my decision has come back to bite me in the form of a misaligned seat track.
Just checked my own '03, and it has the same 4 bolts, covered with easily removed plastic covers, as the kids' cars. Move seat full forward to get the rear two; full back for front two.
I suggest you take off seat and tracks as a unit; make sure gears are properly engaged & working both tracks by applying 12 v to the motor through a fused jumper wire. Set down over mounting holes and look for alignment to holes. If drive is same as my son's 97 Camry, you can disconnect the speedo cable type drive from either side and turn it by hand to make track line up with mounting holes; then reconnect to motor.
The Following User Says Thank You to TedL For This Useful Post:
Ok, I managed to remove the seat and track and reinstall it hoping the issue would be resolved. It didn't work and I believe I finally figured out why.
Below is an image of the right rail of the passenger seat. My fingertip is pointing to the nut on the end of the shaft that passes through a white gearbox (red arrow). I believe the gear(s) inside the gearbox are broken or stripped.
In the video, also below, you can see that the left side shaft spins as it should, but the right side shaft does not. I originally thought it was the result of some sort of misalignment that caused the right side shaft to bind. But it's the result of broken/stripped gears on the right side.
So my question is, can that gearbox-like part be purchased separately from the track or do I have to buy the entire power seat track assembly as a unit?
For a 97 Camry, my son had to buy a complete assembly for the same issue..no subassemby avail. New listed for something like $1700!!!!!! He got used, manual, for $60. You can check with Gary Smith, but I would not be optimistic.
Just wanted to let everyone know that the seat tracks within a generation (in this case an 00 and 04 Avalon) are interchangeable. The 04 seat track I bought used on eBay for just $60 fit perfectly and came with a 90 day warranty.
A few things to note about the installation:
The seatbelt bracket was slightly different (longer and differently shaped). I simply removed the part from the old track and swapped it onto the newer one.
There's no need to perform a complete swap of the tracks. It would have taken significantly more time to completely remove the old track and install a new one. Instead, since the only thing broken was the front right plastic gearbox, I separated the upper and lower halves of the assembly and swapped out the lower portion which contained the gearboxes. Less than a dozen bolts to separate the two halves. And access to two of the rear bolts does require prying off the rear plastic end caps on the seat track rails. Total time from seat removal to completion was about an hour.
I got very lucky--watching eBay and Craigslist regularly until I found a track at a decent price. With a little patience it can be an easy and inexpensive repair.
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