Seat latch weirdness - anyone recognise this part?

[gsmdo]

The sun was out - time to take the convertible out for its first trip of spring...

 

 

I ended up driving my mate home with him in the backseat, and me looking like a !Removed! chauffeur... 😆

When I got home, I had a good look at the runners and saw something loose up in the left runner track. Using a natty little flexible extending magnet gizmo, it took me only 20 minutes to get it out. Because, of course, everything is made of steel there... 🤦‍♂️

Anyway - this is what I fished out:

It's a tool-quality piece of metal, with broken plastic fittings...

The plastic is held in place by a T shaped push pin with a small spring fitted to it.

The weird thing is, that the seat now works exactly as designed. From the quality of the piece of metal, I'd guess it is part of a latching mechanism, the plastic locating parts now broken. But try as I might, I can't get the seat to move back or forward even slightly, or slightly asymmetrically, without using the lever or the tilt handle.

So, I'm going to ignore it for now. If anyone has had one of these apart and can tell me what purpose it serves, that'd be great.

Thanks,

Mike

 

[gsmdo]

So, to answer my own question, this would appear to be the part of the mechanism that ensures the seat returns to its original position once you've let someone into the back seat. The seat now just travels all the way back, instead of stopping at its original position. The reason I didn't spot this earlier is that I invariably have the passenger seat fully back, so it isn't an issue...

[cliffcoggin]

Thanks for letting us know.