Look here for help first!
So I just lived with only having one working seat for almost a year. The other day I was at the junk yard and found a tercel wagon, so I pulled the latch from its back seat. I brought it home and then set on fixing my car.
The first trick was to get the seat folded back down. With some hemostats and a pen light I was able to look down the hole and find the broken rod an grab it and get the seat down. Then I removed the seat back cover. On the normal interior thats the 3 screws on the metal trip at the top of the seat and a few plastic rivets to the seat and the carpet some up. You can see my car I made a plywood piece for the back.
with the seat back off I used 2 pair of needle-nose plyers to un hook the hog rings across the top of the seat and down the side. With the seat cover loose I was able to access the 2 12mm bolts holding the latch in place with a 1/4"dr swivel socket through the hole for the latch.
After removing both bolts I snaked the latch out.
I went to install the new latch and I found the rod wasn't the same length as my existing latch, I mean it would have stuck out of the whole at the top a good 2 inches. I guess the car in the junk yard had higher backed seats of the latch in a lower positing. maybe it was a 2wd. So I had to get creative.
I played with the old latch and I could get a #6-32 die to thread over the rod, but it didn't make very deep threads. I went to the hardware store to see what they had. I found a #6-32 coupler nut and a #6-32 by screw thread stud. I threaded the coupling nut to the latch but it was loose. So I mixed up some JB weld and then threaded the coupling nut on and for good measure I gave the nut a bit of a squeeze in the vise. I let the JB weld set up over night. This is what I came up with, here it is next to the latch from the junk yard.
I fought getting the spiky screw through the seat. then I found some old 3/16" tubing and pushed it in from the top of the seat then screwed it on to the screw part and used it to guide it through the seat.
I used the swivel socket to get the bolts back in and then attach a new pull I got from the junk yard.
I then used the plyers to put the hog rings back and reattach my seat back.
Good As New!
Hope this helps and I hope it saves someone from waiting around to find a new latch. I wish I would have tried to fix my latch last year!
