Jammed Seat Height Adjustor

[slacker]

Hi

A few weeks back the drivers seat height adjustor jammed about half way down. It would go up but not down. Now I need it full down and Lady Slacker needs it part way up so I was able to drive the car but had to recline more so not ideal.

Having looked into fixing it I discovered that you cannot buy the ratchet mechanism on its own but as part of a complete seat frame which seemed ridiculous. If you look here then you can see the frame and the mechanism on the side. Now it lists it as nearly $600 now with the best will in the world I don't think the UK price would be £20 which is about what the part is worth so I needed a solution.

I checked EBay of course and there are several seats around but most wanted pickup and generally were nowhere near me.

So I decided that seeing as it is broken already I should take a look and see if there was anything I could do.

I removed the handle T25 bit required for that to remove the two screws and then took off the trim piece which has two push fits one at the fornt and one about halfway back along the seat and a plastic fixing on the rear (I used a broad screwdriver behind the plastic to work it out). Out comes the drill and a 6mm HSS bit and off come the four rivets holding the face plate. Now this is the face plate of the mechanism not the mechanism fixing to the seat base which also has four rivets (the rivets were hollow in the centre). Pull back the lugs at the top and it will pop off.

There are then two more rivets on the next part of the mechanism which can then be pulled off and unhook from the centre of the springs at the bottom. Then there is a plastic plate with a spring and a metal braket that engages with the teeth on a ratchet wheel this comes out really easy. Then the larger plastic piece with the ratchet teeth comes off and it is this that was the culprit.

The back had two plastic lugs on either side and it was clear that one of them had partially broken by about 5 mm. So I fished around in the seat mechanism and found it jammed in the top right so that came out. Now there is no way to repair it so I cleaned up the grease and re lubricated as I went along and reassembled (I fitted the ratchet wheel the other way round so I would at least be able to lower the seat). Reassembley went well and I cleaned and lubricated as the white grease was a little dirty.

Put everything back together and what do you know I now have a seat height adjustor again. So for the cost of about an hours work I have saved myself several hundred pounds. By the way I left the seat in and protected the carpet from the drilling shards - I moved the seat towards the front as it made the mechanism more accessible.

I used a mains drill and 6mm bit, Torx T25, lubrication and some rivets to reassemble.

As an alternative if the plastic is really shot you could take apart the passenger one and swap em over as passenger height is never really an issue or you could buy an ebay seat and take the mechanism apart on that to save having to pull the seat apart to fix the subframe.

I hope this is of some help as a mini Gen1 out of warranty could prove an expensive pain in the neck if this breaks. Over the years I have found lots of info that has helped me so it is about time I paid some back .

By the way I have an August 2004 JCW.

[markjborg]

Thanks alot for this tutorial might come handy in the future