I have a 2010 Clubman S with about 95K miles. I just noticed that the left rear "barn door" won't open. Of course, I thought it was the actuator since that's a common failure. I have another R55 (2009) in my shop and swapped the actuator to test it. The donor actuator also didn't work (but it does work in the car I took it out of). I took the actuator from the 2010 and plugged it into the 2009 and it works fine. So the actuator is definitely working. Next, I tried swapping the door handle with the switch. Again, it made no difference. The switch from the 2010 worked fine in the 2009.

My scan tool can activate components, so I used that to "pop" the left door and it worked fine. So, the car is "talking" to the actuator for sure, and the actuator itself is working. So I pulled out the taillight to check the wiring harness where is transitions from the door to the body and didn't see any obvious breaks. I did notice that the connector for the door handle switch has a small brown wire and a small black wire and I counted 9 wires inside the door, but 8 come into the body from the rubber grommet. I found the small black wire for the switch, but not the brown one. Does it merge with one the other other, larger, brown wires?

Anyway, I can't seem to catch a break with this car - and the problems are never easy to solve. Has anyone run into this before and if so, how did you solve it?

I'm considering "hotwiring" the switch on the left door to bypass whatever is causing the break in communication. My thought is to use a relay to only allow the switch to pop the door if the right side door is open. I'll probably have to get a little creative to make it work, and it's only Plan B. Any reason why that's a bad idea?