[whatsnewell]

Last January (2019) we visited Richard and Rhonda in Inverness, FL.  Richard had removed their Villa passenger chair from their Newell and had offered it free of charge to anyone who would come to their home to pick it up.  We accepted their offer sometime in 2018 knowing we would be in Florida in January of 2019.

We arrived at their home on January 4th, and on January 5th we began the removal of TLE's old, worn out Flexsteel captain's chair, and the installation of the Villa chair in its place.  In all it took about 5 hours beginning to end, and having Richard helping made that timeline possible....without him it would have taken me a couple of days.  He provided the Grade 8 bolts and washers, and gave me very good advice about the proper installation to avoid it ripping out of the floor in an accident, or very sudden panic stop.  The pictures below show the initial installation on January 5th, 2019.

   

   

The Villa chair had been sitting for about a year, and a couple of the power functions were not working properly.....the foot rest would only raise a few inches, and the reclining feature would only move an inch, or so.  We suspected the drive screws needed lubrication, but by that time the seat was installed, so it would be necessary to remove the back leather panel to access those items properly.  

Fast forward to March 18, 2020.....I had still not taken off that back leather panel, but finally decided to stop procrastinating.  As I began to remove the staples holding the bottom of the panel in place I began to realize why I had procrastinated......over the space of 24" I had to remove over 70 staples, and that took the better part of an hour.....

   

.....finally the underside of the Villa chair was exposed.  Next I had to identify which motors, and drive screws moved the footrest, and the reclining of the back of the seat.  The first picture below shows the drive screw controlling the footrest.....

   

.....and the second one below shows the drive screw controlling the reclining feature......

   

....I sprayed some penetrating oil on both drive screws on both sides of the drive motors, waited a few minutes, and them pushed the toggle switches to see if they would now work.....the footrest immediately began to rise, and the back of the seat began to recline.....both functions now work perfectly....

   

....lubing the drive screws was quite easy, it was just getting access that took so long.  We will reattach the leather back panel with Velcro.....no more staples, or tacks!

[Richard]

I suspect a lot of us are getting "someday" projects addressed these days.

[rundlc]

Thanks Clarke & Richard for this thread, I had to tackle this same issue on yesterday. My recliner is a vliia as well just a little different style, after much staple pulling I was able to get into the back and get things sprayed down, it would not work right away but I tapped on it with a hammer and let it soak overnight and presto this morning shes was back to reclining again.

On to the next project. A new headboard