I have a 2001 X5 3.0 with the standard power seats. On the driver's side, the seat will sporadically refuse to move front-back. All the other adjustments work just fine. When it stops working, it'll be anywhere from a day, a week, or a few months before it "decides" to work normally again.

Another random piece of information: often times I'll take my car to a car wash, and when I hop back in the car, the seat has been moved and the power seat works flawlessly. I'm not sure if they have some trick for getting it unstuck?

Any idea what could be causing this behavior? Alternatively, is there any way to manually adjust the seat when the power mechanism isn't working? (i.e. if a shorty is borrowing my car... or even worse if they were able to slide the seat way forward and now I can't get it to slide back.)