Today I'm going to replace the second row seat back recline lever in my
Acura MDX.
It's a 2002 year model.
so, I'll try to
show you what I'm doing as I go.
So, the problem I'm having is that
this lever
that allows the seat to lay all the way down
is not-
seemingly not attached to anything now.
So, I'm gonna have to
look in there and see what's wrong with the cable
or the lever and see what's broken.
So step one is to slide the seat all the way forward. So we just...
If you own this car, you know how to do that.
Flip up that lever, push it
all the way forward.
Step two is to remove the
the uh... pivot bolt cover which is this cover right here. It's just snapped on.
So, you can just
pop it off like that.
It has a couple of places where it snaps in.
We have here a Torx T30 bit
...and removing the pivot bolt from the right side in the same way.
[ratchet wrench clicking]
The next step is to remove the back cover of the seat that uh...
It's good to note that--right now that I have the service manual
for the '01-'02 MDX. You can buy it from acura
for about seventy dollars and it's well worth the price
So,
it has
full instructions on how to remove the back seat cover and tells you where
all the clips are. I'm doing the right side.
So, this is where all the clips are
underneath the
back cover. So, as I remove it I can just pop those all loose.
And here's a close-up of
actually what the clip looks like so
you know what we're detaching.
So to remove the back seat cover
I'm just gonna start at the bottom.
Just give it a good pull. You won't hurt it.
And just work your way up the sides.
I believe I have to remove this plastic cover here.
So let me do that. Hang on.
OK, so weíve got to take this little plastic cover off before we can take
the back cover off.
And so the first thing to do is to remove this little screw
from inside the lever
cover.
And it's just a small Phillip's head.
Go ahead and get in there
and get that loose.
All right.
Once you have that off
you can take off the rest of
the cover. This cover has some screw--some hidden screws underneath
the sticker labels.
You have to take those off
and save those. Don't let them get dirty.
And underneath these two labels
are slightly larger Phillip's head screws.
Just take those out.
Now this plastic trim just comes off like that.
And we can
continue taking off the seat back now.
That's that. So, now that I have the seat back off, I can see that
only the bottom
snapsóI donít know if you can see that--
the bottom had these snap ins.
And then the rest of these
were supposed to
slide or
could slide out but
they didn't snap out so easy.
They actually pulled
out of the backing so
I'll have to deal with that in a minute. I'll have to pull them all out
and put 'em back in there
to reinstall this.
OK, next I want to get to the
bracket covers.
There's an outer and inner on the other side
(bracket covers).
So I'm gonna have to take off this part of the seat cover
by releasing
these clips right here.
So, I'm going to get to those.
These clips here
are just a little metal rings that have been crimped
on there like that. So...
to get them off--
what worked for me is I grabbed one side with a pair of pliers
stuck a screwdriver in the other side
and just pried it open.
You have to grab it very firmly.
I'm trying not to pry it open any more than I have to because I'm gonna
want to put this back.
Just pry it open enough to
get it off of there.
When it comes off
it looks like that.
You can see that against the background.
So there's four
on this side.
OK, now with the, um--
with the seat cover loose we're in a position to
remove the right
outer bracket which is this plastic piece right here.
There's two screws holding it on. There's one here and there's one covered by a little
trim cover here which we can just pop out with a
flat screwdriver.
These are both uh probably
number two
Phillip's head screws.
It's good if you have a magnetic
screw driver head.
These can grab the screw. This one's not very long It's just a small, short screw.
Once I have this bracket loose--
in order to remove it--
I'll need to go ahead and
take this
pivot bracket off.
and around there.
And that's the bracket cover.
Now I can see my cables here.
The one I'm interested in
is this one. You can see it--
it's not even snug against there so
you can't even pull the cable.
This one here is the one that allows the seat
to lay over...I mean--
too slide forward. This one
allows the seat to slide forward.
This one here allows the seat
to actually lay all the way down.
When it pull this up all the way
the seat lays down.
So something is not connected up there or not tight.
As you can see, that's loose.
Now we're ready to take out the
reclining lever.
So we have to pry up this cover.
Again using a flat blade screwdriver.
Just get under there
and pop that out.
This is what the cover looks like.
And then there's two
Phillip's head screws here.
OK, and then we remove this.
after the Phillip's head screws are loose this
should come out.
And, of course, the cable is holding on to it so we'll have to release the cable.
So to release the cable
we need to detach these clips here--
this black one, right here
(clip A in the
shop manual).
Just push it down really hard and that'll pop loose. See how it
snaps on there.
And then detach clip B. Just push it out of the bracket
towards the front of the car, I believe.
It's a little bit more stubborn
I'll get a little bit of
prying in here
behind it.
There we go. It just pops right out of there.
This bracket here.
So now it's loose
and you can just pull
this out the top.
And we have
the whole bracket assembly
and cable out.
You could uh... just reorder this whole assembly, I imagine, from an OEM
parts distributor
but
to see what's wrong
inside of here--
because the cable is not connected--
I'm gonna open it up. I'm gonna try
punching this pin out
and then taking
the handle off and then seeing
what came loose and seeing if it's something that I can
just reattach or
if I need to order a new one.
On the back of this assembly thereís a, um,
spring that
I wanna
just get loose there 'cause I don't want it to
pop out whenever I
remove the pin.
I'll just take
this nail
and spring it over like. OK, so then this is free.
And then I just-- used this nail to punch down into
this just lightly tapping it with the hammer.
Just punch this
out the other end. You can see it's coming out.
I need to punch it a little bit further
to get it all the way out.
Once I got the pin out a little ways
on this side
I was able to uh...
to just spread this out and pop the whole assembly out
and this comes off.
So now I can see
what happened. This is
just a plastic part
that was
attached to the end of the cable.
Let's see if I can get the end out.
Here's the cable end
that fit right in there
It went in that hole
and then engaged
and uh...
from use, it just
broke this plastic part. So this is what I'll have to order
or else uh... I can
effect some sort of repair maybe by
uh... placing metal on here-riveting it on or something but I think I'll just order
a new part probably.
But that's the cause of the problem.
Okay! Hold the phone. I may have just had a brilliant idea.
Since this is uh...
this bracket is made for um... both sides of the car
and on the left side you have a double
cable system where it releases in the center and on the left.
On the right side you just have a single cable- this one right here-
that only releases
the right side.
So, I believe I can use this same actuator. Since this part has never been used its
not broken yet.
So I'll just take this cable-see there's two holes coming up through the bracket.
Iíll just take it out of this one
and move it over to the other side.
Just snap it in place on the other side.
You might need a
pair of pliers or something for this.
just grab it like that.
Give it a little help here.
Push it over.
OK, so to get this over I just used a screwdriver and stuck it in the hole
and pried it back into place.
Now, I'm gonna take this cable,
install it
in the hole.
There's a key slot hole.
And just pop that into place the same way with the screwdriver.
Just pop it down into place like that. Okay?
And then we just reinstall it in the reverse order of how we took it out.
Another note about putting the seat back together:
When I took the back off of the seat
you can see where the uh...
the uh... attachment fasteners
just pulled out of the back. So
I need to get those out of the seat and put ëem back in here before I can
reattach the seat
because the uh.. these key holes donít all line up the same way. So it canít just slide back
on.
So to do that um...
Iím just...
each fastener-- getting under it with the pliers
and just pulling it out. It's supposed to pull out.
The back of the seat wasn't strong enough
to pull it out. So if you just want to get under it and pry it out. They just
come right out. This is how they look.
And to get them all out-- when you get one out
you can put it
where it goes in the uh... seat back. You can see
the little keyhole slot right there.
I'm just gonna slide that in there like that.
OK, so you have to get all those out, put them back in the seat back,
and then we can pop the seat back back on
like it supposed to go.
Here's the seat back with all the fasteners installed.
Just lay that on there.
Line up all the fasteners...
and pop 'em back into place.
So the seat back's re-installed.
I just need to put on a few trim pieces and weíll be finished.
One last note uh...
I forgot to uh...
push this pin back in. You can see the pin sticking out there
from the uh... seat catch. So I
took out the two screws right here,
laid the seat catch over- the seat over so there would be no tension on it
and then uh...I unscrewed this and pulled it out so that I could see this pin
and then um...I'm just gonna take a pair of pliers
and grab the end of the pin and push it in and
it is moving this way.
And then uh... when I get it so far that I canít grab it anymore, I'll just press it
with the end of the pliers.
But uh... it'll work a lot better if I get that pin all the way in there. I
just forgot to do that and re-assembled the whole seat, put the back on it
and realize that I had not
pushed the pin in so
I'll be fixing that now.