A rather heavy passenger unwittingly stepped on the aft seat bottom when the seat was extended flat, and bent the sliding rails to the point that it would not slide back to the upright position. It's an unpleasant task to repair and took most of the afternoon but glad to have it sorted out again. I searched the forum and the interweb and could not find decent info on how to remove the rails so I'm posting it here for anyone with similar bent seat rails.
The entire seat can be detached from the rails by tilting the front seat bottom and back seat bottom and removing the 5 or 6 panhead phillips screws at each end:
The rails attach to the seat base with 3 flathead phillips screws, one on each end and one in the middle (yes, that's blood, I said it's an unpleasant task):
With the rails removed, I could deal with them in the shop. I tried to straighten them in-situ with a port-a-power but no luck.
The rails that overhang at the rear were badly bent:
I fixtured them to clamp to the T-slots on my milling machine table and pried them straight by eyeball reference with a bottle jack.
From now on I recommend the boat owner to flatten the seats themselves into the lounge position, and instruct your guests NOT to step on the seats and to position themselves in the middle before laying down on them. Hope this is of some help for someone with a similar malfunction.
Login
FAQ
Search
