Recently purchased 2004 commemorative edition with sports seats on both sides. Lumbar functions do not work on either seat. After car has been turned off and then back on and you push one of the lumbar buttons, a slight buzz can be heard and then nothing...none of the lumbar buttons work on either seat. Replaced fuse but did not help. Any help you can give on tracking this down will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Bill

 

This link might help if you are a DIY'r. I'm guessing that the lumbar bladders may have failed.

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...ters-pics.html

 

Thanks for the tip AE Guy. With only 11,500 miles on the car it is hard
to believe anything would not be working. Car has been extremely well taken care of. I'll check the website you suggested. Thanks again. GP bill

Another thot from me which is that when trying to activate a lumbar switch just after starting the car, you hear a momentary buzz then nothing. Like something is shorting out. Any thots about this?

 

The lumbar bladder plastics disintegrate with age not miles. So, on a 13yr old car I would expect this.
On the noise you hear when pressing the switch, that is the pump motor running. There will be no noise from the pump when deflating the lumbar just when inflating.

There are a couple of threads on the forum for replacing the plastic bladders with latex blood pressure cuffs.

Gary

 

The OP in the link provided has removed the pictures on how he repaired the lumbar bladders. Here's another link that still has pictures and is pretty much the same thing.
https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...vil-style.html

 

Gary: Does the fact that the pump noise is just for a split second and then quits have anything to do with bladder problems? It would seem to me that the motor would try to fill the bags and therefore run at least for several seconds. It just seems odd that you can push the lumbar button just once and get this brief pump sound. More like a electrical problem, but perhaps I am wrong. Maybe there is a sensor switch in the system that tells the motor to shut off quick if the bladders are defective. Thanks again. Bill

 

The lumbar button is an on/off switch. It doesn't continue to run for a few seconds. It's so you can precisely control the amount of air in the lumbar support bladder. When it feels correct to you, you want it to stop immediately when you release the button, not continue for a few more seconds. I'd be very unhappy if I had to guess when to release the button so that the lumbar support was correct if it continued to pump em up.

 

Sorry if I'm hijacking the post, but hoping this helps to get an answer, as I think I have something similar going on with my 2004 vert. The lumbar pump on the drivers seat will run for a short while, and then quit, at which point none of the lumbar switches on that seat do anything. When it does work, the bladders do inflate and hold air, so I'm confident that mine aren't deteriorated.(it's full right now) The passenger seat works perfectly fine, and the seat movement controls on the drivers seat continue to work even when the lumbar controls stop.

Is there another relay or circuit breaker in the seat control module that could be tripping? (the main seat relay/breaker is fine) I'm planning on removing the seat to check out the control module, but is there anything specific I should be looking for? (would cold solder joints cause an issue like this?)

Also, based on my passenger seat, the motors should be running whether you are inflating or deflating the lumbar pads.

 

Good input mj. My problem with the lumbar motor stopping after about 1 second was while I was keeping pressure on the button. My thinking is that the lumbar pump system is not able to detect in that short amount of time whether the bladders are shot or not. ACTUALLY, I got in the car today and started it up and then left it run for awhile and then got in and moved the driver seat way back and then forward and now the lumbar motors on both driver and passenger seats are working fine. Don't know whether a wire under the driver seat is rubbed bare or shorted or what, but after 30 minutes of driving, the lumbar pumps on both seats are still working fine with the motor running or not whereas before, neither seat lumbar was working. So..........??? But thanks to everyone for your input. Bill

 

OOPS! Just went out after letting the car set for about 3 hours and the lumbar functions still work fine on the driver seat, but none of the lumbar functions (pump not working) work on the passenger seat. The saga continues G'pa Bill

 

I think we have similar problems happening, after three days of my drivers seat not working, I just went out to the garage, and both lumbar switches were working again. Ran them up and down a couple times, no problem, then I touched the bolster switch and zap, now none of the lumbar switches are working again. It just gets weirder.
--Mike

 

Mike: Did you by any chance change the position of your driver seat, i.e. forward or backward, in the last three days? I am wondering if the wiring for the lumbar motors in both seats run in series starting under the driver seat, over to the passenger seat and then back to the fuse panel or some such thing? I just tried the drivers lumbars and they work fine, but when you push just one of the passenger lumbar buttons, it gives a short motor buzz and then none of the passenger buttons work. Both seats lumbars worked the other day, and the day before that, neither of them did. The ruskies must be interfering with corvettes now!!! I wish they would keep their hands off of our stuff. Somebody Please Help!

 

Well I think I fixed my drivers seat lumbar adjusters yesterday, but the fix was definitely not what I was thinking it was going to be. To answer your question, I did move the seat back and forth when I was trying to get the lumbar settings to work, but didn't have any affect for me. I believe that both seats are independent of each other, since they both have their own SCM module, and each seat has it's own breaker in the fuse box.

I would recommend that you first check the lumbar bladders to make sure that they are in good condition, and the hoses are attached properly, there seem to be a number of them that fail, and the fix for that appears much simpler. Mine were in great shape, and held air just fine, so I started looking elsewhere.

I pulled my drivers seat out of the car, and followed the directions from others, who recommended pulling out the SCM and touching up the solder points on the board. This did not fix the problem, so I moved on to the switch board, since that was another recommendation, and unless you've had a quite a bit of water in your car, I wouldn't bother with this. The switch panel case is plastic welded together in two spots, and I had to drill those out before I could get to the board. Once I did, there was no trace of any corrosion, so I cleaned it anyways,and stuck it back together, with no change to my problem.

While I was testing the seat the second time, I noticed that when the lumbar pump did run, it always seems to die when it hit the two extremes of the range, either all the way inflated or all the way deflated, at which point the motor would make a da-da-da sound and then stop, and not work any more. Under the seat are two vinyl bags closed by zip ties, The black bag is the lumbar pump, and hanging from the seat springs is a white/cream colored bag that contains the lumbar solenoids and relays. I pulled the white bag out, and clipped the zip tie so I could pull out the board inside. I hooked the seat back up to the car, and noticed that when the lumbar pump stopped working, if I touched a screwdriver to the metal contacts on the large gray air pressure switch on the board (has a single air line connection on top), the lumbar pump would start working for a while until it reached the max or min value, and then I'd have to touch the contacts again. So I thought the air pressure switch was bad, but just for grins and since I didn't have a replacement, I tried touching up all the solder points on the solenoid board, including the air pressure switch. I also noticed that the switch has two small screws on it, one on each side, which appear to be for adjusting the switch trip pressure. I turned each screw about a quarter of a turn, and then reset them back to their original setting. I hooked it up again, and so far it's been working perfectly. The one difference that I noticed now that it was working properly, was that the pump didn't make the stutter-stop sound when it hit the limit switch, it just stops, and then you can run it in the opposite direction.

Hope that helps a little.
--Mike

 

Also, since I forgot to explain this, if you pull out the seat, and detach the blue plug from the seat frame, there should be enough wire to hook up the seat with it sitting outside the car. I found a wood box tall enough to match the sill height of my car, and laid the seat on it's side facing the opposite direction that it mounts. (seat facing the back of the car, controls facing up) lock the seat back in the forward position, and you can get it close enough to the wiring to get it hooked up. Make sure you throw some old blankets over the side and sill of the car to prevent scratches since the metal mounting feet will be very close to the paintwork.
--Mike

 

Mike: Super diagnostic work on your part. Mr. Goodwrench could not have done better. I will try to work on this next week when I get the time. You sure have helped a lot of guys on this issue I'm sure. Thanks again, Bill

 

No problem, I'm just standing on the backs of others on the forum, plenty of info here to be applied where needed. Here is one post that helped me figure out where to look.
https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...t-problem.html

Good Luck!
--Mike