So I've had an issue where I'm driving and suddenly the front seat will just recline, fairly rapidly. I assumed mistakenly that it was the gears stripping in the reclining side pieces of the seat and found some on ebay. Swapped them out. Same problem. Frustrated that I likely got another bad pair I was inspecting the original ones I removed and everything seemed fine. So I moved on with life for a few weeks ignoring the problem and went to the grab the title out of the glove box and put my knee into the center of the seat and the seat came rapidly reclining back up into a upright position.
Which leads me to believe it may be these rubberband pieces that connect the left and right gear sets. Potentially I'm driving along, hit a bump and trigger the bar that connects the two gears and hence the seat reclines.
I've ordered the parts new from a BMW Parts store, thankfully they're not $500 from some eastern European E12 chop shop on ebay and I plan to replace them. But before I go ripping the entire seat out again I'm curious if anyone else has had this happen or if anyone thinks I'm heading down the wrong path.