that does seem to be the case, i just lifted my rear seats to check for it and there's no ring under the seats. The two round things and a couple of pieces of masking tape were all that was down there.

 

No, I don't think it would affect the fit of the rear seat.

I would like to do the front. Haven't tackled it yet. I don't know about the rugs. Where did you hear they were glued? The doors are extremely difficult to do, other than putting a few small pieces in near the bottom.

I'd like to do the firewall and floor. Don't know how difficult it will be.

It deadens vibration of metal panels. After removing the rear seats, the noise from that back was very loud. I put Dynamat throughout the back, I also put Quiet Batt in the side panels and in the cavity for the rear seats. A birch plywood floor went over the seat cavity. I believe the sound level from the rear is now lower than when the seats were there.

However, there is still a lot of road noise coming in the front.

 

Robin,
You can't believe how impressed I am that you have the guts to take your MINI apart to this extent.

I noticed in your middle pic a cable and ring on the right side that looks like the boot hatch manual release ring. Is that the one you showed a pic of earlier relocated so you could lay in the Dynamat?

 

After installing Dynamat in the boot and on the inside of the boot hatch there was an audible reduction in noise coming from the rear of the car. It is much nicer to drive now!

 

Well I took Bimini (our 2008) in and had this looked at. I found out that during the 2008 model year the emergency boot release has been deleted. Bimini is a production week 17 (I think - might be 19). The dealer thinks the fact that mine was not installed properly is indicative that the training on the deletion had occured, but they were still installing it. Person A put in the part, Person B was supposed to complete it but thought they were no longer doing the install. And I think there was someone with a May build that didn't have a release.

Anyway, they installed it and it's in the boot proper, not under the seat. Kind of a bad design in my mind. The dealer said it was so that you could position yourself to push up the boot from the inside after you opened it. My argument is that I can pull the ring while leaning in, the boot pops enough to unlock, I can then walk around and open from the outside. And where it is now, if the seats are up, I can't get to it unless the boot cover is not in place or I want to bend/break the boot cover. This might have to get modified.

 

Mine was build week 12, date on tag in boot is 19 March 2008, no evidence of release cable seen under seat or boot.

There is a petrol door release (green pull) behind amplifier in left access port.

Looking at this photo from Robin's post above:



The release cable can be seen from the latch, along right side up under that wire bundle
with the masking taped NAV receiver connector.

No evidence of this cable in mine, it looks like Robin has relocated the pull-ring along upper side wall in this photo.

Robin lists "NAV" as installed, was the receiver removed for the above photo?

Or is it located elsewhere, I find this space ideal to hide a 'jumper-cable' set and as long as I have enough battery to release the boot..