It's not a junkyard, it's a FUNYARD!

Yet another in an ever-growing chronicle of junkyard visits!

Anyway, I just had to go back and get those lovely blue rear seat headrests I had seen on my last visit. BUT FIRST, I had to figure out ahead of time how they come out, because I didn't want to get there and not have the right tool.

So, off first to my shop manuals.

Nothing. Not a blessed thing.

The factory manuals I have don't have the section about interiors, and the cheapo Haynes book says nothing about them. ON TO THE INTERNETS, where I found out that headrest removal is absolutely no different from any other topic of a technical nature, in that it seems the guys who are most willing to share their expertise are also the ones in most dire need of basic writing skills. Or skylz. It would be nice to just have a simple set of clear instructions.

I did find one obscure post that kinda had the information I was looking for, and it mentioned that there were 10mm nuts holding things together (somewhere) and that it needed two people--one inside to pull the rests upward, and someone in the trunk to release some sorts of clips. Hmm. Obviously, I am only one person. (Despite all the voices in my head.) This might take some ingenuity. Or stupidity.

Anyway, I began planning my raid on Wednesday night, when I got out my trusty 10mm combination wrench and a couple of pairs of Vise Grips. My plan being to use those as my extra set of hands to hold the clips in, while I was inside the junker pulling up on the headrests. I laid the tools in an inconspicuous place (i.e.--in plain sight, being that the garage is a mess) so that I could retrieve them yesterday morning without raising the suspicions of a certain wife of mine, who is not too keen on my ever-increasing forays to the wrecking yard.

Oh, and clothes. This one would require I have better clothes to wear, so before bed I bundled together my jeans and a tee shirt and my shoes, the reasoning being that I could bring them with me to work and change in the restroom before I left. After I got through, I would go home and drop my stuff off, clean up, then change back into my regular clothes for the dental visit.

You know, it's very complicated being a moron. Made more complicated just by the fact that I'm a moron.

ANYway, bailed out yesterday, grabbed my jeans from the office chair--I figured I could put on the tee-shirt and shoes later--changed in the restroom and headed off for the bad part of town.

Stuck my tools in my pocket, walked in, paid my buck, and sprinted to the lovely foreign car ghetto to see what I was in for. Remember, I had only briefly looked at the mounting beforehand the last time I was there, and had no pictures or anything else to study before I got there, so this was going to be an on-the-fly learning experience.

Okay, there it is. An '87, blue, hit hard on the front, and there are my headrests.

Okay.

There they are.

Yep, that's them.

I looked at the mounting brackets in the trunk. Hmm. Hard to see what sorts of release clips they were talking about. And hard to reach, too. Seeing as how they have everything up high on stacked rims, I couldn't reach the brackets at all. Gee, I wonder if I'll have to get IN there!? It was like a swamp, with both spare tire wells full of water. Eww. The thought also flashed through my mind of me, in the trunk, and a sudden gust of wind slamming it, trapping me forever. ::shudder::

Surely there's a better way to do this.

I hope.

And I still hadn't seen any sorts of 10mm nuts anywhere. Back around to the back seat. Maybe if I took the seatback off? The bottom cushion had already been undone and rolled forward, so I looked for something to undo the back cushion.

IMPORTANT INSTRUCTION NUMBER ONE--There are two sheetmetal tabs that form hooks down at the bottom corners of the back cushion. These hold two loops attached to the cushion itself that keep the seatback in place. Bend the sheetmetal tabs up, pull the bottom cushion forward until the loops clear the tabs, and then pull the seatback up hard. It might take a couple of bumps with your hand, but what happens is when you lift up, you are unhooking the clips at the top of the seat cushion from the sheetmetal. After you do that, the seatback will come right out.

It's surpisingly light. And bulky. I leaned it up against the fender and AH-HAH!

IMPORTANT INSTRUCTION NUMBER TWO--Those 10mm nuts? They hide behind the rear seatback. There is no other way to get the brackets off without taking the seatback out and getting to those nuts. Thankfully, they ARE 10mm. I would have been in bad shape if they were 11s or 12s.

I spun them off easily and both headrests were soon flopping on the package shelf. Now then--how do they come out?! Each one is supported by two metal rods that go down into the mounting brackets, and the mounting brackets were still attached and the mounting brackets were too big to come up through the holds where the metal rods went through. If I could just reach through to the trunk, but there was a piece of hardboard material (like the stuff they used to put on the back of TVs) blocking it off. Gee, if that was just out of the way...

WHAT AM I THINKING!? It's a junk car--I can just break that stuff out of the way! So I did. It snapped and buckled and pretty soon I had a nice big area to work with. I reached through and grabbed one of the mounting brackets, still attached to the metal headrest rod, and sorta pulled on it. Pop. Right into my hand.

SWEET!

I finally got to study it up close to see what the deal was with the clip.

IMPORTANT INSTRUCTION NUMBER THREE--these are NOT the kind of clips that PUSH IN. The Vise Grips I had still banging around in my pockets would have been useless, because the clips, which look a bit like the shirt clip of a pen and are made of white nylon (that can break off, by the way), have to be pulled out slightly to clear the notch in the metal rod. If needed, I would have had to put a flat piece of metal like a screwdriver under them to hold them up to remove the rests.

AS IT WAS, they all just came right off. With the brackets loose from the car, they would rotate around the headrest rod, so I just turned the brackets to the side of the rod without the notch, and they slid off with no problem. Two of the clips had already had the little lift tabs broken (again, the nylon they're made out of is fragile) but the clip action itself is unharmed.

SUCCESS!

I proudly gathered up my toys and started to leave. But--but--I wonder if there's anything ELSE I could find?

So, more plundering. I went down the rows and found a few of the round plastic discs that hold the carpet in place, and some instrument panel light bulbs, and two tiny windshield washer valves from a couple of different 740s (these keep the washer fluid from draining back to the jug), and HEY! LOOK!

SWANKY!

I found a nice (relatively speaking--it was nice when it was new) wagon that had the elusive factory accessory armrest in it! Of course, I didn't have the right sized wrench to get it out (I suppose I could have used the Vise Grips if I had remembered they were clanking in my pocket). No matter--I hadn't brought my screwdriver, either. Next trip.

Paid the princely sum of ten entire dollars for my goods and hurried out to the car, because it was now nearly 3:15, and I had to get home, unload, clean up, get re-dressed, and get to the Money-Sucking Pain-Inflictor--i.e., my dentist.

(Crossposted in extended form over on Possumblog.)