So today I tackled the (seemingly) daunting task of removing my headliner in my R56. I was the latest in a long line of mini owners to have their stubby antenna ripped off in an automatic car wash and, because I have no sunroof, the antenna base is a little difficult to remove. I also wanted to make my tan headliner and upper interior trim black; and now I might as well get those red seatbelts that I've always wanted.

Anyways, my ceiling-mounted switch panel and all of the other electronics in the way of the headliner have been removed. My front and rear seatbelts are unbolted at the bottom and my antenna base is unplugged. I disconnected the battery before doing anything in order to avoid taking an airbag to the face or some random codes popping up on the dash, but my idiot self thought it'd be a good idea to fully close the rear hatch after removing the headliner. The only way to open it, as far as I'm aware, is with the battery connected. I'm worried about error codes coming up or the airbag/safety system being messed up with everything taken apart.

Is it safe to reconnect the battery, or do I need to plug everything back in?





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You can see in one of the pictures that I had a towel blocking the latch for the hatch from latching into place, but it somehow didn't work.

 

There should be a handle under the rear seat to release the hatch if you do not want to hook up the battery.

 

I had already removed the rear seat cushions and there's no emergency release that I can see, nor is there one behind the access panels in the trunk area. From what I can find on the internet, only certain years had an emergency hatch release. Mine is a 2013, so you'd expect it to have one to comply with regulations, but I can't find anything. There's no mention of an emergency release in the manual. This seems like a slight safety issue

 

Sorry not sure if it is on al years. here is the page out of the manual and it shows it where mine is.




I guess you would have to reconnect the battery, I would think as long as nothing is grounded that shouldn't be you should be able to reconnect the battery pop the hatch and disconnect the battery.

 

​​​​​​Thanks the reply! I think I'll pull the airbag fuse and reconnect the battery to open the trunk.

If anyone reading this cares, I'll probably make a thread about how to remove the headliner(because I couldn't find one complete thread that covered the process from start to finish) For anyone wondering, my neighbor does upholstery and is simply gluing black suede to the existing headliner, which was in great shape. He's wrapping the A, B, and C pillar trim in special black vinyl and he gave me a kit of products from a company called SEM to use to paint the sun visors, grab handles, and "airbag" covers.

I may be sending my seatbelts to Safety Restore to get them redone in red. It's $75 per belt, plus shipping, which means that you could get all four belts in red for the price of a pair of GP2 red seatbelts. Refurbishment of all of the parts and mechanisms of the seatbelt is also included in that price. They can do belts in a ton of colors other than red, which is cool if you're making a more custom interior.

Lastly, I may have my neighbor cut some black carpet to clean up my rear seat delete. The only other interior mods I want to do are nicer seats (Bride Streams with the gradient if I could afford them) and a red rear strut tower bar.