Stuck Seat

[Thomas Steele]

Please don't ever cross-post in several subforums. It's very annoying and you are not likely to receive more or better answers. Good luck with the seat though

Didn't mean to annoy you, which is why I apologized at the beginning. I'm not sure who else was annoyed or why it was annoying, but I needed an answer and I got different answers on different subforums. Although that's not an excuse, it actually helped me solve the problem.

 

Regardless, I will not cross-post again and I do not advocate it. But I also realize different people inhabit different subforums.

[Thomas Steele]

I want to thank everyone for all the suggestions and I want to officially apologize for anyone I annoyed by crossposting. As it turns out, I received different responses on each of the subforums, so it really did help me.

 

Here is what I finally did to resolve the problem, as well as all the things that did not resolve the problem.

 

1) I greased the latch release lock and key. This did nothing.

2) I pushed, pounded, and abused the seat while holding the lock open - with the kind assistance of the lovely wife. Nothing.

3) Same as above while wiggling and prying the seat. Nope.

4) I disassembled the lock mechanism and pulled on the cable with pliers to release the latch. This had the same result as above.

5) I removed the rear fender assembly to access the latch mechanism but was unable to budge the latch.

6) I swore and kicked at the bike, but I really had little hope in this one working.

7) Finally, I pried up the seat enough to see, with the aid of a flashlight and my son's strong muscles, the latch mechanism. It sits high in the rear and you can see the cable end from peering through the lefthand side. I took a long screwdriver and pushed the cable end toward the latcha dn was able to free the latch. This was the solution that finally worked.

 

After gaining access, I switched the latch return spring with the fast-idle return spring (which was suggested many times here) and added a zip tie to the end of the cable between the cable end cap and the latch mechanism. This takes up the slack in the cable. My guess is that the cable had worked its way loose out the the forked end of the latch mechanism, so all I was doing with the key was moving the cable in the housing. The cable must have been loose (I can't verify that because I may have pushed it loose with the screwdriver). I also closed up the forks a little so the cable could not work itself loose again.

 

Once again, thank you for all the suggestions and help and forgive me for the crosspost.