Folded Seat Doesn't Return to the Same Position

[Vlad Soare]

Hi guys,

I use my car daily, and one of my daily errands is taking the kids to and from school. Consequently my passenger seat sees a lot of folding and unfolding, which apparently it wasn't designed for. I guess Ford expected us not to use this feature more often than perhaps once a year or so, because mine has already started behaving oddly. At first glance it seems to work fine, it feels fine, it clicks fine, there's no apparent sign of a problem, but it doesn't end up in the same position it used to be before having been folded. It ends up a bit ahead of the original position. And the error adds up, so that after three or four foldings/unfoldings it's so upright that you can't sit in the front seat anymore. So I must use the adjustment lever to bring it back to where it started from.
It hasn't always done this. It used to work just fine until about two weeks ago. Something must have worn out, or weakened, or something like that.
Is there anything I can do about it? Is it difficult to get to the ratchet mechanism and adjust it (provided that it allows any adjustments at all)?

I have the premium heated/cooled leather seats.

Thank you.

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[ICU812]

Could it be your kid(s) just getting bigger and lean harder on the seat back while getting out, and the reclining part just moves instead of putting to much force on parts and breaking?

 

[Vlad Soare]

Could be. I didn't think of that.
I'll check and will report back.

 

[WD Pro]

I can’t tell you if it’s fixable, but I can tell you it’s a little tricky to get to the mechanism …

WD

 

[Vlad Soare]

Could it be your kid(s) just getting bigger and lean harder on the seat back while getting out, and the reclining part just moves instead of putting to much force on parts and breaking?

Nope. It's not that. I folded the seat a few times, without applying any pressure at all, and it came slowly forwards, little by little, until it was clearly too upright to allow one to sit comfortably in the front.

 

[Zathras]

On my car that release latch on the back of the front seat feels kind of crude and flimsy. Ford clearly didn't spend much effort on access to/from the rear seat.

 

[Vlad Soare]

Mine does look and feel crude as well, but not flimsy. Quite the contrary, it's quite sturdy, it feels like you couldn't break it if you wanted to.

If it had behaved like this from the beginning I wouldn't have given it a second thought. I would think that it's supposed to work like this, that the ratchet is somehow badly designed, and that would be it. But since it's been working perfectly for almost a year and then started to act up due to heavy use, I can't help worrying that it may worsen with time.

 

[raptor17GT]

Using the handle on the back of the seat, sometimes goes through a phase of not returning to original position then after I adjust it using the lower rake lever, it works fine for months without issue. Very odd like the two mechanisms get out of sync with one another

 

[glockholiday]

I have to hold the lever on the back of the seat the whole time until the the seat is all the way back to where it was if I let go of it early the seat will stop early

 

[Vlad Soare]

Indeed, you're right. I tried to hold the lever while bringing the seat back, and it returned to the original position. I did this several times, and it worked. The backrest is still in the correct position after four or five cycles, which wasn't the case before.
Thanks for the tip.

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