BMW makes a design change inside its Mini Cooper doors. I have a 2005 Mini Cooper and one day I could not open my driver's door from the inside. After some on-line research and help from my dad (Ford design engineer ret.), we found the problem. We pulled the door panel off and took a good look around the latch end the door with a small miror. A small plastic (orange) boden cable guide became dislodged from it's retention collar. It was a bit awkard, but I snapped the guide back in place with my thumb and the door worked fine. 6 months later the guide worked it's way out again. I called the dealership to find out what's going on. The parts guy said there was a "Design change" adding a piece to cover that cable guide to better hold it in place. He wouldn't give me any details as to the year and/or reason for the change, but my dad's very confident that cover was added as a safety precaution. Now we're getting very curious as to why there wasn't a recall for prior Mini's to fix this potentially life threating problem?? BMW Corporate say's, "Dealerships handle all technical questions" and Dealerships say, "We're just independent owners, you have to ask corporate".....hummmm ??? Anyway, I managed to take pictures of how it looks when out of place and how it should look normally. W.W.

 

Interesting, could you post those pictures here?

Welcome to NAM....