Mondial QV seat rail fix

My car's seat rails never ran nicely (actually almost not), not did the seat back swing forward smoothly. Both seats seemed to hit a mechanical stop 2/3 back. I found a metal roller once on the carpet, tried to see where it came from and sort of saw there seemed to be others but randomly placed along the rail. Finally decided to tackle the issue and removed the rails for inspection.
There is a double rail on the outside of the seat: One for positioning the seat lengthwise with notches and a lever (bent in my case and hitting the seat when the back was moved) and one to allow the seat to move forward when the seat back is swung forward. It allows the seat to fall back into the same longitudinal position as it was before moved forward by the seat back. Nice touch to increase access to the rear seat while keeping the seats chosen position.
On the inside near the console, the seat is supported passively on a single rail (rollers for the vertical load and a series of balls both sides in a track for lateral guidance with minimal drag. Nice.
Upon disassembly, I found that there should be 2 rollers per external rail, but most of them were missing, the remaining ones had some rubber attached - unlike the one I found earlier, and I did find one intact unit, luckily. It does have a rubber centre with a larger diameter than the outer metal rollers.
Unable to source replacement rollers anywhere, I reproduced the metal rollers and had to find a way to mimic the rubber centre part. That centre part is essential to the proper functioning of the seat rails. In fact, the metal rollers carry the weight and roll while moving the seat in its rail. The rubber centre get compressed upon assembly and stops the roller from rolling when the rail is not loaded. The rollers need to be moving at equal distance to each other while the upper and lower rail sections move relative to each other. Else the rails will bind if the rollers are both at the end or both towards the centre of the rail.
Upon assembly, since there is no load on the rail, I was able to move them end to end and so position the rollers where they need to be.
I also found, because of the lack of rollers, that the rail sections had bent under the seat load and were physically binding. I re-shaped the rails so the can move with a slight gap before assembly with rollers.
I used silicone tubing to create the volume of the rubber centre, and 3 layers of shrink wrap to pack it all tightly onto the roller. This worked.
Cleaned up all the metal parts, repainted them and with the new rollers, they work perfectly. I used white lithium grease on the internal rails' ball tracks.
When I assembled the rail to the seats and put everything back into the car, they hit something again 2/3 back. Turned out that the central bolt of the upper tracks need to be a really flat headed chaps (there was only 1 left on my car), else they will hit the lower rear bolts.
Once that solved, the seat rails work smoothly again. Here the pics, in case someone needs to do similar work.
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The seat leather of both front seats had some areas that needed attention. Each side had a pull down spring of the front transversal "valley" that had come loose, a seam has split (threads torn,not the leather), some pull down strings for the longitudinal valleys had broken, and there was one tear on the lower rear corner, not visible normally so I wasn't aware of it before having removed the seat. As the leather is in excellent condition I opted for a repair.
The 3 pull-down springs attach to the leather via a string and hook to a transversal rod on the seat frame. I located the spring location, cut a hole (I know I will go to hell for this - untrimming the seat is beyond my capabilities) and luckily the spring was still there. With a long needle (self made from thin welding rod) and super strong thread from a Tokyu Hands (GREAT store in major Japanese Cities) I pulled the spring back up to the right tension.
The split in the same valley with the steel rod visible in the centre got sewn up as well.
The tear near the corner was sewn up using a curved needle. Not perfect but it will stop it from tearing further.
The attachments to which the folding seat back hooks itself were bare metal in my car, leading to rattling noise on rough road surfaces (99% of all roads here) due to a little play in the mechanisms. I used 3 layers of shrink wrap to isolate the metal parts - no noise now.
The driver's seat cushion fell through to the floor pan after having sagged over a period of time (this was the point at which I had to do some work as I couldn't see the road!). I found 4 of the 7 longitudinal rubber bands holding the seat foam up broken. Having no way of reproducing these or fixing them I opted for an external support. I designed a plywood plate at the correct angle held in place by two aluminium braces that mount between the seat cushion and the rails. To compensate for the additional space I also added 2 spacer at the remaining bolts in the front so things line up correctly. This hasn't any noticeable impact on the forward folding action of the seatback as the little link easily compensates for the slight increase in the distance between the seat and the rail. The seats are slightly harder than before, the seating hight is therefore slightly higher, which is good in my case and smaller people really appreciate it.
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The seat work required me to separate the backrest from the cushion, which also allowed me to have a look at the seat hinges. They were basically working but dirty, loose and both of the external covers were held in place by Gurit type of black sticky mass that some people use when all other means fail.... Here the order of disassembly for those who might have to get their seat backs off one day.
The set back comes off first with hinges attached by removing the 2 Allen bolts that allow it swing forward. Note that under each Allen bolt there is thick chromed metal washer with a large external radius and a 5mm plastic spacer below it. Also take away the small link between the hinge control arm and the lower external seat rail for the forward seat movement while you fold the seat forward. With the bolts and link removed, you can use the control arm pulled towards you to lift the hinge from the axis on the cushion. Assembly works the same way - mount the internal hinge onto the axis and then use the control arm to oben up the hinge distance a touch and pop over the external cushion axis. Easy.
The hinges attach with 2 large diameter Allen bolts to the seatback. The top one is visible and removable. The lower one is hidden behind the black plastic cover of the silver finisher. Move the seat to its most upright position and the bolt becomes accessible, but you cannot remove it. It was put in there during the hinge production.
The hinge cover are held in place by a screw at the bottom a clip at the top. As I couldn't source the missing clips locally I drilled a small hole (oups, going to hell again I guess) and used welding rod to lock the cover in place.
Luckily both screws were there but not attached...
With the hinges off, the 2 identical rods that transmit the back angle and lock/unlock the back rest slide out.
You can also remove the centre cover of the adjustment wheel - it has locations where you can get a tiny screw driver in and unlock the holders.
The back rest rear cover in alloy is held in place by two horizontal screws at the bottom corners and once removed, you can slide it downwards to free the hooks at the top.
The headrest on my car was held in place by a single safety pin on the right side. You can slide in a strong tube from below on the inside of the mounting axis and then pull it out to remove the headrest. I have no method other than untrim the seat to put the pin back in as the foam is too tight around the frame top section. The two vertical tubes holding the headrest in my car are not of the same diameter, the one with the pin is larger. On the photo you can see the relative position and orientation of the pin. For illustration purposes, I have reversed the headrest so you can see the notches. The upper most and the lowest notch is asymmetrical and the bottom of the headrest stay is pointed - you can mount it with the pin installed, but not take it past the last notches. I am using tubular spacers to hold up the headrest. As there always was a rattle from the vibrating headrest against the chrome finisher of the seatback, I used some black shrink wrap below the spacers to isolate the parts - no noise now.
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Of course, laa!

 

Thanks!