Rapide power seat troubles...please help

[2011DeepBlueAston]

Hey everyone, I'm a new owner (2nd day) of a 2011 Aston Martin Rapide Luxe, but I have one problem. I purchased this car from a dealership, everything on it was great, functioning fine, and all looked good. After sitting so long, the car didnt have enough battery power to start (everything else worked, however.) The dealer grabs a jump pack and properly connects it to the remote terminals under the hood, and it fires right up.

All seems to be well; however as soon as it was started, both the driver and passenger seats lose the ability to slide back. Both are able to recline up and down and move forward, but they will not slide back. I attempted the reset by pushing the passenger seat all the way forward and holding it, but that didnt reset anything and now the seat is just stuck forward. Therefore, since the whole "seat calibration/ reset" didnt work on the passenger seat, I will not be attempting it on the drivers seat because the car is already practically undriveable with how close the drivers seat is. Any further and I will not be able to get into it. Is there any other reset I can try? I see tons of info on the DB9 battery cutoff switches but almost nothing for the rapide, so if you guys have any ideas on how to possibly reset the seats/ battery/ entire car, please let me know. It's a beautiful car, and I'd love to enjoy it, however I literally have to get out (sorry, fling myself out of the car headfirst) every 5 miles because my legs fall asleep from being sandwiched with 5 inches of legroom. Thanks in advance!

EDIT: while we're on this topic, anyone know how to pop in a new bulb for the rear sidemarker? One of them is out, and I assume (from the very protruding, tacked-on-after-the-fact look of the light assembly) that you can just pop out the housing from the bumper? And it's just a regular 194 bulb? Thanks.

Edited by 2011DeepBlueAston on Sunday 15th December 09:53

[2011DeepBlueAston]

Thanks for the responses. The battery tested OK, as it is 2 years old and charged up fine. I have put the charger on it, as well as (painfully) driven the car about 300 miles so far coming back from the dealer and driving around, and nothing seems to be malfunctioning besides that seat control. The seats worked properly just seconds before the jump start, it's definitely not the motors but I also cant imagine there's a separate fuse for just the rearward power adjustemnt, a blown fuse will typically render the whole adjustment inoperable. I tried the reset procedure on the passenger seat already to no avail.

So basically, it looks like that leaves me with 2 options-
find some way to reset the car 1 last time, and then take to the dealer if that doesnt work. Is there no battery cutoff/reset switch in the Rapide that I can try before going to the dealer?

Also, I am referring to the small rear sidemarker light on the bumper (US spec cars only), not the tail lamp. I was under the impression (from looking at it visually and looking at parts online) that it uses a small bulb, but i could be mistaken.

pics will be up as soon as i can get some decent ones, shes a beauty. Blue-on-blue W/ the Luxe package, and 30k miles.

Edited by 2011DeepBlueAston on Sunday 15th December 14:43

[2011DeepBlueAston]

[2011DeepBlueAston]

[2011DeepBlueAston]

[2011DeepBlueAston]

[2011DeepBlueAston]

Hey all, sorry I couldnt respond yesterday, the forum temporarily had new members locked out from posting. But yes, I purchased from a dealer but not a main dealer, and they've basically responded as a typical car dealer does: "you bought the car, used as is so it's not my problem." Car passed pre purchase inspection with flying colors, and I picked it up with 34k miles for $58,000 USD, and she only developed this problem after the battery ran too low to drive it home from taking delivery at the dealer.

So I've hit a bump in the road because I've read in depth on the topics of seat reset and battery problems, and that seat recalibration did not do anything. So I assumed maybe the battery was low and on it's way out. It wasnt that old, I believe it was 2016, but for good measure i just got done replacing the battery yesterday with a brand new one. (By the way, does anyone have a brand of aftermarket battery that fits? I had to go OEM ($$$) because the batteries from the local stores were listed as the right type, but the OEM battery is a bit shorter which allowed that aluminum bracket to be bolted across the top, which didnt fit with both the aftermarket batteries I tried. So if theres a brand that fits that I can use in the future, that would be great)

Now, upon changing the battery, everything was reset however the seats are still refusing to slide back. All other adjustments work. I disconnected negative and tried recalibrating again, but nothing. The fuses are fine. Just dont know how the power seats can BOTH kill ONLY the rearward slide function just because of a low battery. Sounds very strange to me. If anyone has any other ideas I'd love to hear them because now that both seats are all the way up, my 6'1 230 lb body means driving it it's practically impossible now haha. Thanks again for all the responses, they are definitely helpful in general but now I'm pretty stumped.

Edited by 2011DeepBlueAston on Tuesday 17th December 16:37

[2011DeepBlueAston]

Thank you and yes the advice was great, I followed everything that gentleman said to do including the seat recalibration however nothing has worked on getting the seat to slide back. I assume a trip to a specialist/ dealership may be in order??

[2011DeepBlueAston]

Hi all, as an update, none of the relaibrations worked. I've tried multiple times, disconnecting battery, etc. The power seats will only reliably recline the backrest uo and down, and slide the seat bottoms forward. The slide back never works, and the bottom cushion front and back raise/lower function only works sometimes. What is going on? Battery is new, and all reset attempts have failed. Can a shop reset it through the computer?

[2011DeepBlueAston]

Wow, I know it has been a long time but I just wanted to update and say thanks for all the help. The problem has finally been solved this morning! The last 4-5 months and 12k miles with the seat all the way up has been brutal, partially due to me slacking on finally bringing it into service. I'm glad I didn't though, because it would have been $300 to have them do something so simple. Let me start by saying that the procedure for putting the seats all the way up did not work. What did end up working is the procedure outlined in the most recent post just before this one. I happened to also find that exact post after hours of digging this morning as well (boy did I wish I checked this thread for updates before another research session), and that is the only procedure that worked flawlessly. So for anyone with a Rapide and some seat troubles, follow that procedure, not the very commonly talked about db9 procedure. Thanks again.