Estate Rear Seat Dismantling

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waue1978
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Estate Rear Seat Dismantling

Post by waue1978 »

What follows here is hopefully going to be a useful How-To guide for fellow estate owners. With thanks to Steve Earwig for supplying the raw materials to work with (his old cloth interior).

First job was changing the metal bases under the rear seat squabs. My original seats were mint underneath, but they were only one piece for the squab & backrest (as are all Family 7 Seat models) while my half leather interior was a split folding rear seat with very rusty metal bases. The first problem is getting hold of replacement bases as the seats in most breaker yards are rusted out due to the cars being left open in all weathers.

If you're lucky enough to get the bases, the next step is to remove the bases from the car - really easy. You lift up the bases & here is the view:

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The black bungee cord simply lifts off of the seatbelt clip:

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If you look at the front where the hinges for the folding base are, you see these:

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Unscrew the nuts & the base will come straight out:

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Now we come to removing the metal from the seat. May look scary, but it's really easy. If you look closely around the edges, you'll see this:

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Get some needle nose pliers on there & pull the cloth up carefully, but firmly & work around the whole edge of the metal:

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Once you've got a start, you can pretty much pull the whole lot off with your fingers. Refitting is simply the reverse of removing, just a little bit fiddly on the corners.

Once my shiny new metal bases were fitted, I decided to have a go at something else which has caused me a few problems now & then - the middle rear seatbelt. Quite often you'll try to pull this out & it'll totally lock & most of the time when you fold the seat back down it'll disappear back into the seat. I've been dreading this breaking properly as I'd have no hope of getting another half leather rear seat back, so thought I'd see how easy it is to remove & refurbish. As it turns out it's a piece of p**s to remove, but don't bother trying to refurb it - I took the sucker apart & this massive metal spring twatted me in the face & made it's way across the garden.

Unfortunately it wasn't so easy to get a pic of the removal of the backrest as I'd have to take a few more bits of trim out, but next time I'm at it I'll add a few. Basically there's a piece of black trim at the back of the squab next to the rear door that just lifts out to reveal 2 bolts that need removing. Fold the seat forward & lift the grey boot trim behind the seat & you'll reveal another 2 bolts for each seat part behind where they split. Remove these & out she comes.

Removing the backrest cover looks nigh on impossible, but thankfully you don't need to totally remove it to change the seatbelt. At the bottom, if you look very closely, you'll see a fixing similar to those that held the metal bases into the squabs:

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Pull this out & you're left with a nice big opening in the bottom of the backrest that gives a view of the seatbelt mounting inside:

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Remove the 16mm bolt & she's ready to come out:

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Easiest way to remove it is to pull the belt through the seat. You'll have to pop the plastic trim out of the top, but that lifts out with your fingers:

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The fiddliest part of this is getting the very end of the seat belt through as it is angled, but with a bit of twisting she comes out no problem.

As I said earlier, refurbing a knackered one isn't as easy, but at least now you know how to remove one, you can get one out of any scrapyard.
Last edited by steve_earwig on Wed Oct 20, 2021 10:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Gary406
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Re: Estate Rear Seat Dismantling

Post by Gary406 »

brilliant guide waue. will copy it over to KB now 8)
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