jlucas

While I had my seats out and apart for refinishing, I noted the rail stop (996 521 603 00) at the back of rail (#17 in the picture below). It looked to me that there was more travel available.

So I looked in the part listing and evidently this part is only applied on option M553 cars which is USA & Canada destination cars.

Anyone in the USA that has removed them? does the bolt become the next stopping point? Looks like you'd gain about an inch of travel. Probably would be appreciated by a lot of passengers and some very tall drivers.
#16 (986 521 643 00) would probably be needed instead for proper load distribution in the event of a crash

fpb111

jlucas

Frank, what stops your rail movement now? Did you just flip the piece 180 deg or replace with the non USA piece to maintain the load distribution on the rail (for crash)?

I was surprise to not be able to find any prior discussion about this. Seems like a easy modification.

fpb111

jlucas

I took it out of my passenger seat (2003 MY) and measured no difference in travel. It did not appear that the tab on this part was actually contacting anything in the seat rail mechanism. I even looked into the seat rail with a scope and did not find what was limiting travel. I ran out of time to investigate further.

fpb111

#17 definitely stopped mine on the sport seats. Before I removed them with the back of the seat all of the way down the seats would stop before the rail hit the rug. After it makes a pretty good dent in the rug. YMMV