Hey all. New to Mini, first time owner here ('08 R56). Love the car! Of course now, I'm entering the phase that my wife hates -- throwing money at something I just bought

So, now I'm looking at some retrofits for some of the things that, in hindsight, I should have made sure were in the car before deciding, but that's life. It looks like some of the retrofits don't make any sense economically or are too difficult or not well documented. The list of things that I wanted to retrofit and my current assessment is:

Xenons - way too expensive (OEM housings, ballasts, washers, etc.), parts list and procedure not well documented.
Alarm - about $231 for the OEM kit, DIY install, plus dealer needs to program.
Foglights - still researching this one.
Auto-dimming mirror w/Homelink - looks doable, found some threads documenting procedure. No recoding required. Parts can be found used.

Not a retrofit, but a mod, but I will probably also perform a rear-seat delete so I have more room for my dogs in the back and can level out the floor. Don't think the fold-down of the rear seats will do the trick.

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to learning as much as I can about the car. I have the Bentley on order and usually do all of my own work. Cheers!

 

Retrofit lumbar support is cheap if you don't have it already.

 

Front driving lights and rear fogs.

 

I have the front fog lights, and have installed the lenses and bulbs for the rear lights. I still have to install the switch. The wiring and plugs were already there, zip tied to the top of the bumper from the factory.

I have read though, that I will have to have the computer reprogrammed to get the rear fogs to work. That will probably cost some coin at the dealer.

For your info, I have a spare front bumper cover from an 08MCS that the cover is broken and it has the complete fog light setup in it.

 

I'm not so sure I get the big deal with the rear fogs. I have em, might be nice if I lived somewhere that fogged a lot, but I don't really see the value in them.

My car has just about everything I'd want on it. If I were to retrofit I'd add heated seats (winter makes you think these crazy things even though it was 100F+ when you started shopping for a Mini and thought there's no way you'd ever want them) and bluetooth but that's freaking expensive to retrofit from what I've seen.