This morning I found that the lens on the front passenger side turn signal is gone.

The bulbs are there, and functional, with no apparent damage to the interior reflector. However, the exterior lens is completely gone.

I’m guessing a piece of road debris hit it, as there is no other damage to the front bumper cover.

I do not want to pay a body shop to fix this, but I want it fixed (soon), and I have some questions.

1. Is the lens available separately, or is it somehow integrated with the light assembly? Any idea on price?

2. Based upon my brief inspection, as well as a bit of searching, it appears I have to remove the front bumper cover to access this area. The last pic on this page http://mini.uglydoris.com/archives/000020.html# indicates that the entire turn signal housing is attached the front bumper cover. Is there a simpler and/or quicker way to replace the lens?

Any help and/or advice is appreciated.

 

The entire light housing is very cheap, about $25. However, you do have to remove the bumper cover, but that is really not a very difficult thing to do.

What I suggest is to find your local MINI club and see if someone there has experience removing it and would help you, but the how-to that you have found seems to be a very good description of how to do this. It is easiest if you have the car on ramps or jack stands so that you can get underneath easily.

If worse comes to worse, you could have a mechanic or body shop do this and it should not cost more than 1 hour labor and the cost of the part, especially since it should not take more than 30 minutes to complete the job.

 

Consistent with what you stated, the part is pretty cheap -$25.75 for the entire assembly, and per my dealer the lens is not separately available.

I frankly hadn't thought of using my mechanic, but since I already have all the tools (ramps, etc) save for the Torx, I'm inclined to try DIY.