The wife and I met Bibendum at the Bitty MINI meet and greet in Chesapeake VA this morning, and in the process of admiring each others MINI, he told us of his problem with the cable on the right hand bonnet latch disengaging.
Being an enterprising young man, he removed the right wheel, then the inner finder liner, and released the catch manually.
The point of this tale is to display his fix, which I am going to apply to our car tomorrow. It prevents it from happening in the first place, and even if the dealer will repair it, I would rather not have it happen at all.
Only the tension of the cable prevents the ball from slipping from the release lever. In the case of Bibendum's MINI, and ours, the cable is too long, which allows the ball to drop out of the yoke in the release lever.
His fix is to use a nylon wire tie to positively hold the cable in place. The tie has no function except to ensure that the ball does not jump out of the yoke.
The photo should make this concept clear. He has developed several other clever fixes and modifications to his MINI, but I will leave those for him to post.
We also discovered that curves posted at 35 MPH can be negotiated at 70 MPH with no problem, even with stock suspension and CVT. Loved the outing, looking forward to more of the same.
Bibendum's bonnet latch fix 
