My driver's seat's screen is totally trashed in my newly acquired 240. I wanted to temporarily put the passenger's seat in the driver's spot, but I found that the back of the tracks are shaped differently - they are swapped left/right. With the seat out of the car I tried to get the track to slide away from its housing so that I could swap them left/right, but something was stopping it from coming all the way out (probably a good thing most of the time). How can I get the tracks out? If this works think I'll have to remove the vertical adjust know or the center console plastic, but that is fine for a temp fix.

The other option is to figure out how the cushion comes off the metal part of the seat, and swap cushions. I know how it works for a 740, but I need to inspect further for this 240.

Secondly, my passenger seat had 1 or 2 of those metal cross bars loose and 4 total springs loose, at the front and back. I managed to get 3 springs back on, but when I was putting the 4th on, another slipped out. Is there a technique to this? Is thicker steel bars that the thinner ones slide onto supposed to be bent in some way to keep pieces from sliding out? Also, it takes a lot of strength to pull the spring with a pair of vice grips. The whole time I'm trying to guess if my hand goes flying if it will hit metal.

Thanks,
Nathan

Hi, Nathan,

With the driver's seat out of the car, you can remove its track assembly. Just turn the seat over and examine how the front and rear height adjuster levers work. Each one controls two pins that engage sets of holes in the sides of the seat cushion frame. If you push both adjusters in, all of those pins will be retracted, so the frame should come off.

But it won't, yet, because as a safety measure, four bolts are also involved. You will find they occupy adjustment slots in the seat cushion frame, and that, even when fully tightened, they are designed to allow the seat frame to move relative to the rail frame (or vise-versa). Remove those bolts, depress the adjusters, and the frame will come free.

The passsenger seat bottom is identical, but the passenger's rail frame is simpler (no vertical adjusters). Having done the driver's side, you should have no trouble getting the passenger side rails assempbly off.

Now just mount the driver's rail assembly -- don't skip the bolts -- on the passenger seat, and you have what you want. The whole passenger seat will fit the driver's side with no inteference.

You can find others Brickboad threads that are informative about seat repair and seat-switching on a permanent basis.

For example, some genius brickboarder describes and illustrates the use of brake spring pliers and coat-hanger wire loops to install seat cushion springs with some degree of safety and without superhuman strength. Worked for me!

Good luck

--
jds

As I recall, the middle section of the lower seat cushion lifts out , exposing a couple of tie-downs. Then the cushion just lifts off.

The springs are a bugger. I bought a spool of soft wire to secure the ends of the springs in place as I put them on, and I did put a slight bend on the end of the heavy wire to help keep the last spring in place.

You probably already know this, but don't try to re-use the 'hog rings' that attach the seat cover unless you have the correct pliers to put them on. Zip ties are FAR easier to work with.

Also, consider putting a flexible panel of some sort between the lumbar support and the seat back springs to build it up and spread around the pressure. I found that this made my seat more comfortable.

Unfortunatly, I just tossed out a fairly good lower cushion a few months ago because I got tired of looking at it in the garage. My junk yard searches suggest that vinyl covered cushions seem to hold up better than cloth covered cushions.

Ah, the pain you cause me by reminding me that you had a good cushion. I would have rather been blissfully ignorant of that fact. Thanks for the tips.

Im not sure how to get the tracks off, it would be great if there was an easy enough way to do it though.

I usually get the springs off by putting on some gloves and slipping some wire through the end of the spring and wrapping the ends of the wire around my hands and getting some leverage on it. It helps alot if you have a helper to place the spring under the grid while you are pulling on it.

Uou should check out erling's page. There is a tutorial by tony hoffman on how to completely rebuild the seats

http://home.no.net/ebrox/