Pull the plastic cover off on the side of the air mixer box by releasing the screws pictured under the red circles and sliding the cover away from the firewall and down to release the firewall clip shown under the red square.



With the cover off you will see this



The heat exchanger runs full time so the pipes you see heat up to coolant temp of the motor. There is little to no insulation on the plastic cover so you can easily experience hot foot syndrome. If it is really cold out you might enjoy it but in the Florida heat that area can get quite toasty. Notice the red circle above the pedal where the heat has actually toasted the wiring loom wrap. The loom in that area runs right under the heater pipe and on my 2013 Roadster the insulation wrap had fallen away and the wires were sitting right on the metal pipe.

The idea is to insulate the exposed metal to prevent heat radiation from cooking your foot. I used foil backed foam tape and armacel 1/2 pipe insulation both bought at home depot plumbing department.



I started by covering the entire exposed heater core with one layer of foam tape. Then a second layer of tape on upper and lower portions. I left only one layer of tape on the end cap so the plastic cover would still fit. The lower pipes were insulated with one piece of pipe tubing around both pipes. I used a plastic trim tool to compress the foam into position around the pipes. No rocket science here if you mess up just cut some more and try again there was enough material to do 5 or six cars.



I also reached behind the heater box and put insulation between the pipes and the wiring harness to protect it.

The last thing I did was to place pipe insulation under the gaps to keep the hot air from the rest of the heater box flowing down into the footwell.


Make sure you keep the lower screw area clear.



Replace the panel cover and you are done. I measured the area after driving and only showed a 10 degree rise in temp compared to the rest of the footwell.

 

Very nice writeup! That should help the rest of us when we get tired of hot feet in the summer.

 

Very nice job. Thanks for sharing.

 

Would the installation be similar in the Gen1?

 

Thats could work for Gen 1 also.

 

Thank you! One of the the best tips I've seen. Considering the incredible number of screwed up assembly designs on the Mini, AT LEAST the heater core is easy to access. I have always had to run the AC vents in the footwell as well as the dash ones. Maybe if I do that I won't have to!

 

Simple but quite ingenious. I have to do this on my gen2, lately the temps in Texas make driving the mini very uncomfortable.

 

Thank you SO much for posting this! I have a "new" 2007 R56. The first time that I drove it out of town, I started getting the hell burnt out of my accelerator foot! After I decided that the car wasn't on fire, I looked on the net to see if others had the same issue. I'm a sandals gal, so it needed addressed asap. I came across this post and was relieved that you had a fix with thorough instructions for a newbie. 👍