Thanks a lot Great how-to! It worked like a charm. I installed the new covers in 5 minutes. No towel needed if you have someone else to hold the mirror cap for you.

 

Anyone see this? haha The trick starts at 00:50, but it is for the R56...I haven't tried yet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dq5359x9Uo

 

I would like to know if that really works, or if it was a fluke with his car (like because of broken clips on the cap).

 

This post was great. I replaced my black caps with the checkered flag ones in 5 minutes after reading it doing exactly what it says. Before that, I fooled around for about 30 minutes using the BMW MINI manual instructions with no results. The manual says with the special tool release the tabs. It should say pry outward with the special tool to release the tabs. Also nothing was broken or cracked doing it this way and it saved $75. that the dealer would charge doing it the same way.

 

Geez, you can't post pics about changing your mirror caps without posting some pics !! Especially when you put on some checkered caps.

 

Well CR&PW&JB here he is with his new caps. Next is checkered flag for the sun roof. Then the JCW aero kit.

 

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeet. And can't wait to see your upcoming mods.

Hey, is it the camera angle or is your driver side mirror mounted at a funny angle ? Seems to be drooping a bit.

 

No droop, must be camera angle.

 

Has anyone changed mirror caps with powerfold mirrors. I just realized that's what I am getting and they might not be the same in terms of yanking the mirrors out.

The part numbers are different for the powerfold mirror caps.

 

Got my car today and changed the mirror caps first thing. Took me a whole 5 minutes. Worked out great. Easy-peasy.

 

Same. I found that my driver side caps had broken clips already though... probably someone tried to nick it but then heard the cracking sounds?

Thanks for the post!

 

Great write-up!!!

It was very helpful in removing my covers. Just an added note, even though you have the top clips disengaged, you might want to also disengage the lower clips instead of rolling the cover down to disengage the lower clip. On the first cover I removed I disengaged the upper clip and gently pulled the cover forward and slightly down and it did come off and I notice the bridge pieces on the clips were cracked. My second cover I did the same thing except as I pulled forward and down just slightly, I looked at the bottom clips and could see the pressure against the bridge piece on the tabs wanting to break. At that point I took by butter knife and while keeping enough forward pressure to the top tabs so they would not reengage, I released the bottom two tabs and everything slid off like a charm. Just an FYI from my mini mirror covers removal experience.

 

I love this site!!!!!
My husband got me checker covers for Christmas and the parts guy said he thought that it was about $200 for install. but he said we could provably try it ourselves unfortunately we would not be able to re-use the originals.
i went back and forth on whether to make the change. I was not sure if i was ready to not be able to go back.

 

I decided I didn't like the checkered caps and put my OEM ones back on. Again, it was very easy.

If anyone wants checkered caps I have them in MarketPlace.

 

Just received my Union Jack caps from a Christmas exchange with Moss Motors. They were very happy to do an exchnage. These instructions had the caps on in a few minutes. Thank you for such clear step by step directions. I did pull the heater wires to make it a little easier to see and do.

 

I'm glad that this How-to is still proving useful. To everyone: you're very welcome!

 

Been exchanging diff colors mirror caps and plinths on my 2 R53's for diff looks.
1. There are 4 Torx screws under the plinth (easily visible if you bring hatch to eye level. That's the easy part.
2. More work is with unplugging the single harness that's behind the hatch from the plinth.
Remove (6) Phillips head screws around the perimeter of the hatch inside panel. Then grab one corner and unsnap all around. Set the panel aside. There's the harness plugged from the handle outside. Unplug then you can remove old handle. Push the harness from the new handle into the hole...and do the reverse. Make sure you snap back the clips.
Someone recommended to me to just try to unplug from the outside but the harness is just the right length that it was taking forever for me to try to unplug it using different long nose tools and I was worried I might break the harness. So I did my way and it went quicker. Hope this help.

 

ImagoX, thanks for sharing the how-to!! It applies to R56 as well. Just that there is no wire attached to the mirror (or is it just mine?).

I got the caps swapped in less than 20 minutes. Nothing broken. Everything nice.

 

Great to know - thanks!!

Does anyone know who the Admin is for the 2nd Gen MINI forum? Might as well post a cross-link back here if the process is the same on those cars.

 

ImagoX
Thank you for a great howto
I just changed mine 2006 R52 and all went as planned. nothing broken

 

Believe it or not I was reversing out of my mates steep driveway and he had two lil white poles sticking up out of the ground to mark the edge of the driveway. I hit one and bent the passenger mirror back, ripped the mirror cover off clean. Couldn't see the damage as it was too dark so first gas station i found i put the cover back on, not one broken clip!

Did it on Jan 1, at 12:30 in the morning. What a way to start the new year.

 

Thankz imagoX! thanks to u. none of the clip broke =]]

 

I have a 2009 MCS w/powerfold mirrors. I tried using the pull off method first as all the feedback seemed good. I pulled very lightly and nothing..so I reread the post and tried again pulling a bit harder this time and pop! Off came the mirror, unfortunately the mirror cracked and one of the mirror tabs broke as well. So very frustrated and angry i replaced the cap and put the mirror back on. I'm not sure what I did wrong, maybe something I have is different then what everyone else has that tried this or if the fact that it was about 40 degrees had something to do with it??
So now I go to the other mirror. I'm not even going to try the pull method this time as I really don't want to pay for two new mirrors (god only knows what that will cost me, and arm and a leg?) so I decide to try pressing the tabs. Using the new mirror cap for a guide to where the tabs are, and a flashlight I begin my task. I quickly decided to make my own tool to do this and create my own method. Amazingly it took about 10 minutes and that includes making my own tool. This is what I did:
I used needle nose pliers to bend a old spoke from a bicycle wheel, I made the end the with of the tab.
I then started with the top tab closest to the mirror, as I pushed down i pulled with my hands on the cap. As soon as it popped out I used a small flat head screwdriver to keep it out.
I then popped the two tabs on the bottom. For these as I pulled the cover with my hand I pushed down one tab popping it, then the other. The whole time pulling the mirror cover to keep it from popping back in. As soon as both ofthe bottom ones came out the whole thing came off.
This really wasn't hard at all and I would say try this if you have trouble popping the mirror off so you don't risk cracking your mirror. I know most people don't have bike spokes but I'm sure a wire clothes hangar or other piece of metal that is somewhat flexible would work as well. Or stop by a bike shop they would probably give you one or sell you one for $1.00 tops.
I'll let you know how many appendages I will have to lose to pay for this once I stop by the dealer.
I also hope to have pictures up in my gallery soon with my new blackjack side mirror covers and rear, rearview mirror cover, and side scuttles as soon as I can wash my car.
Here are a few pics
1.The cracked mirror 2.Using the new tool 3. the tools

 

I used 2 or 3 fingers under the edge of the mirror to pull it off and never broke the mirror.

I've done this to my car several times (I have 3 or 4 different mirror covers believe it or not and cycle through them in the summer) and I've done about 6 or 7 other peoples' cars and none of the mirrors have so much as cracked, so I'm not sure why yours did. 40 degrees is a bit chilly, so I suppose it IS possible that the plastic backing was a bit brittle, but that's above freezing so I'm not sure.. A plastics engineer can probably tell us about the decrease in flexibility in that sort of plastic as temp. decreases, but in lieu of that, all I'd recommend (for you or anyone reading this) is to to the "pull off the mirror trick" when the temp is at least 55 degrees or so - every time I've done mine it was well above freezing, and since none of my mirrors have ever cracked then I guess we can say that, experimentally-speaking, there's a low-probability chance of the things breaking.

As always though, if anyone feels wary about a "home brew" modification that you read about on a web site like this, you always have the option to pay a mechanic for the work. It will cost you some green, but they'll replace any broken parts if a mishap occurs. Sorry that happened to you.

 

No worries, mine for some reason was just being a little more difficult. Even though the one mirror cracked it definitely was easy to get the mirror cover off without the mirror being on.
I too would tell people to try your way first.
The method I ended up using on the driver side did work fine, it just took a little bit more time.