Removing stuck Bertone seats....argh

OK, this is the only thread I can find. both of my seats are stuck solid. I am not sure where to even sprat the PB Blast, and hitting the adjust release bar with the orange deadhead hammer didn't do anything either. I tried the jack behind the seat method, but my jack is too big! Any insight would be greatly appreciated!! -Mike
 
Michael Oxman said:
OK, this is the only thread I can find. both of my seats are stuck solid. I am not sure where to even sprat the PB Blast, and hitting the adjust release bar with the orange deadhead hammer didn't do anything either. I tried the jack behind the seat method, but my jack is too big! Any insight would be greatly appreciated!! -Mike
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What year is your car? There are 2 varieties of seat rail pre and post about the 1983 model year.
 
Michael Oxman said:
Sorry - Its an 86. I've read about the key hole front bolts and all, but these guys are stuck fast.
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Ok. You have the bolt in tracks. Go to the MWB website and look up the late seat rails and you will see what you are dealing with.

You need to get the lube into the tracks of the seat rails. Maybe you could get some thin flexible tubing and attach it to the straw on the PB Blaster and snake it into the rails?
 
An '86 will have the seat mounting system where the sliding tracks are bolted to the reinforced section of the floorpan. Between the tracks and the carpet there will be mostly flat reinforcing plates. There is one 6mm (or maybe 5mm?) allen head cap screw at each end of each track for a total of 4 per seat assy.

The hole thru which the two front allen head capscrews fasten the tracks down is keyhole-shaped, so loosening them a few turns is sufficient, no real need to run them all the way out unless you want to. The rear two holes are just holes so you have to remove these capscrews to remove the tracks.

Can you see and access either the front set of allen head cap screws or the rear set? It's more likely the seats are frozen into the rearmost position; if so you will have normal access to the front allen head capscrews but limited access to the rear ones.

All four of the capscrews protrude thru the floorpan and stick out the bottom, so if no joy in accessing them from inside, an optional method could be to flatten their tips with a grinder (they have a pointy tip), then with a dremel cutoff wheel cut a slot in the end into which you can insert a large flat tipped screwdriver and unwind them from the bottom. Be careful to not damage threads on the capscrews as such damage will in turn damage the captive nuts welded to the floorpan as you unwind them. If your car has the old fashioned muck undercoating, best to clean those protruding threads before attemtping capscrew removal.
 
I like this Idea better drilling them out, but now that you mention a flat head screwdriver, maybe I'll get a long one and get it down along the seat rail and hit it with a hammer. I need the seat out to get my fat self down to do a master cylinder replacement project.
 
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Oh my, your task list is like "The worst of X repair work"! If the seats are all the way back up against the seatbelt inertia reel boxes then they are as far back as they can go and you should have access to the two front bolts. I never intended to use the stock seats so had little qualms about totally destroying them to get them out. I never did find out why my seats were stuck but one possibility was the actuating arm at the front was not actually releasing both runners. If you can get your head down there with a flashlight maybe you can see if the arm is releasing both runners.
 
Thanks Carl. that's a good idea. I can see the front bolts. I'm also hoping that my hitting the releases with the dead head hammer was not the most foolish thing I could do and actually breaking them somehow! I have so far found an old bottle of Coppertone and a half a roll of 1980s era bridge tokens under the seat. Hopefully I can spy the mechanism.
 
Several of the parts chain stores have inspection endoscopes in their tool rental selections. One of those would let you see what's going on.

And there are cheap ones $10-$35 on eBay and Amazon that connect to your phone and/or tablet.
 
my 86 only has a locking system on one side, the other side is just free moving (well if it's not stuck that is).
 
I have after market seats in my X so get confused sometimes on what's what with stock seats. I any event, try to verify that the release mechanism in the track is working.
 
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