I had planned a trip to the local dump community recycling facility this weekend, to dispose of some accumulated bulky junk from the garden (mainly various bits of trees, and bits of old fence).  Found the tarp - not too grubby, to my relief - and set about removing the rear seats from the Yeti.  The nearside and centre seats came out no problem but the offside one completely refused to budge, no matter how hard I hauled on the handle.  It was a bit weird, actually: I'm so used to just pulling on the handle and tipping the seat forward, finding that the seat wouldn't move at all was a bit of a "WTF? Does not compute!" moment.

 

Looking at the mechanism on the underside of the nearside seat, it doesn't look as if the handle actually does very much, though I assume it must lock the rear of the seat down sufficiently firmly to stop the seat tipping forward when in use.  Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any easy way to get at the mechanism at the rear of the stuck seat to try finagling things - plus access is pretty restricted back there anyway (I have the spare wheel and so a raised boot floor).

 

Has anyone encountered a similar problem on their Yeti and managed to solve it?  Any helpful suggestions would be very welcome!

 

(In case you were wondering: I ended up putting the other seats back and loading two Ikea bags full of rubbish on the rear seats, with the rest on the tarp in the boot.  Good job 'leather' seats wipe clean...)

Does the seat slide sideways as a configuration adaption?.

Check the seat is fully pushed back , if it isn't the seat Base won't lift up

seat should slide forward to give more access space at the back of it! least that's the case with my mk 1 pre fl

I had this problem when Annie was new.  The trick that worked for me (no guarantees, of course) was to sit on the seat, then bump up and down while pulling on the handle.  It did give eventually.  Good luck! 

As said above make sure it's fully seated

Sit in the seat and you may hear a click then try tipping it again.
Not trying to teach grandmother to suck eggs but you're not pulling on on the Isofix bar are you, I have done that.

As above - make sure the seat is slid fully backwards.  i had this exact issue a while ago; I pushed and pulled and deployed all my best swear words until I decided to sit on it and slid it back to its limit, after which it popped up beautifully.

5 hours ago, weasley said:

.... deployed all my best swear words.....

Ah yes!  Sorry, I forgot that part. 

Thanks all for your helpful advice.  I took all of it on board and went and sat on the seat, slid it forward and then slid it all the way back again.  After that, it unhooked and pivoted forwards with nary a hitch, smooth as silk.  If it could have spoken it would probably have said: "Oh, is that what you wanted?  You should have said..."

 

In fact, so easily did it fix the problem that no swear words were required.  Just as well, really, since I'd worked through most of my stock the day before when it first started playing up!

 

(From this it should also be clear that, no, I wasn't pulling on the isofix bar.  TBH I don't even know where that is.)