After searching the internet for this topic and coming up empty handed, I wound up having to figure it all out on my own. I am posting this topic hoping that it will be indexed by the search engines and one day it might help someone in the same situation.

My flying Spur has the rear center console option. There is a button at the top of the fold down armrest that you push, and the built in gas shocks push the armrest forward and down from the vertical position to the horizontal position. While looking for my Spur, I found two other center console cars that, like mine, had a lazy shock set that would not kick the armrest forward. The only way the deploy the armrest was to push the button in and grip the lower edge of the button cutout with your fingertips pulling it forward and down. That annoyed the **** out of me. There is only one other thing that annoys the **** out of me more, and that is the overpriced rates at the Bentley stealerships, so I whipped out my handy dandy flashlight and started to poke around the rear seat assembly.

I found that this fix was very straight forward and cheap. If you grab the inner bolster of either rear seat back and compress it towards the closest door, you will see a small 5" shock connected to a metal pin at each end. As you operate the armrest, you will see that this pair of shocks extend and retract with the movement of the armrest. There is a small E-Clip locking the eye of each end of the shock to the metal pins connected to the armrest assembly. Remove each E-clip, and the shock will slide off of the metal pins. I called Bentley Atlanta and they had both of these shocks in stock. They were about $70 each (ridiculous seeing as I am a big cheapass and think they should be about $10) plus shipping. Pop the new shock on and slide the E-clips back on securing the shock eyes to the metal pins.

I have to warn you that the little E-clips are a ***** to get off and on without dropping them. Don't worry if you accidentally drop one. There is hope for you. Adjust the rear seat all the way forward. This will expose two 13mm nuts under each seat. Once these nuts are removed the front of the seat can be pulled upwards. The rear of the seat is secured to the sliding seat frame with a hook system. To unhook the rear of the seat you have to push it downwards, rearwards, and then upwards. There is a small wiring harness that has to be unplugged (seat heater, butt detector) and there is a loop that wraps around the female seat belt receiver. Once the seat bottom is out of the car, you can drop the E-clip 42 times like I did before getting it to clip on properly and all you will need is a small shop magnet to retrieve it from behind the seat back.

Put everything back together in reverse order and thank the stars in the sky that I took the time to write all of this crap. That is all carry on. Tip your waitress. I will not be here all week.

 

Thx Gary, and yes small pins can be trying.

 

I like the part where you call yourself a "cheap ***" as you work on your car with $200k+ sticker price! Lol

I know what you mean though, I am really handy and used to install car alarms and stereo in my driveway while I was in college for beer money, so nothing burns me more than getting charged stealership rates for something I found out later I could have done myself blindfolded.

 

Thank you for the post!

I have exactly this problem with my 07' Spur. Dealer kindly charged me $60 just to tell me they would have to completely remove the seats to repair this, so I declined. Had both shocks out in 15 minutes.

 

As a former handyman I couldn't agree more. But the problem I'm finding these days is that stuff is getting so complex that the fixin' is just the tip of the iceberg. Looking up the details and figuring it all out takes much longer.

I now don't regret one penny of the money I give to dealers/tradesmen to get my stuff done. After all, if my time-opportunity cost is worth $1000 an hour, almost anything is cheaper for someone else to fix for me.

Just ask me how I learned this (a trail of half-fixed stuff and wasted days!)