Rear Seat Removal

[mhall]

I know Mr. Clarkson has done this, and then finished it off with a nice false floor, so i gave it a shot over the weekend. The process was arduous in the texas heat, to say the least.

I started by taking out the seat bottom, which is removed in two steps. There's four metal loops that are attached to the underside of the seat cushion, and they fit into two retainer hooks in the rear, and two retaining clips in the front.The first is to pull those little grey plastic rings at the base of the rear seat cushion. There's two of them, and you have to yank them hard till you hear a snap noise. That releases the front retaining clips, leaving the rear hooks to be dealt with. The rear hooks are a pain. The best way to get these off is to feel under the cushion for their locations and then, reaching over the cushion to the back of the seat: pull the back up, which creates space to push the whole cushion back into, and while pulling the back up, push the area where the rear hoops are down to unhook them. Then push back to get the cushion off. I'm sure someone could do a better job explaining with a photo on hand.

Next up was removing the seat backs, which was way easier from an exertion standpoint. Tools required was a T40 torx bit, a T47(though there was some wiggle room; it was the closest i had) bit, and a standard screwdriver. The rear seats attach to the body of the car in three places: either side has a springloaded pin-like thingie, and in the middlish, there's a hingey bit that bolts onto the frame with 4 bolts. The bolts on the trunk-side can be removed with the T40 bit without much trouble. The bolts holding down the hingey bracket on the seat-front side uses the bigger torx bolts, and are really torqued on there tight. There's another on of these to the right that holds on the center seat's seatbelt. Go ahead and remove that too. The little pin-like thingie's on either side can be disengaged by wedging your screwdriver in there and pushing the part closest to you a little bit closer. The seat will pull up out of that rail, and that side will be free.

ANYWAY, my whole point in that effort was to reduce the weight of the car. Did it work? Sure; those seats certainly have mass. Was it worth it? Well, i went and put the seats back in yesterday because the road noise was driving me nuts.