Catch for lowering the rear seat

[bernie]

The catch for lowering the rear seat on my T5 is the old kind at the top back of the rear seat. It is not well designed, being made of plastic. You rotate it to pull two wires that go down to the release mechanism somewhere at the join of the upright and lower seats. Mine has snapped off but worse is that it has broken the metal bobble on the end of one of the wires. Since I was in France I effected a temporary repair using electrical connectors and some bicycle wire to create an effective release mechanism ( better than before ) but it looks awful. Does anyone know the costs involved to fix this fully? Will it involve dismantling the seat? Also, is it possible to re-adapt it so that it works like the modern ones which have a belt at the join of the upper and lower seats? thanks in advance for your time

 

[WestCali]

I have a 2005 LHD T5 California and the rear seat release mechanism is jamming. The extra effort needed to pull the catch has broken some of the plastic handle. This sounds like a similar problem to yours. The extra strain on the plastic handle, when the mechanism elsewhere jams, causes the plastic to break. The actual problem however lies elsewhere in the mechanism.

I have dismantled the back of the bench seat and lubricated the bowden cables but I think the pin moved by the cable that locks the hinge point of the seat is sticking and I can not see how to get to this.

Does anyone have an exploded drawing of the seat that shows how this can be dismantled and regreased?

 

[bernie]

Good luck. You've got further than me in that you have dismantled the back of the seat. A replacement plastic handle is not too expensive and I am sure you could fit it yourself.

 

[WestCali]

I also have a 2005 LHD T5 and had the same problem with the rear seat cable mechanism 2 years ago. How did you fix this?

The plastic handle broke, where the cable end sits in the plastic, when I forced it a little. My local VW distributer in Exeter kindly sent me the attached general assembly drawing, so I bought a new plastic handle (about £32 from VW) and began stripping down the plastic trim to get at the key mechanism.

I removed all the trim from the rear of the back seat to reveal the two bowden cables etc. and relubricated the cables in-situe (with some difficulty). This seemed to help a bit. I also tried to inject some synthetic grease (the sort you use on a bicycle rear gear cassette) into the hidden mechanism in the "knuckle joint" that hinges the back seat. This all helped at the time and freed up the mechanism a bit. I could not work out how to fully remove and replace the old plastic handle and eventually used some Halfords special plastic trim glue to stick the broken bit of plastic back in place. This delicate repair has worked for the last two years but has just broken again.

Have you made a better repair now? Any advice on how to do this would be welcome.
Do you have a drawing of the actual knuckle joint so that I can disassemble and service this?