Josh Wardell’s MINI Cooper S

Ever since my bumper was destroyed in June, my foglights would not turn on. I assumed the filaments were broken by the impact, as one of the front turn signals suffered the same fate. However, I kept putting off replacing them for two reasons: First, every guide I found to do so involved removing both front wheels and wheel liners as you can only access the bulbs from the back. And secondly, I could never conclusively determine if the bulbs were H7 or H11s–discussions argued both ways in the forums, and even my dealer’s parts department saw indications of both and wasn’t sure! I eventually came up with a good short cut, and attempted replacement last week.

First, a guide to replace the foglight bulbs easily–something I haven’t seen documented elsewhere. Simply turn your wheels all the way to one side. Then with a standard phillips screwdriver (ideally a stubby one to help with the smaller space), unscrew and pull out the four plastic rivets towards the front of the wheel well. This will almost allow you to pull back the plastic wheel liner; unscrew the one metal screw upside-down under the front bumper, and the liner will then be freed. You should be able to pull it back now enough to see the back of the fog light. Simply rotate the L-shaped wire assembly 90 degrees and you can then pull it out of the lamp enclosure. There’s plenty of slack in the wire to pull it out from behind to more easily work on it.

The bulb turns out to be an H7 in an H11 socket. There are a few weld points, however. They could probably be pried off pretty easily, however it is much easier just to replace the whole H11 assembly. Simply squeeze the tabs on either side of the wire connector to pull it off. As for the bulbs themselves, they can be found in most parts stores. The MINI dealership wanted a whopping $23 each for them! So instead I went to my favorite aftermarket lighting website, Autolumination where the bulbs can be had in a variety of brands and colors for as little as $3.49! This is also a great opportunity to stock up on back up H7s for headlights, and 7507 turn signal bulbs..even available in silver-coated.

Enough of the how-to, on with the story. After close examination, I noticed the filaments in the bulbs were just fine. After plugging them back in, turning on the car, and trying the lights…the foglights worked! Strange…. Then I noticed that now my REAR foglights were not working! I checked fuses everywhere, and eventually went to the back and wiggled the cables..tried again and they worked. What is going on?? Perhaps a british car starts showing its age around 65,000mi with old-fashioned electrical gremlins. But I was happy…everything was working.

The next morning, when leaving for work I then noticed a headlight out! I quickly inspected it as the other headlight bulb had legitimately blown a few weeks earlier, but the filament was intact. And sure enough after re-attaching, the headlight worked again! Strange indeed.