Suppose you are about to begin a long drive with your family or you may be going for scheduled driving, suddenly, you notice that the car’s recliner lever doesn’t work. How disgusting it is, right?
You may never understand how important a recliner lever is until it’s broken down. Even a broken recliner seat adjuster is equally frustrating whether it is a car recliner lever or office/home using a recliner.
Now you may be wondering how to fix a broken car seat frame or home recliner lever. However, there are some different ways you can approach a broken recliner lever. Primarily, you can fix the recliner lever by following proper guidelines until it demands professional intervention.
Thus, we have designed this article to let you know about how to fix a broken seat recliner lever. In fact, you will have a clear idea about how to fix a stuck manual car seat as well as electronic car’s seat lever troubleshooting.
Importance of Fixing a Broken Seat Recliner Lever
After understanding the fact that your recliner lever has broken down, you may be thinking it would be easy to go with a broken recliner. Indeed, there are a lot of problems associated with a broken recliner because that’s not about the question of comfort.
I understand you can somehow adjust a broken seat but what about your family especially for the children or the other passengers.
Now we have discussed some common issues associated with the broken recliner lever and why it is important to fix the broken seat recliner lever.
- Comfortability: Going with a broken recliner seat would be a horrible experience if you use it for a long time. Instead of having comfort, you have come up with some health issues.
- Seat Belt Adjustment: A broken recliner never allows you to adjust the seat belt properly. That means such a recliner puts you in a dangerous accident. Statistics show that 48.1% of road accidents happen without wearing a seat belt properly.
- Fear of Suffering: If you use the broken recliner in the office or home, there is always a fear of suffering that it might fall off. And such incidents could happen if children or senior people use such broken recliners. In this case, it is better to stop using the recliner until it gets fixed.
- Spinal Problems: A recliner has designed ergonomically so that you can have maximum comfort without having a single issue on your spinal. Some recliners actually solve particular spinal issues greatly.
- Driving Issues: A broken recliner never gives you 100% control while driving. Most of the time such recliners lead to serious disaster at driving. Thus, every driver shouldn’t drive with a broken recliner.
See Also: Checking the How to Fix Diesel Engine Knocking will be helpful as well.
Find out the Exact Problems
Whether you are encountering a manual car’s broken recliner lever or an electronic one, the initial process is the same for the both car’s recliner lever. In fact, you can follow the same instruction to fix an office or home recliner lever problem.
Step 1: Look for Problems
Recliner lever problems type can be varied according to the lever type. Manual car seat recliner mechanism nearly same for the most car. However, the electric seat recliner lever could be different from the manual car seat. Plus, home/office recliners surely have different mechanisms. But these recliners’ fundamental design is the same, that’s why you will find some commonalities while repairing any kind of recliner’s lever.
Step 2: Move Forward
After initial examination, if you have confirmed what the exact problems are then you need to go for direct fixing. In this case, you can directly jump to the manual fixing section below.
However, if the problems aren’t visible at your first attempt then follow some other steps below in this section.
Step 3: Physical Impediment and Solution
The primary reason for stucking a recliner is its seat adjuster. However, there are other issues that exist beyond recliner lever problems. Some of these are describing below:
- Dusting: Sometimes a seat adjuster can’t work due to dust problems. If the recliner doesn’t take care properly then seat stuck could happen.
- Lack of routine cleaning process: A seat adjuster could be stuck all of a sudden. In this case, you must take preventive care to avoid such issues. For example, regular cleaning and using the right lubricant for the lever can relieve you from such disasters.
- For Electric Recliner Seat Adjusters: Disconnecting electric lines can lead to the recliner’s stuck problems. In this case, you can easily fix the adjuster by fixing the electric lines as it was. However, solving electric lines demands an expert intervention. In this case, if you try it by yourself. Remember! you must follow the car’s manual to have proper guidelines.
Step 4: Check the Seat Track:
If the car’s seat derails from its original path then it won’t help if you press the adjuster button or simply fix the broken lever. These derailments could happen for both electric and manual recliners. Basically, most of the recliners are working on a certain trajectory. Here a little imbalance on the track can lead to serious seat adjusting problems.
Make Necessary Arrangement for Fixing Broken Recliners
To get the seat on track, you need to remove the seat entirely or partially. To do the job you need some initial preparation and tools arrangement which are given below.
- Take a luminous place where you can see the all the necessary nut, bolt and connections
- Take a flashlight if necessary
- Take the car’s manual or recliner manual
- Find the exact nut and bolt driver or socket wrench
- Buy a new lever if you sure that only replacement of lever complete the repairing job
See More: For more suggestions, you can read about How to Fix a Knocking Engine Rod.
Removing the Seat and Solving Other Issues
Step 1: Open up the Lever Covers
First, you need to open up the lever cover to identify the exact problems. If the lever is okay then remove the seat. In this case, you might need two people to avoid probable hazard.
Remember! if it is visible that the lever has broken down after removing the lever cover you don’t need to go further to remove the entire seat.
In this case, see whether the old lever is worth repairing, if possible then you don’t need to buy new one, otherwise, buy a new lever according to the recliner models.
However, if your car recliner has a manual lever then you can repair the broken lever shaft by welding. This process has been described in the subsequent section.
Step 2: Remove the Seat
First remove the nut and bolt. You might find these bolts at the back side of the seat or beneath the seat. You must carefully reach the driver to bolt so that it won’t affect other connections.
Step 3: Disconnect Electric Lines
After removing the lever cover, you could find some electric lines or you might find these lines after removing the seat a little bit or slightly tilting it. Now, unplug all the electric line in the seating systems.
However, if you find any disconnected lines after removing the seating system, you must connect them where they should be and check whether the recliner works or not. If the recliner works then you are good to go. You don’t have anything to do.
Manual Repairing of the Recliner Lever
To manually fix the lever by welding, you need some expertise on this matter. However, there is another way to fix the broken lever without welding. In this case, you need some accessories which are stated below:
- Exact bolt and nuts according to the lever panel
- You can use rivet as well
- Specific driver
- Metal plate which will sit on the broken lever plate
- Metal Saw
Step 1: Cut the Existing Plate
First, cut the broken plate to the first rivet where the spring has attached. Take a look at the underneath picture to have a look at how to cut the existing metal plate. Now use the metal saw to cut the existing plate to the first rivet.
Step 2: Take Metal Plate/Brackets
Take a metal plate and cut it according to the lever size, so that it can adjust perfectly to the entire adjuster. Now make a two hole on the metal plate as well as on the broken lever. Now, join them with the exact nut and bolts.
Step 3: Make Holes And Joint
On the other hand, you need to make another hole in the recliner body where it would be joined to the entire system. Now you have two holes in the lever body and two hole in the broken lever part. Afterward, join the repair lever to the recliner body tightly. See the below picture.
However, to fix this lever in the same way you can use welding instead of using nuts and bolts to connect the broken lever to its main system.
How to Fix a Broken Recliner Lever
Final Words
After finding the exact problems why the recliner adjuster is not working, you can try a DIY repair by replacing a new lever or repairing it. In this case, you can follow the above guidelines to get the job done.
However, if the problems are more complicated than we are presenting, then you might need an expert intervention to repair it. In fact, it is better to hire a professional in such a complex situation.
Therefore, we hope that you have found your recliner lever repairing solution and know about the entire steps of how to fix a broken seat recliner lever.
Hi, my name is Gabrielle. I have been into Automotive Industry for over 15 years. If you’re anything like me, then building, maintaining and improving your Automotive Industry/Projects is all part of the Automotive experience.
My goal with this blog is to share my experience with and help you discover new and exciting things about Automotive.
