I had the low beam headlight bulb burn out on the passenger side on my 2019 Countryman S ALL4, so I needed to replace that bulb. I had replaced headlight and signal bulbs on other MINI models, both halogen and HID, which were straightforward enough. Easy peasy, I thought. Before I started I took some time on the web to see what was involved in the F60 models, and I was surprised to see that there was precious little real information out there. Some had said it was not an easy task, some had given up in trying to access the bulbs, and some had said that it was not worth the effort, just take it to a MINI dealership and eat the cost. I was seeing prices for this task ranging between several hundred dollars to over $1K to get the job done. Ridiculous, I thought, so I determined to give it a go.

I quickly discovered several items that partially explained why this job had such a high cost. First, for the halogen headlights the bulbs are not readily accessible and require that the entire headlight assembly be removed just to get at the bulb. That's just nuts - I see BMW's engineers all over this design, fans as they are for designing excessively complex and over-engineered basic functional bits. Three Torx T25 bolts and one 10 mm bolt needed to be removed. Since you always want to replace headlight bulbs in pairs, I had to remove both headlight assemblies. Bottom line - job done in about 3 hours. This was not an excessively difficult task, just tedious and far more finicky than it had to be. Issues of interest to those contemplating doing this job themselves:

Issue #1 - the Torx T25 bolts are secured using a clip-type fastener that is only secured to a tab on the vehicle through compression and friction. Two of these fasteners, part #07-14-9-310-339-M26 in the MINI parts catalog, would spin on the tab they were clipped to and had to be held in place with Channellock pliers so the bolts could be unscrewed. The bolts are further secured with threadlocker, which is fine if the nuts they screwed into were rigidly held in place. They were not, hence the need for pliers.


MINI Headlight Mounting Nut Alignment Element Genuine MINI 07149310339.

Issue #2 - looking carefully at the photo above, you will note the square nut that the Torx T25 bolt screws into. The nut is captured in a cage to prevent it from turning. That's a good thing, except for one mounting nut on the driver's side headlight that had so much threadlocker on the bolt that it needed several dozen lb ft of torque to get it loose from the nut. So much torque that it overcame the strength of the capture cage, bending the cage outward to the point where the nut was freely spinning in the cage. What I ended up having to do was to grab the nut cage with a small vise-grip locking plier and then wedge a screwdriver bit into the gap. I was then able to bend the top half of the cage outward. That gave me enough room to get a 10 mm open-end wrench onto the square nut and then used my impact driver (!) with an impact-rated Torx T25 bit to unscrew the bolt. There was a lot of threadlocker on that bolt.


After prying open the nut cage to get a wrench onto the no-longer captured nut.

Issue #3 - in order to get a wrench onto the caged nut, I had to use vise-grip pliers to hold it in place while backing out the threadlocker-drenched bolt. I needed some room to get the vise-grip pliers onto that nut, but to do so I had to get the horn out of the way. The securing nut holding the horn in place was underneath the driver's side headlight assembly, getting a 10 mm socket onto that nut seemed impossible. But then I realized that with three of the four bolts securing the headlight assembly removed, I was able to rotate the headlight vertically to the point where it was simple to get the socket and an long extension onto the nut holding the horn to the bracket. The horn then dropped below and I had plenty of room to use the vise-grip pliers.


Horn unbolted, giving enough room to get at the freely-spinning caged nut just to the right of the horn bracket.

Issue #4 - now with the headlights out, I was looking forward to popping out the old low beam H7 Halogen bulbs and inserting the new bulbs (Sylvania H7 High Performance SilverStar ZXE Gold Halogen Headlight Bulb (Pack of 2) - H7SZG2BP). I was not mentally prepared to deal with how fussy the securing ring assembly was when it came to removing the old bulbs and then installing the new bulbs. After removing the holddown screw with a Torx T20 bit coupled with an 90º driver (and being very careful to not drop the screw into the recesses of the headlight interior) I was able, with much patience, to work the old bulb loose from the three spring clips that hold the bulb flange in place:


Using a long T20 Torx bit and angle adapter to remove the hold-down screw.

Issue #5 - installing the new bulb without touching the glass surface of the bulb was the single task that took the most time during this installation. Getting the new bulb's flange ring to fully seat in place onto the back of the headlight reflector was a real exercise in patient fiddling with the bulb. The three clips that keep the bulb firmly seated into its mount point have to be positioned just so, else the bulb would fit in the mount at an angle, not a good thing when it comes to aligning the beam of the headlight. I used a long narrow screwdriver to slightly expand the clips enough to where I could work the bulb flange below the edges of the clips. Very fussy process - too much force would bend the spring clips out of alignment and possibly break the back of the reflector housing. You need a strong but delicate hand to weedle those bulbs into place.


Spring clips in the recess where the bulb's mounting flange had to be pushed into place.

Final assembly was a breeze once the bulbs were installed in both headlight housings. Everything works, job is done. If Alec Issigonis had ever lived to see his original MINI morph into the relatively gigantic Countryman, then I'm sure he would have approved.