1 electric 1 manual sport seat

[vabeachbum33]

i have owned my shark for over 16 years and never had an issue with the driver side seat until now. At some point the PO replaced the driver side seat with an older one that has the manual base tilt (handle) and the manual thigh extension(wheel). I just finished recovering my seats and now the driver side is tilted severely back (low) to front (high). I have tried to use the handle to adjust but to no avail. Can i just push those front bar connectors down?

[DesktopDave]

That might be an E30 seat, they're a lot more common than the E24 power units and swap in without much effort.

I'd guess you have blown pneumatic springs in your seat. Very common problem with the BMW Sport Seats. Alternatively, the little adjuster ratchets can bend or stick, resulting in odd seat behavior. I've also had those little seat adjuster pushrods and/or latching cables fall off, preventing the seat from functioning in various ways. If you decided to lubricate the hinge plates, they're relatively easy to remove once you've gotten the seatback off. I prefer white lithium grease since it tends to stay where I put it, but there's lots of choices.

The seat height adjusting handle unlocks one of two geared latches inside the hinge plate, depending if you push it down or up. IIRC pushing the adjust lever down unlocks the front seat height pivot, and you can lower the front of the seat to a more reasonable level from inside the car. The rear adjuster requires more effort, so I usually adjust mine from outside of the car, by operating the lever while manually lifting the seat base. Those pneumatic springs are still available from aftermarket vendors, I don't think BMW still stocks them at a reasonable cost.

I would urge you not to force anything...those are relatively delicate hinge plates, expensive to replace.