After 8 weeks and 2500miles, I have no real problems and just love my MINI. However there is a strange issue with the passenger seat.
When I have someone in the rear seat and they depress the "Press" button to release the seat, the seat leans forward but does not shift forward. All of the adjustments work fine to position the seat, height and tilt, it just does not seem to release properly. The driver seats works fine, and returns to its "memorized" location when pushed back. I looked under the passenger seat to see if anything appeared broken, a rock in the mechanism, etc... but I could not see anything obvious.

Has anyone else had a problem like this? Any hints on what to look for?

It's hard to justify a trip to the dealer for something this small, but my son ends up "trapped" until someone slides the seat forward.

 

I had mine where the seat back latched and you could not adjust it at all. Have you reset the seat? I had to do that and it worked like a charm. I will look for the exact instructions on how to do it again and will post them if I can find otherwise someone else out there might be able to tell ya. It has to do with putting your knees in the seat sitting backwards....put your shoulder against the seat back and pushing both levers (on right and left of seat) straight back and hitting the seat back hard. Don't quote me on that but when I did it I heard a pop and the seat reclined all the way back but now it works perfectly again.

 

I am not sure I did exactly what you were describing, but I have tried various combinations of both sliding it to either extreme with a little thud, as well as pressing the "press" button and trying to push it forward quickly etc... to try to unstick it, with no luck. My seat does recline fine and so your exact case may not be mine. Thanks, and if you can easily find more details about "resetting" the seat that is interesting.

 

I have seen a couple of cars that the seats were not functioning right. They were told by their dealers.( one in GA the other in MO ) that the seats can get out of syncro if moved a lot. Dealer can readjust thru warranty.

 

Not too minor to justify a trip to the dealer... consider it as a safety issue: someone could get trapped in the back in an accident.

 

Skip - I hadn't thought of that. I think you a have a point there.

 

I know this post is old as hell, but I just experienced it and I have a fix.

The issue is that there is a cable that goes from a small tab on the inboard side of the seat back down to a spring loaded mechanism on the inboard seat rail. That mechanism has the "memory" for the seat slide position, and is separate from the "recline" lever. Both ends of the cable have a crimp end fitting, and one of the ends breaks off.

You cannot buy the cable separately, so the fix is to buy a new rail assembly from the dealer ($500+).

Or you goto a junkyard and buy a seat for $35, like I did.

The rails and spring loaded thing the cable connects to are specific to driver and passenger side.

The cable is not specific. The one in the picture is from the drive side, and I will be putting it in my pass side seat.

You need a T40 to unbolt the seat and a 1/4 drive T30 to unbolt the ratchet mechanism from the rail. You have to fish the cable out of the ratchet, it's a bit of a puzzle, but it works and saves $$.

The ratchet is circled in the picture below.


The actual cable I just removed from the donor seat: