My wife's 2008 Cooper (R56), like most, had a rubber trunk release button cover that had dried and become paper thin. It finally gave up the ghost. I looked at a ton of posts on this forum and other places online, and the standard response was to replace the whole trim piece. The consensus was that the rubber piece was not sold separately. I found an excellent source for the piece ($15+shipping). Took me two minutes to remove the trim piece, unplug the small wiring connection, secure it so it wouldn't fall back into the hatch. I assumed that the trim piece would have to be split apart to get to the inside of the rubber assembly (wrong!). After disassembling and reassembling it, I began what was the longest part, removing the rubber...all of it. Used a small scribing tool to totally clean out the exterior channel where it was "baked" into over the years. Probably about 30 minutes on that step. The new rubber cover has a "grommet" design, so there's a thin indentation running around the entire thing. Putting it back in place took about 3 minutes. So, gate to gate was about 40 minutes. Works great. The interior of the rubber has four stabilizer on it that line up with the small circuit board that holds the microswitch, and a circuluar extension that lines up with the switch to actuate it. Works perfect. So, if you've got an older Mini basic, and your trunk needs some love, this is about $100 dollars cheaper than a new trim piece, especially if you have to try to match paint. The provider is: Out Motorining (https://www.outmotoring.com/); and the specific URL for my car was: this one I ended up calling because the website quantity was inaccurate. Excellent people!

 

That’s a great tip. On mine the rubber is fine but I think something on the inside is broken because it pushes in much further than it should and then doesn’t work. I took it off the car to see if I could figure it out but it looks all but impossible to get apart without breaking something. It might be worth just cutting the button out and replacing with this

 

Just to make sure I’m understanding this correctly, remove the handle but you can clean out the old rubber piece and insert the new piece without any kind of disassembly. Can you provide a picture or explain what kind of pick tool works best to get out the old rubber that’s in the channel?

 

Nice.......I just looked at that recently for my vehicle.....

 

I got this one; cut the periphery with an Xacto knife and pressed in around the margin.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/393876136215
Props to RandyR90S for the write-up:
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ing-o-diy.html