I have a counter view. The clips, they work. I have two boots with perfectly secured seals as testament to my installation.
Same. I was completely ready to forget the clips and glue it after hearing the stories. But I thought I'd give the clips a crack first and bugger me, they worked really well for me. Maybe the luck of the draw, I don't know. Here's a post of me installing it...it's pretty long sorry
Today I assembled the rear boot lid.
Firstly I installed the rubber boot lid seal.
I used the clip method, rather than using contact adhesive. Other people have reported that the clips are a pain in the bum, but it was super easy and took all of 15 minutes from start to finish (I have heard that maybe there are different types of clips and some are too wide to get this job done easily).
The clip is at the bottom of the image and you can see the orientation of the boot lid so the later shots make sense.
The rubber is positioned so the tongue/flap/slot of the rubber seal points towards the front of the car (more easily demonstrated in the picture below rather than trying to explain it). And the clip is attached like so...
Then the clip is inserted into the holes that surround the boot lid
I cleaned up and semi-polished the latch mechanism, before lubing it with graphite paste and mounting it (I will shine up or replace the old looking bolt later)
I polished up the badges, attached the license plate flap with the previously-polished number plate light
The boot lid shown on the inside as attached
The progress made to reassemble the rear end
If you want to know specifics about the seal, I used:
- a high quality boot seal as available from Minisport in SA "Mini boot lid seal on boot lid seal GENUINE soft seal 14A6584" (note that from what I read some aftermarket versions are crap, but this one was really good)
- clips bought from Mini Kingdom "Clip, Boot Lid & Van Rear Door Seal (#14A6585) x26 = $28.60"
did mine a number of year's ago and haven't needed to touch it again.
