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How to remove the rear panel of an Ocean SE bench seat

Ting Tong

Ting Tong

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Location
South Wales
Vehicle
T6 Ocean 204
I posted a few weeks ago to say I'd broken the large plastic back panel of the bench seat on our Ocean and @WelshGas kindly stepped in with a parts diagram which helped enormously. The part No for the back panel in grey is 7E7067361B 30T. SMG Cowfold was the cheapest at £102 but they couldn't quote postage until it arrived. The forum shop were £127 + about £6 postage, so I haggled with the local dealer and it got it for £114 and didn't have the risk of it braking in the post. It's actually fairly resilient though.

I doubt many people will want to remove the bench seat back panel but this may be useful if you break it (like I did) or if you want to access the mechanism which releases the back rest, e.g. if you break the strap that you pull to lie the seat flat for sleeping.

You will certainly need 6 x panel trim fasteners (701867299 30t) as it's impossible to remove them without damaging the heads. They are those 2-part mushroom head clips and the only way I've found is prising out the inner part with a sharp tool under the inner head. Youtube is your friend.

Referring to Figure 1, firstly remove the 6 x panel trim fasteners from positions 10. Then pull the lower edge of the panel rearwardly to release the 9 x white fir tree fixings 11. The only things holding the panel then are the upper bifurcated clips 12 shown in Figures 1 and 2 that engage the inner and outer lugs 15i, 15o on the metal seat belt exit formations shown in Figure 3.

Referring to Figure 5, you will need to undo the 2 x T20 Torx bolts to remove the seat belt shrouds 14 from the front of the formations. Once removed, you can prise the inner arm 13i of the bifurcated clip 12 away from the inner lug 15i to fully release the panel from the seat. I broke one of the white fir tree fixings 11, so you may like to order some spares. I got a bag of 50 panel trim fasteners (701867299 30t) off ebay for £5 but the grey isn't quite as original. PM me if you want some.

Part 16 in Figure 4 is the strap that you pull downwardly to release the seat back.

Hope that helps.

Fig 1.JPG Fig 2.JPG Fig 3.JPG Fig 4.JPG Fig 5.JPG
 
Thank you for taking the time to post the method in such detail. I at some point will be removing this panel also. :thumb
 
A hint for removing the panel clips with minimal damage is to screw a small sharp self tapping screw into the middle section leaving enough to grip the screw head with pliers or mole grip. Then pull the middle section directly out.


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I got stuck at a campsite with bed down when the strap for bench seat came off. After reading a bit on this forum, realised that only way to unlatch the bed is to remove the bench seat back trim.

Only difference from complete panel removal for this emergency repair is, you can't remove bottom 2 trim fixing (red circled item #10 in Figure 1 above) when the bed is down but it is not a show stopper. Trim panel is flexible enough to reach out to bed latching mechanism when you open middle and top fixing points and pull the panel out for which you need to move bench seat all the way front

This topic saved the day for me. Thank you very much.
 
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