What is the point of locking the catch for the rear backrests? In the locked position, they disable the catches on the rear seats and prevents you from folding the seats down.
When I bought the car, one seat would fold down, but the other wouldn't. I thought the catch of the locked one was broken and I would need to remove the seat to fix the mechanism. Luckily, I discovered the page in the manual explaining the Through-loading system. Turned out, one seat was in the locked position and the other was unlocked.

 

So you can lock up something in the trunk when you leave the top down.

 

Thank you. Makes sense now that you need your key for this feature.

 

rkw has it.

yea , I have it on my R52 , it was to prevent anyone from getting into the trunk with the top down. One of the quirks of the r52.

 

Good to know..... I have what might be considered a similar problem but after checking this lock you speak of, my issue is not that. One seat "goes down" easily.... the passenger side rear seat, not so much. If I push hard from the frt. side towards the rear it will release [sometimes] when I pull the release. But it's difficult every time,...for sure. I was wondering if anyone knows of an adjustment to make it easier to release the seat so it folds down.
Thx

 

Lock need greased and so do the pivot points on the back seat. Put the seats flat and you will see the mount in the middle, and spray the lock on the top latch with oil.

 

Just want to throw out a big thank you to @bootZilla! I have I have a 2008 justa, and it just started developing a fuel smell. After looking at a bunch of other similar articles I read this, made a quick inspection, and confirmed that this is the exact same problem I had. I looked up the fuel line replacement part and was shocked at the price. Pretty much everywhere I looked it was about $120 to $130 or more. After realizing that this was not a high pressure line I decided to cut out the perforated section of the line and reconnect the two ends with a barbed fitting and two hose clamps

. just took it for a ride and everything seems to work perfectly fine.