The seat back in my 04 S-Type has always been set back horizontally about 3 inches further than it should be. This leaves an obvious gap at the bottom where the back and seat bottom meet. I decided to pull the seat today having had no luck repairing it in the car. After dismantling the seat back from the bottom I can see there are a couple of brackets on either side that allow the seat back to be moved back as I mentioned. They appear to be spring loaded but in the fully back position I am unable to restore the brackets to the forward position. I tried a search but may be using the wrong buzz words. Any thoughts. I'll try to snap a couple of pics.

 

Here's a link to a picture of the bracket taken looking at the right side bracket. You can see that the bracket is about half way to the home position but for some reason I cannot coax it all the way. http://www3.telus.net/public/a5a40043/DSC01872.JPG
There is a spring on the inside of this bracket that cannot be seated until the bracket sits in it's home position. Looks like internal cams in the bracket are binding against eachother preventing me from restoring the position. An obvious question on my part would be what is this part and why was it "sprung" away from home position?

 

Well sort of solved. More like discovered. Appears Jag/Ford, like so many car manufacturers have introduced some overkill into their safety systems. This bracket has a shock absorbing expendable link in it that folds up like a pretzel if the car is struck from the rear, which this one was before I bought it. I guess the idea is that your are supposed to buy new brackets for it. Not sure how they would go in but I really don't care for such a safety item and will jury rig the thing to go back in without the "pretzel" links.

 

WTG on the discovery. I was going to tell you that this evening I would have removed Joyces seat and poked around to see what I could find. Out of curiosity are you going to price out the new "pretzel" links atleast?

 

No I just straightened out the ones that were in there and then reassembled the bracket with a securing bolt in each to prevent collapse in the future. I don't think the "pretzel" links are the replaceable item here. Everything I could see on this bracket was secured by riveted pins so I suspect bracket can be removed further up in the seat back but I did not go that far. This 04 just has to go the rest of it's life without collapsing seat backs, which is quite OK by me.