Date:         Sun, 1 May 2011 15:51:23 -0700
Reply-To:     Steve Williams <sbw@SBW.ORG>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Steve Williams <sbw@SBW.ORG>
Subject:      Re: Repair Arm Rest Stop?
In-Reply-To:  <561c3.71c0a3d8.3ab4cbda@aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

Back in March, I wrote:
>My '84 Westy has the stock seats.  I leaned a little too hard on one
>of the armrests.  I heard a crack, and now the armrest won't stay
>horizontal.  It just continues to rotate down past the seat bottom.
>
>Can anyone tell me whether it's possible to repair the stop?  I've
>got spare seats I can cannibalize.  How do you disassemble the armrest?

Turns out I lied.  My front seats are from a later model.  They have
adjustable arm rests.

So that misled Ed Duntz, who replied:
>I think the earlier, shorter, non-adjustable ones are easier to deal with
>than the later ones. On yours, you pop the plastic cap off the near end (if
>you still have it) and use an allen wrench to unscrew the bolt that holds it
>on. Then it will slide off, I believe. I haven't fooled around with them too
>much, but from what I remember, you can see "the works" when you look inside
>and see what's wrong.

I have a pair of the original seats in storage, the ones with
NON-adjustable arm rests.  Yes, they have a plug on the outside of
the arm rest over the allen bolt at the pivot point.  I didn't try to
take those apart.

I also misled JordanVw@AOL.COM, who replied:
>one of the allen bolts broke.  just remove the armrest and replace the
>bolt.

Yeah, that sounds like the older seats.

The seats currently in my camper don't have that plug over an allen
head at the pivot point.  The upholstery is continuous there.

I screwed with it a bit and soon found a large roll pin was floating
around loose between the arm rest and the seat back near the pivot point.

With the roll pin out, I was able to pull the arm rest off the pivot
post attached to the seat back.  I could see the roll pin is supposed
to secure the tube on the arm rest to that pivot post.

I still couldn't see any mechanism for the adjustable stop, but I
thought I'd just put it back together and see what happened.

I put the arm rest back on the pivot post and lined up the holes for
the roll pin.  It's pretty hard to retract the upholstery enough to
see the holes once the arm rest is on.  It's even harder to maneuver
the roll pin into the holes.

But within a few minutes, I had the roll pin started.  I drove it in
the rest of the way with a few taps on a drift.

And now the stops work correctly!  There's no mechanism on the seat
back or its pivot post, so there must be something inside the arm
rest.  But I sure couldn't figure it out.  Heck, I couldn't even
rotate the tube on the arm rest, and now that tube is fixed to the
pivot post, so I can't see where the pivot comes from.  I guess I
didn't try hard enough to rotate it.

Anyway, it's fixed, for now.  We'll see whether the roll pin stays in place.