Repairing the seat back release cable
One day my '92 VR6 Corrado passenger side seat back failed to release when a friend pulled the lever up. Luckily he was trying to get in the
back, not out! After a close inspection, I found that the release latches on the inner and outer rear seat posts were not lifting when the
lever was pulled. To gain access to the cable mechanism, I manually lifted up both the latches to fold the seat forward. Sitting the back, I
found that the lower edge of the seat back material (cloth on my car...leather seat may differ) was held in place by 4 or 5 little metal
tabs folded over a straight metal rod. Unfolding the tabs allowed removal of the rod and released the entire lower edge of material. Next
I carefully worked the cloth upwards as much as possible...this is not easy. I was able to just enough room to find the problem. The cable
mechanism resembles a bicycle shifter or brake cable, a plastic sleeve with a metal cable running through it. If you think aout a bike cable,
it's plastic sleeve is held in place at both ends typically, allowing the cable to run cleanly in side. On my '92 Vr6 car, the upper end of
the plastic sleeve (located near the lever handle) is (or was) attached to the frame of the seat back by a little white plastic clip or bushing.
This is what had broken in my case. Thus pulling the lever only moved the sleeve & cable together, not the cable through the sleeve and it
didn't lift the latches. Since I didn't have a replacement bushing and VW wasn't about to supply the sub-one-cent part without the rest of a
new +$500 seat attached (!?!?!), I decided to fabricate a bushing. Went to Pep Boys and after combing over the little fitting and bolts section,
I found something called a "nut-sert". It's basically a little cylindrical metal part with a length-wise section removed. This allows
you to clip it over something like a cable. This was kinda important because I could not remove either end of my release cable to let me fish
it through the new bushing's hole...there just wasn't enough access space to fish the cable back in place later. It was also roughly the
same size as the outer diameter of the plastic sleeve. You could always make up something like the nutsert out of a small bit of metal sheeting
or even an over size regular nut. I then used "Quick-Weld" (an epoxy ceramic material that after 5 minutes turns to rock hard) to secure the
nutsert to the plastic sleeve and the whole thing to the metal seat frame. After thorough testing for a few days, I replaced the seat
material. This fix has lasted for nearly 6 months now...no trouble with the release at all.
Michael Dobbs
