Supporting the electric seat controls

[ScarbSaab]

My time spent fixing the housing for the driver's seat controls has been undone. My wife came back from work yesterday and said she must have broken it originally. The tale was she got out of the car at work and with her short legs and hip operation she had to slide off the seat to reach the ground, and heard a crack from the plastic. The controls now flap about again...

I'm not hopeful of a solution, but does anyone have ideas for how I could fix the seat controls so they can cope with a grown woman sliding over them?

[sgould]

they all seem to break.  I have given up and just leave the panel lying there.  But I do have the memory driver's seat, so I only have to reach the buttons on top, normally.  I had been thinking of removing the switches from the panel and mounting them separately, somewhere. But I haven't thought it through in detail.

[ScarbSaab]

Thank you for the response. I have been bouncing some ideas around, but rejected most of them as potentially hazards in the event of an accident. I'm still thinking about lowering the controls - so out of the firing line - but need to work through the details.

[David]

Assuming this is a 9-5, I had the same problem.
So I removed the part, glued it back together then applied some GRP reinforcement to the back side, which causes it to flex, but not snap. HTH

[sgould]

It's posted in the 9-5 section!

I wondered if I could fix it with some rubber tube over the break, so it flexes.  The issue is that the seat compresses below the top of the plastic trim when you sit on the side of the seat when getting in and out.  And with a slightly lowered car, I drop onto the seat a bit harder than I wold in a standard car.

[carrera]

I think going for the bendy willow approach will be better than the make rigid approach, so it can snap again.

I suggest using just two fixing points

1. The rear one
2. The front one under the seat

You may use the plastic sleeve onto the metal plate as well, if the plastic has not already failed

Use an oversize washer to spread the load around the plastic at the front (or replace the missing plastic). You should find that you can get enough clamping force to keep the cover in place, but that it will deflect enough when shuffled over 

[ScarbSaab]

I was trying to stop the bendy willow as it bugs me.

I have it fastened on the rear rigid point and underneath the front (penny washer is a good idea, carrera!). I had also drilled through the reinforced plastic to add a tie wrap over the metal plate. (The top of the slot snapped long ago.) With this it doesn't as flop much as pre-repair.