Fitz@CFB
Lifetime VIP Member
First let me add my voice to those who have praised these forums for their wealth of useful information. The generosity of so many of you who take the time to advise those of us who have recently entered this amazing world of the California never ceases to amaze me.
I, like many others, find the headrests a problem - affecting rear visibility and access over the back seat when up and restricting storage space when lowered. I read several of the threads dealing with this and decided to have a go. At first very frustrating - I started with a punch and despite the restricted working room I did manage to move the C pins in some way at first. Then despite repeated hammering I couldn’t get them any further than about half way (about 10-12 mm in and it needs to be a good 25mm to clear the post). The hammering has to be very carefully done and cant be too hard or I thought I might cause damage.
I then tried drilling but without a specialist right angle chuck you just cant get a drill in line with the pin - and the pin is so hard it makes no progress. After giving up at first thinking this was beyond me I realised that my punch was a bit too small (about 3.5mm across) and my repeated blows might just be spreading the pin and thus jamming it in. £10 for a decent 5mm long punch and a long slow repeat effort requiring patience and I finally prevailed. The worst one took a good 30 minutes to drive through but I think I had made the job harder by my previous attempt.
Summary - if you want to do this make sure you have the right tool and a lot of perseverance. Now I need to keep the removed headrests close at hand as they must be replaced if we ever have rear seat passengers - and they must go back for service and MOTs. Replacing is easy if you make sure the plastic locking mechanism is in line for the headrest posts to pass through which is easy with a screwdriver.
I hope this may be of help to others who want to remove these. Felt like I should start to try to pass on some tips rather than just being a ‘consumer’.
I, like many others, find the headrests a problem - affecting rear visibility and access over the back seat when up and restricting storage space when lowered. I read several of the threads dealing with this and decided to have a go. At first very frustrating - I started with a punch and despite the restricted working room I did manage to move the C pins in some way at first. Then despite repeated hammering I couldn’t get them any further than about half way (about 10-12 mm in and it needs to be a good 25mm to clear the post). The hammering has to be very carefully done and cant be too hard or I thought I might cause damage.
I then tried drilling but without a specialist right angle chuck you just cant get a drill in line with the pin - and the pin is so hard it makes no progress. After giving up at first thinking this was beyond me I realised that my punch was a bit too small (about 3.5mm across) and my repeated blows might just be spreading the pin and thus jamming it in. £10 for a decent 5mm long punch and a long slow repeat effort requiring patience and I finally prevailed. The worst one took a good 30 minutes to drive through but I think I had made the job harder by my previous attempt.
Summary - if you want to do this make sure you have the right tool and a lot of perseverance. Now I need to keep the removed headrests close at hand as they must be replaced if we ever have rear seat passengers - and they must go back for service and MOTs. Replacing is easy if you make sure the plastic locking mechanism is in line for the headrest posts to pass through which is easy with a screwdriver.
I hope this may be of help to others who want to remove these. Felt like I should start to try to pass on some tips rather than just being a ‘consumer’.
