'76 Midget seat functions

[Dennis Bagwell <dennis@page-campbell.com>]

Greetings,

Let me introduce myself as I have been lurking and learning for a few weeks now 
and I now have a question. My name is Dennis Bagwell and I bought/saved a '76 
Midget from destruction in March 1998.
It is a daily driver that was going to be sent to salvage because the owner 
didn't want to do any more work on it and his soon-to-be-licensed troubled 
teenage son might sneak out in it and do all sorts of terrible things. Anyway, 
I got it and have been slowly getting it running again. It still needs things 
like a new top, paint, more carb work, etc. but I just LOVE driving the little 
bugger.....never owned one so I'm probably gonna be asking some dumb and/or 
repetitive questions...But as I have learned in my short time of lurking, you 
guys (and gals) seem to be very patient with us LBC newbies.

Enough of that for now, on to the questions.
1) The seats have adjustable head rests (I assume) that will not budge for 
anything. One is all the way down, the other is halfway up, looks kind of wacky 
that way. Is there any trick that I'm missing to remove these from the 
seatbacks? I've tried penetrating spray and a hammer, as they seem to be rusted 
in place, to no avail. How can I get them out?
2) There is some sort of handle on the inboard side of the seatback. Is this a 
seatback recliner handle and if so, why won't the seat budge? The handle will 
move about half an inch but it doesn't seem to do anything? I'm thinking that 
maybe these seats are all rusted internally and the proper functions of these 
items can't be restored without completely dismantling the seats. Is my 
thinking correct?  Any way to get to these mechanisms without destroying the 
seat covers as they are alright?

Any ideas/experience with this would be greatly appreciated.

TIA 
Dennis Bagwell
'76 Midget






                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
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