Hi all,


Last week I was cleaning my car and found this thing (see picture) under the driver seat. I believe it is part of the power seat assembly so I went to the dealership on 15 March 2024 to have my car and the broken part inspected. The mechanic told me that my power seat is “intact” and that they found no damage whatsoever which I think is BS. Considering how laborious it is to disassemble the power seat assembly, I have a gut feeling that the mechanic didn’t even bother to carry out a thorough inspection to identify the broken part, and just said everything is fine just to be done with it.

Does anyone know what exactly is the broken part, and if there’s any part number to identify it so I can escalate this matter again to the dealership? A few Redditors did convince me that this is likely from the seat rails/latch attachment but I’m hoping I could find out the exact part number as I’ll be visiting them again this 22 March 2024.

Thank you.

 

Hello,

It would be helpful (and inexpensive) if you were to provide at least one more picture of this thing from a different angle. Perhaps 2 or 3 more pics would be good.

If it were me, I would raise the seat as high as I could, and get under there with a powerful light. I'd look around for any other metal objects that resemble the color of this thing.

And now for a few stupid questions...

Did you, or anyone else who was in the car, transport any type of mechanical equipment or tool that this might've come off of?

When was the last time you did a (similar, thorough) cleaning of the interior of the car. Any possibility it was there at that time and you just didn't find it?

What is the year and trimline of your NX?

Have you ever, or recently, (forcibly) shoved anything under your seat?

Do all of the power seat features/directions work for you?

Sorry I can't be more helpful. I've never had such a problem before. I'm sure someone out there in LexusLand can offer you more.

Personally, I wouldn't be so quick to fault the dealership. IF you test it all and it works fine, then it's safe to assume that the dealership did the same. IF the aforementioned is all true, then I would not expect that anyone in a dealership (even in the parts department) would be able to identify such a (possibly) obscure part from the power seat assembly. Just my opinion !

 

Hey there, thanks for the reply!



Here are some pictures of the broken part from different angles (ignore the dust lol)








After my visit to the dealership, I tried looking under the driver seat to find where the broken part could’ve been originally located but unfortunately the assembly looks too crowded to pinpoint the exact location. It’d probably be easier to locate by removing the driver seat first but unfortunately I don’t have the right tools/expertise to do this.



To answer your questions:



i) Nope, so far my car has been used solely to transport people; never transported any mechanical equipment or tools.



ii) I did several sessions of light interior cleaning and I may possibly didn’t notice the broken part under my seat. But what I do remember is that I heard something snapped when adjusting my driver seat but didn’t think much about it. And this happened long before finding the broken part.



iii) I got my Lexus NX300 Luxury in May 2021 (brand new). My current mileage is 54k km (33.5k miles). This is my first time owning a Lexus (coming from a 2014 Mazda3 1.5L).



iv) Nope, the area under the driver seat is pretty cramped so it never crossed my mind to place things there.

Tested the power seat and it works fine for now and you’re probably right in thinking that the dealership likely did the same. To be fair, Lexus did note assembling/disassembling the individual power seat parts is hard according to Lexus Parts and Accessories Online here so that’s probably why the dealership didn’t do any thorough diagnosis.

Anyhow, my warranty will be expiring next year so I feel like it’s imperative to highlight this potential premature defect to them so they could look into it and repair or replace if necessary under warranty. Here’s hoping my power seat will last a long time! 🤞

 

Looking at your pictures, I think this is part of linear bearing cage in seat slider/track. Typically, these bearings have plastic cages with ***** wedged in. Perhaps, at one time you’ve got something under seat that got wedged in the slider and broke piece of it once you moved the seat.

 

Thank you for the reply!

Say in the event that the dealership still refused to do anything about it, should I be concern of potential power seat premature failure?

First time Lexus owner here and here’s hoping my car will last me a long time.

 

If you are not moving the seat often, you should be OK. However, if your settings are that driver seat moves all the way back for exit the vehicle and back when you start the engine, the seat linear bearing that is damaged may not last as designed. Most likely you need to replace damaged part.

If my diagnosis is correct and to fix it, you may need to remove the seat and find which side slide is damaged. I am sure you can get replacement part on eBay from totaled car, and this should not be that difficult to replace (do not quote me on this one).
If your NX is under warranty and if you want to work with dealer, you can claim that it may be a defect from factory. It is impossible to determine why this happened, so claiming factory defect is your path to resolution.

 

Hey there, your diagnosis is actually spot on!

So today I visited the dealership again and told them that I was not fully convinced when they told me last week that my power seat is “intact”.

Then I showed the person-in-charge your comment about the broken part possibly a part from “linear bearing cage in seat slider/track” and they finally agreed to do a thorough investigation this time by actually taking out my driver seat (finally!)

And they told me that they discovered where the broken part could’ve originally been located along the seat slider and agreed to replace the seat slider assembly under warranty. Without warranty, the assy would’ve costed me BND4,000 (USD3,000) minus labour fee.



Thank you so much for your assistance!