Acura MDX.

It's a 2002 year model.

so, I'll try to

show you what I'm doing as I go.

So, the problem I'm having is that

this lever

that allows the seat to lay all the way down

is not-

seemingly not attached to anything now.

So, I'm gonna have to

look in there and see what's wrong with the cable

or the lever and see what's broken.

So step one is to slide the seat all the way forward. So we just...

If you own this car, you know how to do that.

Flip up that lever, push it

all the way forward.

Step two is to remove the

the uh... pivot bolt cover which is this cover right here. It's just snapped on.

So, you can just

pop it off like that.

It has a couple of places where it snaps in.

We have here a Torx T30 bit

...and removing the pivot bolt from the right side in the same way.

[ratchet wrench clicking]

The next step is to remove the back cover of the seat that uh...

It's good to note that--right now that I have the service manual

for the '01-'02 MDX. You can buy it from acura

for about seventy dollars and it's well worth the price

So,

it has

full instructions on how to remove the back seat cover and tells you where

all the clips are. I'm doing the right side.

So, this is where all the clips are

underneath the

back cover. So, as I remove it I can just pop those all loose.

And here's a close-up of

actually what the clip looks like so

you know what we're detaching.

So to remove the back seat cover

I'm just gonna start at the bottom.

Just give it a good pull. You won't hurt it.

And just work your way up the sides.

I believe I have to remove this plastic cover here.

So let me do that. Hang on.

OK, so weíve got to take this little plastic cover off before we can take

the back cover off.

And so the first thing to do is to remove this little screw

from inside the lever

cover.

And it's just a small Phillip's head.

Go ahead and get in there

and get that loose.

All right.

Once you have that off

you can take off the rest of

the cover. This cover has some screw--some hidden screws underneath

the sticker labels.

You have to take those off

and save those. Don't let them get dirty.

And underneath these two labels

are slightly larger Phillip's head screws.

Just take those out.

Now this plastic trim just comes off like that.

And we can

continue taking off the seat back now.

That's that. So, now that I have the seat back off, I can see that

only the bottom

snapsóI donít know if you can see that--

the bottom had these snap ins.

And then the rest of these

were supposed to

slide or

could slide out but

they didn't snap out so easy.

They actually pulled

out of the backing so

I'll have to deal with that in a minute. I'll have to pull them all out

and put 'em back in there

to reinstall this.

OK, next I want to get to the

bracket covers.

There's an outer and inner on the other side

(bracket covers).

So I'm gonna have to take off this part of the seat cover

by releasing

these clips right here.

So, I'm going to get to those.

These clips here

are just a little metal rings that have been crimped

on there like that. So...

to get them off--

what worked for me is I grabbed one side with a pair of pliers

stuck a screwdriver in the other side

and just pried it open.

You have to grab it very firmly.

I'm trying not to pry it open any more than I have to because I'm gonna

want to put this back.

Just pry it open enough to

get it off of there.

When it comes off

it looks like that.

You can see that against the background.

So there's four

on this side.

OK, now with the, um--

with the seat cover loose we're in a position to

remove the right

outer bracket which is this plastic piece right here.

There's two screws holding it on. There's one here and there's one covered by a little

trim cover here which we can just pop out with a

flat screwdriver.

These are both uh probably

number two

Phillip's head screws.

It's good if you have a magnetic

screw driver head.

These can grab the screw. This one's not very long It's just a small, short screw.

Once I have this bracket loose--

in order to remove it--

I'll need to go ahead and

take this

pivot bracket off.

Then just pull it out like that

and around there.

And that's the bracket cover.

Now I can see my cables here.

The one I'm interested in

is this one. You can see it--

it's not even snug against there so

you can't even pull the cable.

This one here is the one that allows the seat

to lay over...I mean--

too slide forward. This one

allows the seat to slide forward.

This one here allows the seat

to actually lay all the way down.

When it pull this up all the way

the seat lays down.

So something is not connected up there or not tight.

As you can see, that's loose.

Now we're ready to take out the

reclining lever.

So we have to pry up this cover.

Again using a flat blade screwdriver.

Just get under there

and pop that out.

This is what the cover looks like.

And then there's two

Phillip's head screws here.

OK, and then we remove this.

after the Phillip's head screws are loose this

should come out.

And, of course, the cable is holding on to it so we'll have to release the cable.

So to release the cable

we need to detach these clips here--

this black one, right here

(clip A in the

shop manual).

Just push it down really hard and that'll pop loose. See how it

snaps on there.

And then detach clip B. Just push it out of the bracket

towards the front of the car, I believe.

It's a little bit more stubborn

I'll get a little bit of

prying in here

behind it.

There we go. It just pops right out of there.

This bracket here.

So now it's loose

and you can just pull

this out the top.

And we have

the whole bracket assembly

and cable out.

You could uh... just reorder this whole assembly, I imagine, from an OEM

parts distributor

but

to see what's wrong

inside of here--

because the cable is not connected--

I'm gonna open it up. I'm gonna try

punching this pin out

and then taking

the handle off and then seeing

what came loose and seeing if it's something that I can

just reattach or

if I need to order a new one.

On the back of this assembly thereís a, um,

spring that

I wanna

just get loose there 'cause I don't want it to

pop out whenever I

remove the pin.

I'll just take

this nail

and spring it over like. OK, so then this is free.

And then I just-- used this nail to punch down into

this just lightly tapping it with the hammer.

Just punch this

out the other end. You can see it's coming out.

I need to punch it a little bit further

to get it all the way out.

Once I got the pin out a little ways

on this side

I was able to uh...

to just spread this out and pop the whole assembly out

and this comes off.

So now I can see

what happened. This is

just a plastic part

that was

attached to the end of the cable.

Let's see if I can get the end out.

Here's the cable end

that fit right in there

It went in that hole

and then engaged

and uh...

from use, it just

broke this plastic part. So this is what I'll have to order

or else uh... I can

effect some sort of repair maybe by

uh... placing metal on here-riveting it on or something but I think I'll just order

a new part probably.

But that's the cause of the problem.

Okay! Hold the phone. I may have just had a brilliant idea.

Since this is uh...

this bracket is made for um... both sides of the car

and on the left side you have a double

cable system where it releases in the center and on the left.

On the right side you just have a single cable- this one right here-

that only releases

the right side.

So, I believe I can use this same actuator. Since this part has never been used its

not broken yet.

So I'll just take this cable-see there's two holes coming up through the bracket.

Iíll just take it out of this one

and move it over to the other side.

Just snap it in place on the other side.

You might need a

pair of pliers or something for this.

just grab it like that.

Give it a little help here.

Push it over.

OK, so to get this over I just used a screwdriver and stuck it in the hole

and pried it back into place.

Now, I'm gonna take this cable,

install it

in the hole.

There's a key slot hole.

And just pop that into place the same way with the screwdriver.

Just pop it down into place like that. Okay?

And then we just reinstall it in the reverse order of how we took it out.

Another note about putting the seat back together:

When I took the back off of the seat

you can see where the uh...

the uh... attachment fasteners

just pulled out of the back. So

I need to get those out of the seat and put ëem back in here before I can

reattach the seat

because the uh.. these key holes donít all line up the same way. So it canít just slide back

on.