328 Drivers seat

The floppy seat back is usually caused by loose screws attaching the hinge/recliner mechanism to the seat. They use very short countersunk flathead screws and when they back out a turn or so it allows a lot of movement of the seat back. The screws go in from the front and the back and getting to them all can be a challenge. I take them out, clean them up, replace screws with damaged threads and locktite them in place.

The rails get a lot of debris in them and even coins. When the seat is out get a good look and clean the junk out of them. Also being sure not to bolt them in place under a bind makes a lot of difference too.

 

Add to that, be very careful with the rails and the mechanism. The adjuster unit is riveted together so difficult (impossible!) to disassemble/clean and there are some very small cogs in there that wear out if you force the thing. Once they have worn the seat won't stay where you want it.

To remove the seat you will see there is a stop piece at the front of one of the rails, you need to remove that bolt first, then the one on the other rail at the front. Then you can slide the seat far enough forward to get to the bolts at the back of the rails. You can't get to them with the stop piece in place. When I put them back in I bolt the front ones down first without the stop piece, then slide the seat forward to put the rear bolts in, then slide it right to the back & take one of the front bolts back out before replacing it with the stop piece.

As Brian said, if the rails twist or bend at all when its bolted down it becomes very difficult to move so experiment by releasing one bolt at a time to see if they are under any tension.
If releasing one of the bolts makes it easier to move the seat then put a spacer /washer under the rail at that corner before you bolt it down again.

There's a certain amount of lateral movement too where the rails are bolted to the seat & obviously if they aren't parallel that doesn't help either.

If you find the rails under your passenger seat work much better than those under the driver's seat you can just swap them.

 

As far as the seat backs flopping instead of staying rigid, mine do that too, and from my research it seems that almost everybody's seats do that. Whether it's "normal" or not, I dunno.

If the seat tracks are stubborn, take the seats out and clean the dirt, debris and old grease using an all purpose cleaner. Then lube them with some white lithium grease in a spray can. Work the sliders a bit and they'll be good as new.

If you can't move the seats far enough to access the rear bolts, you may need to get medieval on them. I had to use a pry bar, a block of wood and a BFH to get my siezed driver's seat to budge forward enough.

 

My seat backs also flopped about a bit - or they did till I got some new bolts, cleaned the threads and loctited them in.

 

Flopping seat back happens a lot BUT you can make it much better. There is a lot of work involved.

 

You do need to take the seats out really but I think its worth doing, if the bolts are loose & the thing is moving around then you are going to get some wear around the bolt holes.

New bolts & blue loctite (red is probably overkill) and they should stay put. Important to clean old loctite out the threads first though.

 

when i still had my 328, i routinely took both seats out as part of her winter PM.

i did this to perform the Leatherique process, and also clean, lube, the rails.

also to open the and clean the seat-back ratchet, etc.

my mechanic always commented how nice my seats looked and operated for a 30 +yo car.

he used to say. you can do the perfunctory stuff (i forget the italian words) "i'll do the heavy stuff."

how i miss her so!

 

I decided to do a big cleaning and treat the leather of the seats of my 328. I had no problem removing the seats but I would like to separate the backrests from the seat bases and now I have a problem, how to do that ?

Please see picture below, I stopped the job before do a mistake. Anyone could tell me how to do ? Can I unscrew everything without having a problem with the spring ?


Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Pop loose the large spring to remove the tension.
Remove the fasteners for the seat back on both sides (Left and Right sides)
The seat back will come loose.

 

I'll bet getting that spring back on with proper tension is going to be fun.

 

Fun, but there is a trick

 

This is my anxiety !

What is the "trick" pleaaaaase

 

The trick: wind the spring on, use a small c-clamp to hold down the spring tension. Then re -attach the seat back .

The other method is a two-person job. You need 3 hands.