Ok, Clubman hivemind, I may have screwed up and I need your help.

I had things taken apart in the rear of my F54 Clubman looking for a good way to run a wire for the rear camera of my dashcam. I have the electrical connector disconnected, as I was looking at it as a potential route (nopes, unless I come out through the rubber tube). I had to go inside briefly and I closed the door over, so as to not leave it wide open and the latched clicked. Stupid stupid stupid.

Now, without the connector connected, the release doesn't have any power to operate. Please tell me that there's an emergency release for stupid people like me?

 

Ouch. Took a look at the door, and it doesn't look good. You can pull the access panel from the inside, but can't get a good look at the wiring harness. Can't see a way to get access to the connector with any precision. It doesn't look easy to pull the full interior panel with the door closed, but that (or, eek! cutting it) would give you access to the lock mechanism. Best of luck!

 

After taking she time to think about it, I attacked the problem again. The first obstacle to removing the door panel was the catch for the right door, so of it came. I was able to then fold myself into the hatch and with lots of grunting and pulling and swearing the panel came off. That gave me access to the mechanism and I was able to trip the mechanical release.

I won't be doing that again....

 

When I ran the wire for the rear cam, mounted on the license plate frame, I drilled a single hole thru' the sheet metal dead center along the rear edge of the trunk floor. Dropping the wire down from there gets you behind the bumper, but with a heat shield in the way. If you thread the wire back up again on the other side of that shield (more towards the rear of the car) and pop out one of the license plate lights, you can get the wire out to the license plate (nice big square hole to get your fingers in and feel for the wire being threaded up). Then I drilled thru the plastic surround of the light, to provide an exit point for the wire. Sealed up the holes on both ends with silicone for weatherproofing. Using the light surround means you can get lots of silicone on the back side as well, before reinstalling it.

 

Since the camera is an internal camera, the hard part was getting the wire out of the door, and then back into the passenger cabin. I ran the cable through the rubber wiring conduit, with it exiting through the rubber at the base of the plug end. I got that all sealed up and watertight and then ran the camera cable behind the trim piece above the bumper, which gets you behind the bumper. A quick drill through sheet metal, directly under the left storage cubby in the hatch area allowed me to thread the cable in there. Sealed it up with some silicone and the rest of the run was straight forward. Tucking behind wether stripping and panels all the way to the front at the top of the windshield where the front camera is.

Getting the cable out of the door in an invisible way and finding a good way into the interior was definitely a challenge, but we got it done. I don't think the guy I did the install with will ever want to work on the back end of a Mini ever again.

 

Thanks for posting in this thread. I was installing a wiring harness for towing a 2017 F54 and shut the door with the left barn door wiring connector unhooked. Needless to say, the door locked. After mucking around for an hour looking for a door release in places where older models had them, I checked your forum. I then learned what I needed to do. 1. Remove the catch bracket. 2 Pull off the door's interior panel enough to visualize the lock actuator. 3. push the manual release on the actuator with a long screw driver towards the outside of the vehicle. It took all of 5 minutes and only required a t45 socket, socket driver, socket extension, and screw driver. Placing the panel back on afterward was a bit cumbersome, but not extremely bad.