Toyota Jidosha Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha

Shiroki Kinzoku

Hideyuki Ooshiro

Masakazu Chiba

A seat reclining mechanism, for example for vehicle seats, is of the kind having first and second arms for attachment to portions of a seat. Each arm has a respective internal gear secured to it, and the gears are coaxial and the arms can rotate mutually about a pivot. An external gear is slidable axially on the pivot for movement into engagement with one or the other or both of the internal gears to lock them together. The improvement of the invention is an arrangement for shifting the external gear axially into and out of engagement with the internal gears. The arrangement has a plurality of operation elements secured on and extending axially from the external gear, and an axially acting cam engaging the operation elements for shifting them and the external gear axially of the pivot. The cam may be a rotary cam or a linearly slidable cam.

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Toyota, Japan

Hideyuki Ooshiro