Fixing Worn Seat Tracks

[garciapiano]

Ah, the terrible Mk3 seat track design has reared its ugly head again.

The car-side tracks on my driver side seat were worn down when I came into possession of my A3, with no plastic bushings present for what may have been many years. I replaced the slider bushings which gave me proper sliding functionality of the seat, but the seat tracks were compromised in such a way that wore through the paint and the metal, creating enough play for the seat to click extremely loudly when my weight shifts in the seat (this is especially bad when it's side to side motion.) This clicking has gotten somehow worse over time, to the point of being extremely annoying and impossible to ignore.

I know it's the "car" side of the track, because the noise stops when I slide the seat all the way forward (to where I would never sit in it) - my guess is the the more heavily used portion of the tracks just naturally opened up over time and hundreds of thousands of miles of wear.

In my research about this issue, believe it or not, VW used the exact same slider design in these cars as what they used for some of the later aircooled Beetles(!) and the basic design was not revised until the Mk4 platform. Beetles had replaceable tracks (spot welded into the floor pan), and while it appears the same holds true for the Mk3s, I don't believe the tracks are available anywhere separately for the A3 / Mk3 platform. Either way I'm not trying to replace the entire track, even though that is likely the correct fix.

Like I said, I have tried new genuine bushings and new grease but to no avail.

I can think of a couple of different options:

1. Shim the track somehow with a thin piece of metal
2. Hammer the seat track down to be tighter (unlikely to be successful in my opinion, plus potential permanent damage to the floor pan if unsuccessful)
3. Install VW OEM seats from a later model with custom mounts (this may make the most sense, but I'm not a fabricator and it's somewhat uncharted territory, may require drilling the floor pan, which I'd prefer not to do)
4. Install aftermarket seat mounts and aftermarket reclining seats

I'm not really trying to go to bucket seats with the daily driver... But those Recaros are nice! Mostly, I do not want to buy a $$$ set of seats for my beat up old mk3, it's just not nice enough. It looks like Wedge Brackets does make a direct fit bracket for Mk3s that has the proper interface for Recaros.

Has anyone dealt with this issue before? I'm guessing that since the B4 has the same slider design, they too may have been unlucky enough to encounter worn seat tracks. Open to suggestions.

 

[garciapiano]

Well, it looks like I figured out the fix to my problem. The answer is to use a hammer to "massage" the track to be a bit tighter where it has worn down.

Hammering the metal may sound scary, but it is caveman simple and actually pretty hard to mess up. If you happen to run into this issue, here is the fix:

1. Before you go hammering away at the body of your car, make sure your seat bushings are not actually just worn out. They wear out faster than you'd think. If the bushings are brand new (don't use anything but the genuine VW seat bushings) the track is greased and they're still making noise in one specific part of the track, you probably have a worn seat track. I found my left side driver bushing to be worn at 60,000 miles. Your mileage may vary. If the track is so worn that new bushings are just shifting around, I don't know if this will fix it. You very well may be hosed. But it's probably still worth giving it a shot.
2. Make sure it's actually a worn track. Find the "center" of the worn area by determining the fore-aft seat position where the seat bushing clicks the loudest. I figured out that I could replicate the click by shifting my weight side to side in the seat. This varied by the position of the seat - all the way forward didn't make any noise, but pushed back to where I sit the most, it clicked and creaked the loudest. Thus, the loudness of the click will most likely correspond to the fore-aft position where you position the seat most often. Again, if you find that it makes more noise in one fore-aft position than another, it is more than likely worn tracks.
3. Use a helper to shift their weight around in the seat while you pinpoint which bushing is clicking - It can either be the left or right side bushing. Sounds can reverberate throughout a car body and it's not always clear exactly where the noise is originating from. You can use your hand to feel for vibrations as to where the click or creak is loudest. It very may well not be the bushing or the track. The telltale sound for me was the hollow sound that felt like it was coming up through the B-pillar. In my case, it was the left hand bushing of the driver's seat that was clicking.
4. Push the seat forward out of the way, making note of where the bushing was sitting in the seat track at the most "worn area." You can eyeball it or mark it with something suitable like a piece of tape.
5. Get a 2 lb or so rubber mallet, or a hammer and a large, soft blunt punch or dowel. Do NOT use a hard metal chisel or something that would dent the metal. I personally used a rubber mallet handle's wooden end as a punch, and hit the rubber end with another standard hammer - this was because the seat belt lower tab interfered with getting clearance for the hammer to hit the track easily.
6. Hammer the portion of the track that you've identified straight down towards the ground. Don't go nuts. You're looking gently massage the metal a fraction of a millimeter, so don't dent the metal, obviously. Just give it a few well-placed wallops. It's not going to visibly make the track look different... and that's OK. It's a lot harder to bend these tracks than you'd think, but again, don't go nuts.
7. Hammer the top outer part of the track sideways/inwards so that it will hug the bushing just a touch more. I used the rubber mallet here, which marked up the track a bit, but it's covered in carpet and nobody is going to see it.
8. Move the seat back, sit down and try to replicate the sound. Go a little bit at a time - hammer, test, hammer, test.
9. If the click appears to have gotten quieter, congrats, you just need to hammer a bit more. If the sound is gone completely, nice work, you nailed it. If it still is clicking and you've kept on hammering with no change in the noise... it might be something else and not the track. If you find that your seat now does not go back to where it should, you probably went way too hard with the hammer and you're hosed. Hopefully you didn't do that.

Honestly, I've only done this repair once but it worked. The same will apply to many Volkswagens that came previous to the Mk3 generation. These were the last VWs to have this sort of seat slider mechanism and, while it may have worked for over 25 years, it was a flawed design that I'm glad VW remedied in the Mk4 and later generations. May you have many miles of creak-free driving!

 

[ToddA1]

I didn’t read all of that, but I don’t believe a properly maintained car will have worn seat tracks at 60k miles. Being sure you don’t have metal on metal contact is a huge deal, here.

I’m driving 40+ year old Rabbits, without this issue. Rotbox was falling apart, but the seats slid like buttah…

-Todd