Intro and possibly the stupidest question of the year

[412grrl]

Hi there:

I've done a search on this site and, while not finding the answer to my question, have been overwhelmed by the support and encouragement members are offering each other. Therefore, I'm hoping that perhaps that sentiment will extend to me too!

My beau recently bought me a 1973 412, Alice. She's a beaut, but very different from my previous vw's (all beetles). I've run into my very first problem, before getting it out of the yard and to the shop (she's running rough and I think she has transmission issues).

She's dead as a doornail and I can't get the bloody driver's seat to move to access the battery.

Help! I know that the front knob is supposed to move the seat, but is the v-shaped bar the actually mechanism that moves the seat? Does the seat flip forward, or back? I'm afraid it's frozen forever, despite my WD40 attempts... what am I missing here?

Any advice would be so greatly appreciated!

Now, feel free to mock away.

cheers,

cait

[SureFit Travis]

Mock away? Never. These cars are quite unique in several areas when compared to the other aircooled models.

To flip your seat up to access the battery (some cars had the battery under the passenger seat, some under the drivers), you have to reach your hand under the front corner of the seat bottom, on the side closest to the door. You might need to duck down to actually see the release catch for the first time, but once you've found it, you will go " Ahh....I get it..."

Anyhow, reach up with your fingers up and under/around the plastic side trim in that front bottom corner, and simply pull that lever/latch towards the oustide of the seat. Voila....seat released.

If you need a picture posted, just let us know....I, or someone, can do this for you.

So, is this car a 2-door, 4-door, or wagon model? Once you have this car up-and-running, you will realize what all of us go on about. They are really nice cars to drive, and while they sitll retain the air-cooled charm, their development is quite an improvement over the Beetle.

Travis

[wildthings]

The forward lever of the ones that you can see on the side of the seat is the one that supposedly adjust the tilt and gives access the battery. The rearward one is supposed to move the seat fore and aft. You may well find that the seat will not tilt when you pull on the lever, I doubt that mine ever did even on day one. There is another lever underneath and on the opposite side of the seat that needs to be pulled at the same time. This should work.

I think that there may also have been a stop or safety to keep the seat from accidentally falling back too far when you adjusted the tilt. This stuff was not on mine so I can't say how it was supposed to work.

[Lars S]

It is the lever no 30 you first have to pull towards the door opening (it can be wery hard) then the seat is released from the holder no 44 and the seat can be flipped up a bit.
Pulling the bar 15 upwards will make the backrest to flip so the seat can be flipped more (on a 2 door: flip the backrest with the ordinary backrest knob).

Please see
http://www.lsmteknik.se/images/Type4%20seat.jpg


Lars

[Lahti411]

On the samba -site there's complete owner's manual's for these cars giving good pictures and explanation for this action.

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/man ... 2IV-79.jpg
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/man ... 4IV-42.jpg