While I had my seat out of the car I took a look at my broken recliner lever. Someone before me had snapped it off and they wanted more than 150 bucks for a new one. Instead I removed the plastic over it held on by 3 sheet metal screws and then disconnected the spring so that I could just use my fingers to disengage the mechanism to allow the seat back to move forward. It was beginning to be a real pain in the *** only being able to always put groceries in on the passengers side. You will also have to trim the plastic enough to get your fingers in. Someone had already done this before me.

When the spring was on it required a pair of needle nose vise grips and a screw driver to be able to move the broken lever but after the spring was disconnected it moved freely using only my fingers.

So if you're too cheap to buy a new one all you have to do is disconnect the spring and trim the plastic a little.

I suppose if you don't want to remove the seat to get at 2 of the 3 screws holding the plastic on you could just trim a little extra plastic off to allow you to get at the spring with some needle nose pliers. I only removed the forward part of the spring and left the back part hanging. I might have done this; but I already had my seat out to repair the forward sliding mechanism.