[Giri]

So guys, If you're here chances are you're sick and tired of your seats no reclining normally. I know I have.

These instructions and pictures are for a 2016 Camaro Base Model but may apply to others. Do at your own risk, I will not be responsible for any stupidity or damages that may occur.

I drive 1-2000 miles every month for work. At times I spend up to 10 hours a day in my car. I need to take naps at times.

My choices so far have been:
1- Sit awake with head leaned against window.
2- Rest head on steering wheel
3- Awkwardly half lay in the back with legs up on roof

All suck. A long time ago I read this thread on this forum about fixing the recline by drilling the stops out, but I've been scared of doing it. The task of taking the seats out has scared me for months.

So today I decided to do it. Throw away my fears and do it.

First of all let's make my technical know how clear - I am comfortable changing my oil, and have even changed the serpentine belt on an old car. That's it. I'm not very mechanically oriented.

I'll add pictures that aren't hosted on photo bucket so you guys can see exactly what I did.

Steps, with notes that I thought were important to bring up.

1- Take out the one screw that is behind each rail that the seat slides on. It is a large TORX bit - I didn't have one this large and had to go to Advance Auto Parts to pick it up. Don't go trying to pop the metal tabs that look like they could have screws under them. I spent way too long looking for the screws until I realized it was literally the ONE torx head screw at the end of each rail.


2- Pick up the seat from the back side and gently gently slide it out towards the back. The seat has a hook at the front which keeps it connected to the frame, and has a screw it sort of mounts to in the middle. This is why you MUST lift at the back and slide towards the back of the car. At this point you also want to unplug the harness.

3- Twist the seat out of the car. Not particularly heavy but make sure you don't scratch anything.

4- Sit the seat down on the CLEAN ground next to the car - MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT TWIST THE SEATBELT AROUND - what I did is I just sat the seat down as if it was in the car, without turning it around, on the ground.


5- Remove the small torx head screws that hold the plastic trim on the seat on. There are two screws on the small trim piece, and one screw on the large trim piece which also holds the seat controls. I didn't have to remove the hole trim piece that holds the controls, only the back part of it.

6- Gently slide the trim pieces off. No clips to break thank god. Keep track of your screws and where they go.

7- There is a small cloth piece that covers your seat corners. This is held by a rubberized tension nylon thing to a hook on the seat. Unhook this now but make sure you take a picture of it so you know where to put it back.

8- Unzip the seat cover to make room. You're looking for the small metal tab that's hidden in the seam of the seat cover. Hard to find, and even harder to pull. I needed to use a screwdriver head stuck in the hole of the zipper just to move it up and down.


9- Carefully inspect your drilling location. You're drilling the area that's towards the BACK of the seat as seen in the pictures. You can tell that you're doing the correct one as this stop is covered by a non-perfect metal weld. The things around it have a perfect metal rivet.


10- Get your drill and metal piecing bit ready. (I used a black and decker 20V battery powered drill - in retrospect VERY underpowered)

11- Drill a hole dead center in the stopper area.


11a- If you screw up like I did and drilled slightly off center, you probably won't pop the stopper out with the drill bit. I had to take a flathead screwdriver and physically manipulate the stopper AFTER I had drilled half of it out - at this point I had access to atlas one side of the stopper.
The stopper is made of a VERY SOFT METAL and is easy to manipulate once you actually reach it.

That's it. To reassemble follow the directions backwards.

MAKE SURE YOUR SEATBELT IS STRAIGHT AT THIS POINT. If you turned the seat around you're going to want to turn in around in the opposite direction to make sure everything looks good.

Remember there's one stopper on each side, so 4 total.

I might have made this sound very complicated, but trust me it was not. The worst part of it all was not doing it in the shade. and using an underpowered drill.

Now have fun. And if you have any questions let me know here.

Look at all this legroom:

PS- Should we sticky this?

[RedonBlackRS]

HELL YES!!! Thank you!

[gosutag]

Go pick up your damn packages already!

[KirkH]

My wife will be so happy when I do this! Thanks!

[Giri]

Of course, makes the car so much better for rest time.

[cmeJATT]

Thank you for the info

[TigerCamaro]

Was anything done to prevent all those metal shavings from going all over the place in the seat mechanism

[Giri]

Definitely should have done, yes.

I may be a VERY lazy person lol... Hindsight

[Zophix]

So is the passenger seat-back loose now? Does the seat still have power functionality?

[Giri]

it works just like it used to, with the power moving working fully! Still folds up the way it's supposed to as well. Really the only difference is that it actually reclines now

[davidbolt]

Best mod ever

[protovack]

Did this today.
It's kind of strange because you can't see what you're drilling. It's like, just....drill down until you hit some "soft metal" and then stop? What could be more vague?
But it totally works! So funny because I don't know what I even did, really.

[CH.CRAFT]

I DRILLED THE STOPS OUT ON MY 2017 BASE MODEL TODAY. THANKS TO Giri I DON’T HAVE TO SELL IT. WHEN I BOUGHT MY CAMARO ON 6-7-18 I DID NOT THINK TO CHECK THE SEAT RECLINE, ( I ASSUMED, AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS) THINKING THAT THE SEATS WOULD RECLINE LIKE MY 2011 SILVERADO. I HAVE LOWER BACK PROBLEMS AND BEING ABLE TO RECLINE BACK HELPS GET THE WEIGHT OFF OF MY LOWER SPINE. THIS IS ONE OF THE STUPIDEST THINGS I HAVE SEEN GM DO PUTTING THESE EXTRA STOPS IN THIS SEAT. WHEN I STARTED RESEARCHING THE GEN 6 I FOUND THIS FORUM AND FORTUNATELY RIGHT AFTER I PURCHASED MY CAMARO I FOUND THIS MOD, AND IF THIS MOD WERE NOT AVAILABLE I COULD NOT STAND TO DRIVE IT. IT APPEARS THAT GM ADDED THIS EXTRA STOP BECAUSE RIGHT BESIDE IT APPEARS TO BE ANOTHER STOP WELDED THE SAME WAY WHICH WOULD STOP THE BACK FROM RECLINING BUT FURTHER BACK. IT WAS A PAIN IN THE BUTT WORKING IN A 96* SHOP BUT WILL BE VERY WORTH WHILE IMPROVEMENT.
IF YOU ARE NOT SATISFIED WITH THE LIMITATIONS ON THE RECLINE ON YOUR SEAT DO NOT HESITATE TO DO THIS MOD, YOUR BACK WILL THANK YOU FOR IT.

[Whitespeed]

Disconnecting the seatbelt is pretty easy and means you can work on the seat anywhere. All you have to do is pop off the plastic cover and remove one torx/hex bolt. To get the cover off, insert something thin and wide like a gasket scraper (a screwdriver may just gouge the plastic) into one side and pry from the top out (just the top), then do the same to the other side, and you should be able to simply pull the cover the rest of the way off from there.

Also, one thing I didn't see mention of is that it's generally considered good practice to disconnect the battery before disconnecting the seat connector because of the air bags in the seats. But make sure you have the seat in a position where you can disconnect the connector, because you obviously won't be able to move it after the battery is disconnected.

Here's a picture with the cover and seat belt removed (bolt screwed part way back in to keep from loosing it)