456 Rear Shelf Removal

The rear shelf on the 456 I bought has significant shrinkage, way beyond salvageable. I looked at the parts book to see what it might take to remove it. Has anyone done this and can you walk me through it? It appears to me that essentially the entire rear seat assembly needs to come out to get at the shelf(?)

Thanks for any help.
Alberto

 

Thank you. I looked again and it looks like you start by removing the bolts holding the lower portion of the seat. The bolts are at the bottom of the cushion, with the bolts directly in the front portion. Looks like you take those two bolts out and the bottom cushion comes out. From there I assume you would find the back rest bolts and so on.

Do you remember if the head rests (both) come out as one piece with the rear part they are attached to that crosses the entire width of the back seat, or do they have to be taken apart separately?

Thanks again.
Alberto

 

Thanks, that's were I started. Just wanted to see if someone had first hand experience that they could share.

 

Thank you very much. This is helpful.

Alberto

 

Well, I removed the rear shelf. Indeed the method is to remove the bolts under the front of the rear seats behind the carpet. Then, continue to remove bolts and screws until you get all of the horizontal pieces off. The only tricky part is that the middle section that holds the third brake light has a very long screw in front of the light that needs to be removed. Also, you need to remove the tweeter speaker covers, as there is another screw that holds each of the rear shelves. Other than this, not very difficult. It all comes apart with a 10 mm ratchet, 10 mm box end wrench and a phillips head screw driver. Oh, and a 17 mm (I think) socket to remove the bottom bolt holding the seat belt. I will be taking the two pieces to a local leather guy to recover.

I took a look at the front dash, since it too exhibits some shrinkage. That does not seem very straight forward.

Alberto