So I bought a 147 GTA recently and soon realised that the 2/3 back seat wouldn't lock back into place after being laid down. After a while of fiddling with it I thought I'd try being a little more 'persuasive' with a few good thumps into the slot but nothing. Realising that this was potentially dangerous for anyone in the back seat I set about trying to fix it. I checked the mechanism, everything seemed to rotate correctly and would lock if I pushed it back far enough with my finger so decided that it must be something blocking the bar from going all the way back and engaging the lock. Had an eyeball of everything and it all seemed to be in order and looked identical to the one on the other side that did work. Only thing I could see was a bit of rubber that the bar hits at the back of the lock to stop it going too far. After much fiddling and pushing I came to the conclusion that the rubber was the culprit, after prising it out using a flat head screwdriver I was able to confirm this and it would lock with the rubber block removed. So I took a knife and shaved off a bit of the top of the rubber block, popped it back in and boom, it worked!
Thought I'd take the time to write this this as I've found plenty of forum posts about this issue but no-one seemed to have found a solid fix. I hope this will help someone out there who has the same issue.
Kay_147_GTA
Thanks for sharing and good to see a simple fix to a potential safety issue/hazard for rear passenger/s.
cheers
bonno
Cheers! Well seems to be a common problem and the only solution I could find was 'slam it harder'.
Hope this helps someone in the future!