Both of my front seats are really hard to move slide back and forth, but the problem isn't the lever mechanism. A lot of the time I have to use a lot of force to get the seats moving, and sometimes they jam up a little and I have to use a bit more force to keep them moving.
I took both seats out today and gave the sliders a good cleaning, and greasing, but it's still quite hard to move them. The seats are quite heavy with lots of motors and crap in them so maybe that's part the problem, but it just seems to be really hard to get them moving initially. Certainly a lot different to my old car where I could just pull the lever and move the seat back and forth at will.
Is this normal for X-Types, or is there something screwed up with mine?
I did pull a lot of crap from underneath, from the previous owner. I'm about €7 richer, and I found pens biscuit crumbs, sweets, legos, and all sorts of things that survived several vacuums since I got the car. Could something have gotten jammed inside all 4 sliders (on both seats)?
When I took out the seats and moved the sliders individually with my hands it was still a bit of effort to move them, even after trying to clean them, but they're slightly better after the cleaning.
Any ideas? Tips?
Or any info on whether there's little wheels inside them? Or is it metal on metal? Etc..

 

Hi gijoe50000,
My 2005 has limited electrics in the seats, so the seat fore/aft position adjustment is manual leaver and a butt wriggle.
When I got mine the passengers side was locked solid and I discovered a hard lollie (prior owner's kids no doubt) had found its way into the rack.
After removal the sliders were not freely running, so I removed the seat completely (you'll need some large Torx drivers #40 if memory serves) and cleaned the rails and re greased with a lithium grease that I had in my cabinet.
There appeared to be nylon gliders that track along the rails, so I didn't get the sense of any metal on metal operation.
I removed the drivers side as well to clean and re-grease that the same way.

Got to say that both seats are now pretty smooth and take little effort to move since a bit of TLC was directed at them.

 

This sounds quite similar to my experience, and what I did. And yes, a "butt wiggle" is the norm, but for me it was more like a hand on the door pillar and legs planted on the floor and forcing the seat back.
Several things popped out from all sorts of places around the seats: popcorn, melted sweets, etc. But the stiffness in the rails definitely felt like something soft/melted/squishy got in there. But it was the same for all 4 rails so unlikely it was the same thing in all. It didn't feel "jammed" like there was a paper clip in there or anything, felt more like melted toffee sweets..
My driver's side is actually much better today after the cleaning (my method of lubricating was WD40 to free it up and then silicone grease to finish), but the passenger side is still a bit sticky I may have rushed that side a bit.
I'm thinking that the WD40 may have loosened up some stuff inside the rail overnight. Maybe it was years of biscuit crumbs and stuff mixing with the grease that was previously there or something.

I have the car about 6 months now, and it was one of those things I almost got used to, just assuming that this model of car just had "sticky seats" but it was just too "sticky" to be intentional from the factory. I think this might be a more common problem but people either get used to it and don't notice it, or buy a used car this way and never think twice about it. Or it could just be that a lot of cars have more "open" rails so it's not an issue.