I posted a different question & back story in the C6 tech forum since I have C6 Z06 seats in my C5, but since this likely applies to C5 seats as well, I'd like to get the C5 opinions on this.

Floppy seats seem to be "normal". You can tilt the seat 4-10 inches without using the seat release lever in the back of the headrest. As I was taking my seat apart today, I see why there's so much play. There is a metal pin which sits in a "valley" in the seat hinge mechanism and prevents the seat from falling all the way down. When you pull on the seat release lever, this pin gets pulled up out of the valley, allowing the seat to tilt all the way forward. There's one of these on each side of the seat.

The metal pin's diameter is a lot smaller than the width of the "valley" (not sure what else to call it), giving it a lot of room to move back and forth before hitting the sides of the valley. That's what seems to allow the seats to flop around so much. Why did GM make the gap soooo much wider than the pin?

The engineer in me starts to think - what could I do to reduce the amount of slop in this valley? Why is it so wide in the first place. The fix seems simple, but there may be some gotchas.

The pic below is from the driver's seat, side closest to the door, showing the view from inside the seat looking out.

If we were to take a nylon nut which just slides over the pin, trim down the thickness to the same (or less) than the black metal part in the pic below, then shave down an edge such that when the release lever is pulled, the pin plus the nut clear the hump on the black metal part. The nut won't fall off and shouldn't interfere with the operation of the release mechanism. Maybe for good measure, epoxy the nut onto the pin so it won't rotate. (the pic below shows an unmodified nylon nut over the metal pin)

edit: the pin broke off the catch mechanism so you won't normally see this view. Lucky for me (not) this affords me a good angle to see what's going on.

 

I fixed my seat's "loose feeling" with the kits that are available from C&S Corvette parts.

 

I think the wide pin slot spacing was designed to allow the seat back to tilt forward some in case the seat is moved backward with the back reclined a lot. In the reclined position the seat back will hit the top of the carpeted back cross frame as the seat moves backward and the seat back will be pushed forward.

 

Do you have a link to the part for that? I saw a couple of kits that fixed the broken part on the end as well as new spacers that go around the trolley on the screw thread. One of the bigger kits has a blocky looking piece that looks as though it could slide into the valley, the description of the kit isn't very clear though.

 

My solution. I do not remember exactly what I did as the was a few years ago. We may have made the brass bushing or bought shoulder bushings. Used epoxy to hold things to the lift wire. The lift wire was very loose in its slot. The interface with the steel cog woud have still left slop. So we machined a fiberglass slot so that the brass bushings ride on the now wider slot in the shell. It works. Grown up seats now. Not gocart seats. George