[JpMcC]

Decided to treat myself to an early Christmas present last week and ordered a Pre-Painted Aero Kit, on ordering I was told 6-8 weeks delivery and got a shock when 2 days later I had a call to say it was in stock.
At this point I would like to point out that there is no way the kit will fit in the back of a Mini so if your picking one up sometime soon get something a little bigger, thankfully I have a Disco3 at my disposal so it wasn’t a problem.
Anyway Sunday morning brought an early start and so I wanted to get cracking with fitting the kit. Please note the BMW/MINI Instructions are useless
I decided to start with the rear bumper so……..

Rear Bumper

• First thing upon inspection of the existing bumper was to find that fitting the new one would require the wheels & wheel lining to be taken off

• When you remove the wheel there is approx 6-8 expanding screws holding the lining in place also 2 10mm bolts, there is also one torx screw at the bottom of the existing side skirts

[IMG][/IMG]

• The next job to do is removing the arch rim, there is 5 clips holding this in place, unfortunatly I forgot to order additional clips from the dealer and I would strongly recommend this as these are easily broken. However once you have the arch lining removed it exposes the rear of the clips, I used a pair of pliers and was able to remove the clips from the rear without damaging them at all. There is also a expanding rivet holding the wheel arch trim to the bumper and this also requires removing, I found mine extremely tight I used some Vaseline and then popped it out with a knife.

[IMG][/IMG]
[IMG][/IMG]

Once all is done your wheel arch should be exposed like this:
[IMG][/IMG]

The above has to be completed on both sides before you can begin removing the old bumper.

• Off with the old:

There is an assortment of screws and torx screws holding the bumper in place, first is to remove all the torx screws from the base of the bumper, as far as I could make out these are just used to hold the spare wheel box in place, which I took the opportunity of removing completely as it serves no purpose with Runflats.
The main screws holding the bumper in place are located where the wheel arch trim normally is and also at the boot lining (See Pics):

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

• Finally there is one other screw from the underside of the bumper, I didn’t take a pic until after I took the bumper off, but it is located just beside the exhaust and requires a long handled screw driver to remove:

[IMG][/IMG]

• Once you unclip the rear fog light your rear bumper should just pop off without much fuss and you should be left with this:

[IMG][/IMG]

Without using any instructions I would say this process incl removing the wheels & lining took approx just over 1hr

The new aero kit rear bumper has exactly the same fixing points as the old bumper so It’s just a process of following the above steps in reverse order, the only difference is that you are required to re-wire the fog lights to allow for the both side, unfortunatly I found the wiring that BMW Supply with the kit does not fit so I was forced to do a bit of DIY.

Once completed your new rear should look like this:

[IMG][/IMG]

Side Skirts

This is the easiest of the mods to make to the R56 and really transforms the car IMO. Again a quick glance around the existing skirts and it’s fairly obvious what has to be removed.

• The first step is the removal of all the existing expanding screws from the bottom of the existing side skirt. There is approx 9-10 of these in total, it is also necessary to remove the torx screw from the bottom of the rear wheel arch lining.

[IMG][/IMG]
[IMG][/IMG]

• The second thing to do is the removal of the existing door strips, in my case the “Cooper” logo strips, I found the best way of doing this was to use a hairdryer to initially heat up the existing glue holding these in place, I carefully then used a knife to cut through the glue. Unfortunatly it is impossible to remove these without damaging them.

[IMG][/IMG]
[IMG][/IMG]

• Once the door strips have been removed there is 4 pin type screws, I used a knife to turn them free.

[IMG][/IMG]

• Once all the above screws and clips have been removed this is the pain-ful bit, unfortunatly it’s now a matter of pulling the existing side skirt free, as much as I tried this is the only way to remove them, you will hear the clips break but thankfully you should be supplied with a complete new set. Once off it should look like this…

[IMG][/IMG]

Time to put on the new skirts:

• The new side skirts come in two pieces, the outer piece and also the black plastic trim to hold the skirt to the frame of the car, I attached this first as an illustration of where exactly this trim is suppose to be in place…

[IMG][/IMG]
It screws onto the base of the car in about 8 different positions. Unfortunatly though it is extremely difficult to attach the new side skirt while this trim is attached to the body of the car, so I removed it again and decided to attach it to the new skirt first, it allows for easier alignment.
It’s fairly straightforward where the extra trim attaches to the new skirt.

• The new side skirt has approx 8-10 clips to be attached, and uses the same alignment as the old skirts:

[IMG][/IMG]

• From this it is just a matter of screwing in the new additional trim first and then aligning the clips and basically popping them into place.

Once in position your new side skirt should look like this:

[IMG][/IMG]

You are also supplied with the JCW Side Sills with the R56 Aero Kit Package

[DerekH]

Bmw instuctions are useless your are 100% correct there i wasted 2 hours on fitting spot lights as most important part not detailed , good report looking for skirts info now thanks Derek

[Mini-Trainer]

Quote: Originally Posted by JpMcC (original)

Decided to treat myself to an early Christmas present last week and ordered a Pre-Painted Aero Kit, on ordering I was told 6-8 weeks delivery and got a shock when 2 days later I had a call to say it was in stock.

Nicely done old bean, they'll be a few after this advice!

Rams

[valk009]

Thanks for the step by step guide! Will be looking forward to the side skirt ugrade guide

[n1tr0]

Looking forward to the front bumper install, nice write-up