BMW/MINI door panel Expanding Nut
 

I recently have had reasons to pull my interior door trims off -- sound deadening, speaker upgrades, and to replace my interior rubber seal (with the felt) because the @$$hole tint installers screwed it up.

In the process, I discovered that removing & reinstalling the door trims, that a certain "expanding nut" (part no. 07147265039) is prone to break and/or become unusable. I have replacements on order from ECS now:

https://www.ecstuning.com/b-genuine-...t/07147265039/

This nut is for the screw behind the interior door opener. I guess it isn't 100% needed, however, I like having things like this work properly and for the paneling to be snug as the factory meant it to be. I do not muscle the screws out or in, but I have found they seem to be designed to be one- or two-time use only. It really is a PITA. I wonder if BMW/MINI did this as a way to tell if the door trims had been removed? A sort of tamper-evident fastener?

Anyone else run into this?

I think you just got unlucky in that it broke. I doubt that they decided to make one fastener in the car a tamper-evident fastener because so many people are taking door panels off.

Yeah, it does sound far-fetched, but I am careful with this stuff and two bad out of three is not so good. I'll try to get to the 4th door today and see what happens there.

Well I did the 4th door last night, and I was more careful with this one and it didn't break; so 50/50 for me. What I did differently was: I was slow and methodical when unscrewing keeping the screwdriver straight with no lateral wobble. Same thing when putting it back together. My guess is that I must have torqued it with forward and/or sideways pressure causing the off-white retaining piece to separate from the black holder piece.

Fasteners in just about every car are not engineered with multiple use in mind. The cost would be very high if they made a fastener that was strong enough to hold and be released multiple times... so they are brittle and cheap and break. That said - they are also very cheap to replace. My S2000 uses fasteners in the wheel liners to hold them in place. Each time i have to get to the headlights or something behind there I break em so I just have a bulk size bag full of them and basically replace them each time. Probably go through 3 a season...

Those door clips are always good to have a spare, after having BMWs and MINIs they seem to all snap every once in a while. I just always keep extras or a kit around.

https://www.ecstuning.com/b-vaico-pa...t/v991010~vaq/


https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.nor...db48060263.jpg

Yes, on my F56, i had one broken by the dealer them selves! I replaced one. I also bought myself reserve ones. Also some extra doorclips, the break even faster. But they don't cost much at the dealer. So good plan. Get some as reserve!

Ironically, these parts didn't break so easily on my old D-90 and D-110 Land Rovers!

Man, seeing those E36 plastic window guides in that photo just gave me a flashback. And not in a good way...